rant on deceivers.com about Michael Moore

I posted the following comment on deceivers.com, after reading their article about Michael Moore hiring non-union workers here (awaiting moderation):
http://deceiver.com/2011/03/07/michael-moore-supports-unions-and-non-union-labor/comment-page-1/#comment-65107

Wow, what a bunch of hate-spewing commentators!  Gee, are you all so 'great' and Michael Moore is not b/c he hired non-union people to shoot his film?  As someone that has worked with several unions and for unions, I say --> SO WHAT?

No one is perfect, and he is by no means perfect.  But what he does well is tell a story that so many ignorant buffoons (probably some of you included) had no idea -- that the US medical system is cruel and inhuman and looks like crap compared to Europe or Canada, that Bush & Cheney did some unusual shenanigans around 9/11 (and before after, like lying about Iraq & leaking a secret agent's ID to the news & cheating on the voting machines), that the financial failure was caused by greed, that private corporations are predators upon their workers and their locales of operation, etc etc.

Unlike you idiots, who make fat jokes & think you are making critical commentary, Michael Moore actually is taking action and getting things done.  And he never insults people (like Bush Jr) for being idiotic moronic jerks!

So, you are making less than $40 an hour?  Well, don't blame the unions!  Unions caused labor income to go up, work hours to go down, and profit going to the upper ranks to drop.  Paying union labor (or non-union labor, like In&Out Burger, Peets' Coffee, etc) a decent wage and medical coverage does not make require your end-product to be more expensive.  It can affect the price, but it doesn't have to. 

What makes your products more expensive is excessive executive compensation of $1 million and up (which is more than $20k per week) and large profits going to share-holders.

I agree that some union jobs are overpaid relative to the work done.  But so what?  How many executives do nothing but sexually harassing employees while being paid $500 per minute?   Or hwo about the executives who fail their company and make it go bankrupt while collecting their huge salaries? 
Frankly, I don't care if a cop or fireman is paid well, or if the guy screwing the bolts into my car is paid enough to pay attention. 
But you FOOLS who blame unions for the USA's financial problems have everything backwards.

Big business (executives, board of directors, & shareholders) want to maximize profit at the expense of labor compensation, seeing it as an unnecessary cost to be minimized.  This is why we have sweatshops & child labor & prison labor.  Unions want a fair (at least 'livable') wage paid to employees, regardless of what they are doing.

When you insult a worker doing a job like picking fruit or screwing in bolts or cleaning toilets, consider this -- would YOU rather do that job?  And secondly, is it such a bad thing that the worker doing that hard job gets enough money that they can feel like they are doing right by their families?

One of the commenters here said they had a college degree -- well good for you!  But guess what?  It's good for getting you a job where the company won't want to pay you what you are worth, in order to push the profit upwards towards the executives and away from you!  And you can whine all you want about workers below you charging too much, but you'll be yelling at the wrong people.

The current financial crises were caused by rich bankers stealing money from middle class & poor people by issuing loans which should have been illegal or at least unacceptable.  But instead they were playing with other people's money and they took chances, and lots of people jumped in for the ride.  But when the housing values started to drop, the government stepped in and bailed out the richest, not the poorest.  Homeowners lose, bankers pocket their money and spend millions on lobbyists to move on & not look back.  Zero criminal prosecution for billions of dollars lost by stealing, by negligence, by not doing their jobs of due diligence while pocketing millions of dollars!!!
Guess what?  If no one goes to jail for fraud over this, it will happen again!  (Have you noticed all those commercial real estate vacancies, by the way?)

And you people want to blame the workers for this?

So if you want to blame and accuse, go after the real criminals.  Michael Moore is a great filmmaker (and yes, he uses spin.  But so what?  Fox is 99% spin and 1% facts, Michael Moore is 5% spin and 95% facts) and story teller, and he is not the powerful 'overlord' whether he has $50mil or $500 mil.  He's telling the truth about the people with so much money that htey measure their wealth in the billions, in multiple currencies and assets, and they own the war machine (The Carlyle Group, Haliburton, Bechtel), they own the oil machine (BP is only one of many including Exon, Shell, Texaco, etc), and soon they will own your water.

It upsets these wealthy people to be forced to spend their money on social welfare and social good.  They'd rather have the FREEDOM to spend 'their money' as they like.  That's why they are fighting taxes and government social spending (social security, medicare, medicaid). 

WHY?
Because the uber-rich don't care if you die young, if you suffer in misery in the street impoverished, if you lose your income in a oil spill or environmental nuclear mistake, if you can't pay your medical insurance, or if you are homeless.

When you have $100 in your pocket and won't give a homeless guy a dime, that is how the ultra-wealthy feel about the working class and the poor people.  Who cares, they are just scum anyway!  Someone else will deal with it, or maybe that person will just die & leave me alone.

This is why they don't want you to know what is really happening; they want to keep you blind, divided, and conquered.  You probably don't know what Smedley Butler did to G. Bush Sr's grandfather, a nazi-supporting banker & fascist, either. 

"In November 1934, Butler told the committee [Congress] that a group of businessmen, saying they were backed by a private army of 500,000 ex-soldiers and others, intended to establish a fascist dictatorship."  And guess what?  Bush now has a private army of Blackwater mercenaries (rebranded Xe Consultants) and other CIA mercenary organizations who don't need American democratic approval b/c they operate under a black budget of drug money and CIA 'secret treasury'.

So if you blame Michael Moore for your woes, you are a FOOL.  Blame the Bushes, blame the CIA, blame the uber-rich.  Who has killed millions of people, & who is making movies trying to make people wake up?

RED ROOM blog entry -- OBSESSION is my ART and my TOOL

RED ROOM sends me an email, asks me, ""What are your obsessions? Your passions? Your fixations? ... Just tell us what's on your mind--a lot of the time. " A nice, harmless invitation for me to blog on their website.

I wonder, why do they care? Does anyone in the USA really care what I think? Then I realize ... Ah yes, they are trying to get more 'hits' and 'views' on their website, which increases their stats and (theoretically) makes them look better to advertisers. They ask me to talk about myself, which they will in-turn re-package and give to their viewership for free in hopes of more 'hits'. Even my composing on their website generates 'hits', so they have already won. I'm fine with that, however, because it's a win-win world and we can all build partnerships of success -- at least they said that in my last business class.

This is the new economy, it seems; an economy about hits and views and commodification of other people's lives as Blogs in order to market and sell them to a viewership that never pays for the product -- however, someone seems to have forgotten the MONEY piece, at least for us little folks.

MONEY, the medium of exchange where one valuable item is evaluated and traded for another valuable item. Something is not working in this equation here. Advertisers are messing things up, don't you think? Advertisers are paying pennies to have their ads put up with your content, which actually is NOT adding value but subtracting value and annoying viewers, but the viewers contentment is not seen as a valuable thing. Advertisers are STEALING part of your brain-space and not paying you for that. So the equation is already fucked.

The topic of money arouses in me a powerful temptation to rant about the CRIME of the Wall Street Bailouts. In fact, I can't resist writing the number out: $750,000,000,000 in bailout money to the banks. The bankers just did the largest bank-robbery in all of known history, and the media 'explained' it away, and then moved on to Sports.

I want to rant further on the insanity which enabled Bush Jr to give away billions of dollars with minimal oversite to the richest Americans, but instead I will stop here and invite you to read any of MY RANTz on MY BLOG on MY SITE, rekzkarz.com. (Aha! I can pitch and market and sell myself EVEN AS you are pitching and marketing and selling me! So there!) I have a bunch of posts about the Bailout Robberies. In fact, I even shot an entire video of RANTz about the state of the USA, but this is not the place to market my videos... or is it?

Back to the topic: Obsession

I feel I'm an expert. I've been clean and sober for 13 years. A sober addict, I still attend 12 Step meetings and give my hand out to newcomers who are for the first time imagining the possibilities of living life without being trashed constantly. Many new people to 12 Step Programs may not believe such a thing is really possible. 13 years ago, I didn't.

But new people keep on coming, and some of them get sober. They change, they grow as people. They move past the alcohol and drug abuse, and once those drugs have faded many realize the obsessive quality has not gone away, but 'graduated' to other things, like food, sex, internet, gambling, objects and cluttering, relationship addiction, and more.

In un-fucking themselves, they have woken up -- and realized they were fucked.

But the good news is that the same skills learned in getting clean and sober can be used to clean up the other stuff. And many of us do that, successfully.

But does that remove the underlying obsessiveness?

I have been doing an Artists' Way group for the past 5 months. It's a powerful transformational meeting on Monday nights at a humble local restaurant. We started with 12 people, and now we are widdled down to three. We are not the strongest or most successful of the bunch -- we are the ones who feel there is a benefit in meeting. Last Monday, we experimented using a "Coaching Yourself" book and I felt it was very successful. We uncovered some common truths about ourselves that none of us realized we shared: Obsession, and the desire to force ourselves to perform rather than enjoying ourselves.

I generally see obsession as one of my strengths. I'm 'intense', people find me to be a 'powerful' personality. Obsession runs counter to balance, so I need to remember to eat, walk, find time with friends & my girlfriend, laugh, etc. But it is so powerful, the desire to continue what I am doing, that I can do superhuman feats (even now that I'm without drugs), such as:

• operate my computer for 12-18 hours straight without food, water, or a pee break
• stay up from midnight to 7am for several nights working on a project
• work a 12 hour day on a film set, and then work another 12 hours that night at home
• compose a song, edit and do multiple versions, and upload it to the internet (the 'tapes' on my blog site)
• send 50 emails in a day, update multiple blogs, touch my facebook account, & do graphic design work
• watch 10 hours of TV on a DVR (but with fast-forward, I can squeeze in 12+ hours of actual content)

and the superheroic feats continue... I had always associated these unique skills with my 'unique nature', my 'extreme personality', being driven or inspired, and later my 'addictive nature', my 'ADHD', and so on. Several doctors have wanted to give me psych medicine (and I tried some) to cure me. To fix me. To make me more like ... everyone else. This is the goal? To make me more able to do a corporate 9-5 job, to work at a supermarket, to be a bank teller. The goal was to make me "normal".

I'm grateful that I wandered into a Kundalini Yoga class years ago in Los Angeles where the Sikh Yoga Master began talking about ADHD several minutes after I had wandered (late) into the class. He said ADHD is not a disease or an ailment, it is not something needing to be fixed. He believed ADHD people need to be given the tools to create, and then released to do their creations.

Awhile back, I decided to re-label my world. I come up with new ones daily. So far, here's a few good ones to reclaim my language from 'them'.

• Right to Life Supporter = Fetal Rights Activist (or better yet, Fetus Protector)
• Socialist = a supporter of fairness and sharing
• Marxist/Communist = a potentially violent believer in sharing
• Anarchist = a person who believes, "if I'm not hurting anyone, leave me the fuck alone!"
• Capitalist = an advocate of "let the rich be rich, let the poor be poor"
• 40 hour 9-5 work week = slavery (albeit with some consent on the part of the enslaved)
• Non-violent Crime = occurs when a person who is not able to work for a reasonable wage opts to engage in non-violent actions (drug dealing, shop lifting) to survive. Also a term for not wearing your seat-belt, smoking cigarettes near a door, public nudity, public sex, and using any drug that hasn't been endorsed by the Government, including smoking a plant.
• NEWS = programming by media (and government and corporations) which informs but will not outrage people enough to demand justice. A conscious propagandistic manipulation of the population. News is a product to be consumed and not cause problems with the entrenched system of oligarchical capitalism.
• Conservative Republican = Fascist (a believer in a strong union of government, business, and religion, where the upper class is far above the lower, sometimes offering protection for the poorest, sometimes guaranteeing death for the poorest)
• Democrat = Centrist (a moderate position, someone ready to compromise, but doesn't completely advocate the total exploitation of the poorest parts of society or the world)
• Radical = Left Winger (a revolutionary who believes in change, and often in concepts like 'freedom', 'equality', and 'sharing'.
• Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) = Artist

I know somewhere in my head that a BLOG entry should be short and sweet, and have some nice pictures, in order to keep the reader's attention and be more easily consumed. A BLOG is not a book, and reading something on a computer screen is not a fun activity like reading a book. (Know why? Computer screens are flashing direct light into your eyes constantly, painfully burning images onto your retinas. Books are the joyous observation of natural sunlight bouncing off an artfully designed wood-like material covered in wonderful patterns. Aaaah, it's soothing really, and despite the regrettable loss of trees, the light is generated without us creating pollution.)

So I guess I'm done.

No, I forgot, I want to add one point. When we are challenged by Obama, teachers, mentors, friends, or whomever, to question what we are being told, how do you DO that? Yes, I'm asking you. I can offer the following suggestion: Take whatever is being told to you, rephrase it with your words, say it (out loud if necessary), and see if it makes sense. If not, you are being lied to. Here goes a few examples:

Bailout of banks -- "We need to give more public money to the institutions we are all giving our money to, because they have mismanaged our money." <-- does that make sense?

Iraq War -- "We need to send our troups to a foreign country where the USA overthrew the leadership because the USA thought this country had attacked us because our President implied this, but now we know they didn't attack us, so we need to stay there and kill the terrorists there to help them to have a democracy like we have." <-- does that make sense?

Economic Crisis -- "Because housing prices dropped and no professional financial people predicted that, the USA needs to loan the largest lenders public money to loan to private businesses, or the 'free market' economy will collapse. Furthermore, because of this crissi, it is acceptable for large businesses and State Governments to lay off massive numbers of their employees and have salary cuts, but the government cannot force businesses to limit the salaries of their highest paid executives."

Obession is a tool ... against bullshit.

This blog entry is reposted on RED ROOM - here.

3am Rant re: Gateway Pundit's stupid article claiming Iraq War actually kills less Iraqis than Hussein's Leadership

There was a ridiculous article tagged in Yahoo News as one of the most read Blog articles, from GateWay Pundit, "Bush Saved Hundreds of Thousands of Iraqis From Saddam's Reign & Clinton's Embargo", about how killing Saddam Hussein actually cut down the number of dead folks in Iraq because Saddam Hussein and Clinton's blockade killed many more people. It's a stupid, misleading article.

Of course, I had to respond to that -- but what a joy to discover that a bunch of right-wingers had commented. So I hopped in there also.

It's so hard to discuss articles like these b/c they start with so many dumb assumptions. The idea that a foreign country can attack another country (for no reason), occupy it for years, steal from that country, and THEN argue that it is helping those people ... Sounds vaguely familiar. Colonialism, I presume?

Since my rant is copied below, I'll copy/paste some of other people's inane posts so we can get a chuckle (or a groan):

- People who fought in Irak or anywhere else fought so you would have the freedom to come to this site and say your insanities. You fuc...g asshole! - Craig

- I've served my country in the U.S. Navy. Just wondering how many of the neo-cunts have. - General Lee

- I thank the men and women who volunteered to risk their lives, and who died, in wars to protect the people around the world, and Americans, including ungrateful liberals who throw you under the bus because they are self-serving and gutless. - Your Liberal Hippie Mama

- I yearn for true conservatism that is based on nationalist fervor and a rendering of the original intent of the Constitution via a Federalist model of restricted government. ... I desire to give the jihadis what they truly deserve--total war. - Publis Mare Hoc

I'd make the point that these comments are freakin' dumb (and abrasive), but they do that for themselves, no?

Here's my RE-posting of my 3am RANT on his Blog:

----------
Dear Righty anti-Leftists,
How many homes & cars does John McCain own? How about President George Bush or GW Bush? Any idea? More than 10? Sure! More than 15? Hmmmm...

Do you understand what concepts you are opposing? 'Liberals' and the Left are what have inspired 'grass-roots' changes in the world, including democracy, women's right to vote, the end of slavery, public schools, a 5 day/40 hour work-week, and hopefully many future positive changes like a living wage, public medical care, etc.

What side was Jesus on when he attempted to change the world to a new path of love and respect? Wasn't he (the ultimate) Leftist?

Did you know Jesus was related by blood to these Islamic folks? Islam and Christianity and Judaism are all interconnected, and extremists exist in all groups (and generally those folks are missing a few brain cells, dontcha think?).
It's not just "them", it's any zealot of any religion can do really bad things and think God wants them too -- but God doesn't.

God wants us to take care of this garden we're living on, and help out the animals too while we're at it. Is this a hard message to understand?

War is the sign of a lack of imagination.

So, now that we are in the middle of a massive bailout of the upper classes, I hope it makes a few folks on the Right (who aren't rich) pause for a second and think ...
Where is my bailout?
Why is all this $$$ going to executives who made really bad decisions?

The Answer: In the USA, we live in a class-based society (similar to the systems of royal kingdoms and extreme poverty of years ago) where the wealthiest 5% do their best to keep a low-profile as they continue to live off and grow most of their old money. If you aren't in the 'clique' of money, you probably aren't on the inside of this group.

The American dream of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps is real for only the fewest of folk -- but it's not likely for you to become ultra-rich. However, for a child born ultra-rich, like the Kennedy's, Rothchild's, or Bush's, even a complete lack of intelligence is no obstacle ... even to becoming the President of the USA.

If you have a net worth of less than $100k, being a right-winger just means that you don't understand how power works in the world -- or you have submitted already to an overlord.

If you're rich, it makes more sense, since the strategy is:
1) Keep poor people poor = good cheap labor
2) Offer incentives to help exceptional people rise to the top -- on the backs of their fellows in strict competition
3) Keep poor people ignorant of their history
4) Hide and obscure the fact that there are extremely rich from those who are poor
5) Make sure that you argue not based on facts and history, but on a false morality, name-calling, and rhetoric
6) Push for policies of over-population and constant war
7) Divide and conquer your opposition
8) Hide your policy of protecting the wealthiest behind distracting moral issues of oppression
9) Always downplay how wealthy you are
10) Manipulate people with non-issues to ignorantly push for important issues about private wealth (vs public)

OK, that's enough ranting from me for one night.
----------
And then I invited them all to come & post over here on my blog.
Maybe someone will take me up on my invitation? C'mon, do it!

And here's a pic of the 3D animation I'm working on for LAUNCHED short film.

I've been pleasantly suprised at how good it's coming along.

This still shows the LifeRaft vehicle where the crew lives and is 'trapped', floating above the Earth.

REkzrantz v5

REkzkaRZ RANTz v5
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_hOi-vHRxU

Lyricz:

Obamm!
He went and said it
the rich ones took it
and ain't gonna spread it.

Omamama!
He up and slammed it!
white on black no more.
like the man planned it.

Odamn!
The prez has got it.
Time to get started
We thought it, 'n bought it.

Oh Yo mama!
Bush thought he'd never see it
He took the White House & reclaimed it
if we demand it, maybe he'll rename it.

O O O
Ya got us to get up and go.
I'm a leftwing fan though
Hey O! Let your radical show!

The biggest robbery in history -- cont'd

So by now you've bought the story that we're in a Depression/Recession, right? And the banks are 'desperate' for money, right? And we are inches away from a run on the banks, right?
So WTF is all this? (see article below)
Welcome to the whacked world of capitalism, where the rich execs live like kings, and the poor are supposed to shut up and take it.

Do you think Bush was a bad president? I do.
But I'm not a financial executive, or a weapons manufacturer exec, or a Haliburton employee, or an oil person. If I was one of those -- and totally ignored everything else -- there'd be ample incentive to think otherwise....

From a Yahoo News Associated Press article
The 116 banks that so far have received taxpayer dollars to boost them through the economic crisis gave their top tier of executives nearly $1.6 billion in salaries, bonuses and other benefits in 2007, an Associated Press analysis found.
...

Even where banks cut back on pay, some executives were left with seven- or eight-figure compensation that most people can only dream about. Richard D. Fairbank, the chairman of Capital One Financial Corp., ... still got $17 million in stock options. The McLean, Va.-based company received $3.56 billion in bailout money on Nov. 14.

John A. Thain, chief executive of Merrill Lynch, topped all corporate bank bosses with $83 million in earnings last year. Thain, a former chief operating officer for Goldman Sachs, came to Merrill Lynch in December 2007, avoiding the blame for a year in which Merrill lost $7.8 billion. Since he began work late in the year, he earned $57,692 in salary, a $15 million signing bonus and an additional $68 million in stock options. Like Goldman, Merrill tapped taxpayers for $10 billion on Oct. 28.

Wells Fargo of San Francisco, which took $25 billion in taxpayer bailout money, gave its top executives up to $20,000 each to pay financial planners.

At Bank of New York Mellon Corp., chief executive Robert P. Kelly's stipend for financial planning services came to $66,748, on top of his $975,000 salary and $7.5 million bonus. His car and driver cost $178,879. Kelly also received $846,000 in relocation expenses, including help selling his home in Pittsburgh and purchasing one in Manhattan, the company said.

Goldman Sachs, paying as much as $233,000 for an executive's car and driver, told its shareholders that financial counseling and chauffeurs were needed so executives would have more time to focus on their jobs.

JPMorgan Chase chairman James Dimon ran up a $211,182 tab for private jet travel last year when his family lived in Chicago and he was commuting to New York. The company received $25 billion in bailout funds.

Sherman, a member of the House Financial Services Committee, said pay excesses undermine development of good bank economic policies and promote an escalating pay spiral among competing financial institutions — something particularly hard to take when banks then ask for rescue money. He wants them to come before Congress, like the automakers did, and spell out their spending plans for bailout funds. "The tougher we are on the executives that come to Washington, the fewer will come for a bailout," he said.

The Biggest Bank Robbery ever -- happening now

Let's call it what it is -- ** the biggest bank robbery of all time. **

Have you wondered why it's newsworthy that Obama has to take bold steps to protect homeowners? According to this Yahoo News article published today, the Treasury Department cannot prevent banks from using the bailout dollars for exhorbitant executive salaries.

Obama commits to support homeowners:
Obama's comments and the letter from House Republicans came a day after the Government Accountability Office, in the first comprehensive review of the rescue package, concluded that the Treasury Department has no mechanisms to ensure that banking institutions limit their top executives' pay and comply with other restrictions.

So far, the government has pledged to pour $250 billion into banks in return for partial ownership. It also has agreed to provide $40 billion to troubled insurer American International Group. In addition, $20 billion of the money was invested in Citigroup and another $20 billion went to the Federal Reserve to help ease credit stresses.

House Financial Services Committee chairman Barney Frank said Treasury's response comes "very close to telling the institutions that they will be free to use the funds as they wish."

Back to rekzkarz' reality:
Wow. First, $20 billion doesn't sound like much when you're thinking about $750 billion, right? What does the number actually look like?
$20,000,000,000.00WHEW! That's BIG!!

If that $750 billion bailout went to the people themselves, ie US Citizens, we could all buy homes and have money to spare. It's already public money and should not be going to subsidize private industries which have poorly allocated their assets in risky debt -- particularly not to the upper class 'executives' of these failing companies.

Hey Bush, what happened to your "no subsidies" and "free enterprise" and "free market" slogans when your rich buddies screw up the US economy as badly as you screwed up USA Foreign Policy?

I was having a talk with some friends and we came to the conclusion that if it had been one or two banks doing these horrible banking practices, the CEO's would have been fired and the banks would have folded. But when ALL of the banks (with a few noteworthy exceptions), under the rubric of 'deregulation' and incentives for economic expansion, are allowed to practice STUPID economics which put everyone at risk ... THEN we are supposed to reward those institutions with public funding without ANY requirements, stipulations, or punitive treatment?

The same approach applied to credit card debtors sounds a little different: when a person gets way over their head in credit card debt, and then somehow loses their income because of gambling and is suddenly 'in the red', would we want the government to step in, pay off all their debts AND get them their salaries back -- without any consequence?!?!

Wasn't the issue originally the 'home mortgage' crisis? Why on Earth are we rewarding bankers (people with economics degrees and MBA's) for screwing up? Bush & co have succeeded in keeping the focus on the (stupid) banks and lending institutions and off the people that are actually suffering. Surprised?