I find myself stone broke this week. Absolutely penniless, ROFL, I used the spare ones I keep in a tin on the dryer to pick up some dog food. How did I become without funds this week, well a couple of extra expenditures, namely a new car and a new roof, sucked up every single ‘save for a rainy day’ bit of cash I had. Now, I could sell off a piece of jewelry or cash in some of my retirement account, but that won’t give me a penny today or tomorrow, or even the next day. So, I’m probably better off just hoping I have enough in the cupboards to get me through until the next time I get paid.

Here’s the odd part of this post: I know I’m not the only person out there who stayed on the good path, did the responsible things, put some money away in case of emergency, work a steady and solid job with a good income, pay the bills on time, etc. I didn’t piss away my cash or fuck up my credit or anything like that. Shouldn’t all my ‘doing it right’-ness have saved me from this?

The truth is, “NO.” And that’s the same truth a lot of my friends and relatives seem to have trouble understanding. Poor people aren’t necessarily poor because they don’t have good money management skills. Maybe they are like me, hit a really rough spot, got way behind, credit went to shit, whatever. In all truth, I’m broke, but not. I have credit cards – I could spend money I don’t have on the plastic and pay it off later – I’m simply not inclined to add more to my personal debt because the shit hit the fan and now I have no cash on hand.

Still, despite the fact that when the next paycheck comes, I’ll most likely forget about how crappy I feel right now – I feel pretty crappy. Guess I’ll go make that mac and cheese that’s been in the cupboard for at least three years. It’s still good, right?

The President of the United States is barely more than a figure head. Thanks to our checks and balances set up, the President can’t do shit to change the state of the union. He can do things to stop change, aka vetoing new laws, but if Congress wants it passed badly enough, with a 2/3 majority they can pass a vetoed law.

The only thing the President can do is wage war – He is after all Commander-In-Chief of the Military. The biggest of the big dogs. He can’t necessarily declare war without Congressional backing, but he can certainly send troops whereever he likes to fight whatever he wants.

The argument between McCain and Obama is moot. It really won’t matter much in the scheme of life in the US which is President. Sure, with a heavily represented democratic party in the Congress, Obama may have a better chance of getting laws passed – but that’s no guarantee.

In short, ignorant baffoons out there whipping up the bitch fest over who to vote for, if you really want change you need to change CONGRESS. You need to vote out the fat, gluttonous, greedy, bribe-taking bastards(male and female) who represent the individual states. Those worthless pieces of shit who do nothing productive but give themselves raises while enjoying lobbyist dinners and vacations and more.

If you want change, America, I’d suggest you FIRE ALL OF CONGRESS. And when you hire new folks, you make damn sure they have no political background. Moreover, you/we make damn sure they don’t even take a shit without accounting for their toilet paper and water usage. Until politicians lives are absolutely, completely see through there isn’t a goddamn thing gonna change ’round here. Until we the people stop bleeting with the herd not a fucking thing will get better.

And hey, once we do that, maybe we should go ahead and realize that certain things don’t work in a ‘free market’ society. And we should realize that everyone should be able to live comfortably, but everyone shouldn’t be(nor do they have a right to) William Buffet. Including William Buffet.

But that’s a whole other bitter pill to choke down.

I’ll lay it out for you. Health care in America is one of the most acerbic, bitter, nauseating, vile, evil, disgusting, putrid, heinous excuses for American ideals one could possibly find. It could even possibly surpass the equally fetid existence of Big Oil. I don’t know that I could even list enough words to properly convey my feelings on the health care system in the United States. What in the hell are we thinking? What are we allowing our government and these faceless money grubbing corporations to do to us? To our children?

By allowing a completely free market medical system, we’ve fucked ourselves. And by ‘we’ I really mean the hard working shoulders of this country: the middle class. The very poor have Medicaid – which takes forever to get real services, leaves it’s carriers with little cost. The very rich don’t need the help, they can pay to buy a house in Japan, they can apply for dual citizenship or become a resident and opt in to the Japanese health system if they like. But the middle class, well, we take it in the ass while taking a big ol’ bite from Big Medicine’s shit sandwich and continue to let them strip us of access to more than decent care at greater and greater financial cost.

That said, I am stealing a few minutes to vent venomous bile over the supposed ‘stimulus’ package. I use supposed because, thanks to GW and IRS fucknuttery, a giant bulk of the folks who are eligible for the rebate won’t be getting it as timely as the aforementioned ass-hats implied.

Why, you ask? Well, because at some late date, after the passing of the ‘bill’, the IRS decided that those who used third party tax preparation services – and chose to have their filing fees deducted from their refund amount – would be receiving a paper check. Regardless of whether or not the original refund was direct deposited. And anyone who opted for a rapid refund loan will also be getting paper.

So basically, anyone who used one of the multitude of at home tax software, or even H&R Block, and went with the RAL or had their fees deducted, instead of paying for them by CC or check, won’t be seeing their ‘stimulus’ check until… Well, the first set is supposed to go out on the 16th of May.

That part makes me pretty fucking bitter. After all, like a bunch of people I opted to pay out of the refund. Beyond that – just about everyone I know did as well. And, unlike me, a lot of them are so buried under bills thanks to the rising cost of gasoline and food that they really – REALLY- needed that check. At the DD time, not waiting an extra three to four weeks – and that doesn’t count time in the mail, that’s just to get to the estimated time the check will be mailed – for their rebate.

The part that has me ready to put the smack down on any IRS agent I see is the reasoning behind the IRS’ decision. They claim that if you used a third party and paid the filing fee out of your return that they, the IRS, do not actually have your bank account number and so they cannot direct deposit (DD). Riiiight. Because on the bottom on my return it doesn’t have my name, the little box checked direct deposit, and my routing and account numbers. Hmm, let me look. Oh, shit, yes it does!

I understand that the third parties have banks that handle all the RAL and pay-out-of-refund money. Those banks put your refund into a temporary account, take out the money you owe, then forward the rest onto your bank account. However, unless these third party preparers are comitting fraud and substituting their account information as the filers own, your/my personal account information is still on the return, clear as day. And if they are substituting, then how in the hell can any of those returns filed be legal? I mean, I also sign at the bottom saying that everything included on the return is true and right, to my knowledge. Um, that can’t be true if a third party is changing up the account numbers. Ergo, I’ve comitted fraud, ergo the IRS would definitely be capitalizing on that and garnishing penalties and fines left and right.

Since they don’t, then I feel safe assuming that my bank account information is available for them in black and white. And regardless of how I paid for the filing, how you paid to file, if we opted for DD we should be getting the damn check as a DD.

To add fuel to the flame is this bullshit GW was spouting a couple of weeks back that the IRS was ahead of the ball and rolling out the cash early. No they fucking weren’t. It just took them that long to realize a significant, a majority, of DD filers weren’t going to be getting a DD. So they went ahead and sent them early, that way they could fuck around and dick the rest of us for an extra three or four weeks, without looking like the lying, cheating bastards they are.

Oops, guess they missed on that last bit. Fucking nitwits, worthless, worthless, worthless.

Back to the supposed bit. Just out of curiosity, how is our consumer based economy going to benefit from this stimulus if the bulk of the people who would piss it away on consumer goods is going to now have to use it to pay bills? While it’ll make the electric and cable company happy, it isn’t going to give Wal-Mart, K-Mart, or any of the plethora of spend-your-money-on-shit-you-don’t-need outlets, the boost they need to keep the economy out of a depression. And let’s face it, we’re so deep in a recession now the only thing left is depression.

Imagine everything in your refrigerator. Now imagine it not in a plastic container. Imagine all the dishes in your cupboard. Take away the plastic. Hell, check out your computer. Think you could have that without plastic?

Now look, I’ll be honest. Plastic has its environmental drawbacks – just as bad as vehicle emissions and burning coal for electricity. And not every plastic is based on petroleum. The sad fact is that most of the more common varieties of plastic are based on petroleum – that’s what keeps them relatively cheap. Moreover, though advances in plastics on the whole are being seen, the new types of plastics aren’t now, and probably won’t ever be, products that are feasible for more than limited usage.

Recycling plastic is difficult too, but at least it is partially self-renewable. And that’s the core of my bitterness. Instead of spending money and research to find a way to recycle more types of plastic more cleanly and efficiently, the American people and the US Gov’t would rather spend money (or allow it to be spent) to grease the wheels and keep the flow of oil for fuel uninterrupted. Yes, we fucked ourselves with urban sprawl to the point that probably ninety percent of America needs a car in order to hold gainful employment. It sucks. That said, I’d rather cut off oil for fuel and keep so many of the plastics that are such a part of my life – than watch all of that disappear when easy oil becomes a thing of the past.

I’d rather flush the toilet than drive to work. No PVC, no pipes, no plumbing. I can – though it would take a while – bicycle to work. I can’t go back to an outhouse.

1. Oscar loves trash and makes no qualms about it. The more trash, the better, as far as he’s concerned.
2. He’s a grouch, but when he’s not we don’t doubt he had a real emotional moment.
3. He engages in subterfuge, but when caught – as he inevitably is – he fesses up and apologizes.
4. We don’t doubt he’s a puppet, with someone else’s hand crammed up his ass, making his lips move.

Explanation of 1: It’s really simple for me: Obama, Clinton, McCain are all interested in keeping America wallowing in a cesspool of its own making. They talk about lessening our carbon footprints, trying to mitigate the impacts of global warming, trying to find logical alternatives to oil. Trying, trying, trying. Hel-fucking-lo. The time for TRYING is PAST! Look, I’m not an end of the world-ist, but reality check people. Crude oil is running out. At best, we might have fifty to a hundred years of accessible crude oil left. And that’s it. No more driving your car, no more electricity for the majority of the US. You think I’m fucking kidding? Okay, why don’t you go learn something instead of spanking the monkey at yutuvu:

What an oil peak means to an American

An article I have thoroughly reviewed for fact checking and found full of information

To be balanced, here’s some buggering bullshit you can run to if you don’t like the other sources

Yeah, Oscar wouldn’t lie to you. He wants us to keep making trash because it makes him ‘rich’ and he’s honest about it. Not our candidates. Neither of their energy plans is worth two shits in trying to mitigate the damage of an oil collapse NOR to aggressively mainstream new energy resources and put environmentally conscious energy plans into action. Oh, they pay all kinds of lip service, but that’s all it is, lip service.

Explanation of 2: Each of the candidates has made an ass of him/herself more than once during this election run. And for all their apologies of ‘incorrect wording’ they don’t fucking mean it. They don’t really mean those oh-so-carefully concocted “I’m sorry’s”. It’s good old fashioned ass kissing of the American public. Do you really think Clinton is regretful of the comments she’s made about Obama? Do you think he’s truly upset that his words about America understanding black anger or implying that rural Americans are a bunch of gun-toting, bible-beating, rednecks pissed some people off? Um, no. I don’t believe his apologies for a second. Nor hers. And I won’t even get started on McCain. Truth be told, John McCain has been through some shit most of us would fucking break under. I’ve got all kinds of respect for him as a human being. But he’s fucking OLD. His mind isn’t what it used to be. And he’s not in touch with the shit that really means something right now, nor would I expect him to be, honestly.

Here’s the thing, I can’t be the only voter in the country who wants someone to be president that doesn’t bullshit me. I’m not interested in the politicking, never have been. I don’t want the wanna-be leaders to kiss my ass and feed me air disguised as a steak. I want to hear them talk shit they can back up. I want Clinton to ask Obama flat out where the hell his hope train is gonna get the country when he’s barely been in office long enough to get a proper bribe from lobbyists. I want Obama to ask Clinton who the hell answered the phone in the White House during the whole Bosnia fiasco, cause it surely wasn’t her husband – like air raids are going to stop genocide. Puh-leese. *If you’d like a look inside that ugliness and the truth about what the ‘peace-keeping’ forces really did, pick up this book. It’s good for more than the war insights, too.* And I want McCain to ask both of them who they think they are trying to run a country they’ve only served as politicians (heavily paid and catered to) but never on the back of a tank or the end of a gun.

I want to see the REAL people, not the facade. It might not get me your vote, but it would go a long way to restoring my faith in our government, which right now is so far below zero as to be nearly absolute loss of belief.

Explanation of 3: Every single politician in America, and probably the world, engages in subterfuge. They take bribes in one form or another. They vote on shit that doesn’t help anyone but corporations and the rich. They pass laws into being that strip my rights from me using false logic and false science. I won’t even get into the whole smoking ban thing – I’m not a smoker, but I am intelligent. There are SO MANY other things that cause people to get sick that there’s no way to scientifically prove that second hand smoke is more harmful than coal burning, vehicle exhaust, herbicide usage, et-fucking-cetera – but it’s a good place to start as far as lying goes. The electrical plants runoff is more harmful to my family than the old guys puffing away on a Lucky Strike at the next table, but that plant gets to purge its noxious waste with near impunity, while old guy is nearly beaten down with bullshit by anti-smoking proponents and their own noxious waste.

So, political subterfuge is part and parcel to the whole politics gig. I don’t like it, it makes me want to scream and beat down some folks of my own to get those asshats running the country FIRED. However, when caught I’d like a candidate that takes it on the damn chin, instead of playing a shell game of disinformation and disingenuous apologies. You fucked up. Admit it, take your penalty like the rest of us would have to, and go the fuck home.

Explanation of 4: The most important reason why I’d vote for Oscar the Grouch. I know he’s a fucking puppet and if I met him, I could clearly see with my own two eyes whose hand was up his ass. I can’t see that as clearly with the candidates. I know they’re all mouth pieces for big business, big insurance, big oil, blah fucking blah. But I can’t clearly ‘see’ the body attached to the hand in their asses. I want to. And I want America to as well. I want to know if the person I’m voting in will be puppeted by a devil I can deal with or not.

What I really want is something purely fantastical: I want a complete overhaul of the entire government, from top to bottom and in all three branches. I want all of Congress, all the Supreme Court, all the White House fired – but don’t stop there, take it to the state and local level too. None of them are doing this country the slightest bit of good and if the rest of America would just open their eyes instead of their glutinous mouths, they’d see that truth. We need leaders who aren’t full of shit and taking money, in whatever form, from just about all hands holding cash. We need leaders who KNOW we’re beyond the turn-it-around point with global warming, but who have aggressive plans for mitigating the effect of our consumption on those in America now, as well as future generations. We need leaders who understand that there are countries we have a fundamental and basic disconnect with. And we can either overlook those disconnects or we can divorce ourselves from the relationship – even if that means a sudden and immediate kibosh on cars. We need leaders who think the crazy cost of medical care has to not only stop rising, but be rolled back. That as Americans we should all have the same kind of medical options that fucking Congress has. That medical care is a basic right of humanity, not a get rich and stay rich scheme. We need leaders who think sentencing an eighteen-year old child to fifteen years in prison for smoking dope is disgusting. Basically, we need leaders that think – Not puppets with greedy paws shoved up their ass so far that when they lick their lips they taste boogers.

Next blog: Oil – I’d rather have plastic than gasoline.

American Acerbity isn’t an “I Hate America” blog. Because I don’t hate America. It isn’t an “I Love America” blog either, because frankly I’ve never lived anywhere else and thus have no basis for comparison. It is exactly what I say it is: about bitterness in the land of the free. Here’s what I mean by bitterness:

1. having a harsh, disagreeably acrid taste, like that of aspirin, quinine, wormwood, or aloes.
2. producing one of the four basic taste sensations; not sour, sweet, or salt.
3. hard to bear; grievous; distressful: a bitter sorrow.
4. causing pain; piercing; stinging: a bitter chill.
5. characterized by intense antagonism or hostility: bitter hatred.
6. hard to admit or accept: a bitter lesson.
7. resentful or cynical: bitter words.

But also these things:

1. acrid, biting, distasteful.
2. distressing, poignant, painful.
3. biting, nipping.
4. fierce, cruel, ruthless, relentless.
5. acrimonious, caustic, sardonic, scornful.

My bitter feelings about America cover all of these emotive words and more. Now, to the point of why I should bother with this blog and why you should bother to read it. I’m bothering because I give a fuck. Plain and simple. I’m beyond flummoxed by our news media, our politicians, big-soul-sucking business, et al. To be blunt, I’m fucking tired of getting fed lies from a bullshit spoon. I’ve been gouging myself in the ass with a fencepost of bitterness for a while, but this article and the documentary that birthed it pushed me over the edge.

The article and film aren’t a joke, folks. I live in Iowa, I see this mess everywhere I look. You can keep your head in the sand if you like and call it some kind of ‘anti-business’ propaganda. If you take a couple of minutes on Google, you can determine the veracity of the claims easily enough. I did. And it makes me gut-wrenchingly bitter. That in the Land of the Free, I don’t even have the basic human right to choose what I want to eat. I don’t have the right to choose not to put something more than potentially harmful into my body, into my children’s bodies, because the FDA decided it wasn’t necessary to inform me about the dangers. In fact because the FDA decided it wasn’t necessary to actually do real scientific research into potential dangers. Thanks – fucking asshats.

The whole gobble-gobble-greedy-ham-fisted-take-the-world-straight-to-hell mess is a lot deeper than just food. It’s pollution and destruction, money-soaked conglomerates on the verge of monopoly, ‘we can’t stand to loose a dollar’ murdering thousands. It’s cruel, ruthless, relentless and it makes me very bitter.

This blog will cover many topics. All of them related to my increasing bitterness towards a country, which claims to offer all the freedom a human could ever desire and then some, but where in truth the rights I have are constantly squandered away by a majority that has less than two brain cells to fire together and seem more interested in what free porn they can get their hands on and less in changing shit for the better.

Next blog: Politicians – why I would rather vote in Oscar the Grouch than Obama, Clinton, or McCain.