Wednesday, November 05, 2008

Congrats President Hussein. Life just got a lot more like an episode of 24

Today's Poop Watch is green with nuts.*

*I'm going to start including pictures with my descriptions.

My shit has been green for a few day, and if I was one of you crazy Republicans I would probably blame it all on Barack Hussein Obama. But since I am not a crazy Republican, I have to look to science for an explanation.

According to science green shit can be caused by not digesting my food. My working hypothesis is that all the antacids I am eating to control my acid reflux has reduced the acid level of my stomach to the point that I no longer digest my food properly.

The other probability is cancer.

My acid reflux is not as bad as it was while I was drinking soda all day, but I have to tell you that it has not all together disappeared. I may have to seek medical advice, and even though I now have medical insurance I still don't have a doctor. I am not sure if I will.

Even if I get a doctor there is the little matter of the 250 dollar deductible will have to come up to pay for any of the medical services I may receive.

All I know about deductibles is I assume they are all a thing of the past since we elected a Obama to the highest office in the land. Barack got my vote (even if it was cast on a provisional ballot in Arizona, a state that gave him exactly zero electoral votes) so like a lot of people I figure he owes me.

Caution. Don't get your hopes up.

President Hussein may not be the Anti-Christ, but he is also not our savior. He is just another politician. Obviously one of the great Orators of the 21st century or any other, but he is just a man and just a typical politician.

Politicians rule from the center. If you don't believe me just check out any of the comments from Speaker Pelosi about her new huge advantage in Congress.

Pelosi has no intention of using any of the political capital that this historic election has given her. She has already stated that this election did not give the Democrats a mandate. She added that this election was not about ideology.

That is precisely why we won't get investigations into the Bush administration. It is exactly why we won't get energy independence.

I think what we can look forward to is the re-emergence of America's standing in the world. We will work with our allies. We will stop torturing citizens of the world. We may add some piecemeal stop gags to the health care system.

What I am trying to tell my progressive friends is that after you read this post tomorrow morning you will wake to find the same America that you had last night. Even if Obama wanted he could not turn America into Sweden overnight. And unless I misread him 100%, Obama has no plan whatsoever to turn the U.S. into the socialist utopia you want.

I am not talking to the sophisticated progressives who have experience in organizing and protesting. I am talking to the people who consciousness Obama awakened through his inspirational talks. He has a lot of poor people believing that when he assumes office we won't have to worry about gas prices or the mortgage.

Of course nothing could be further from the case.

Barack Obama is the shiny face of Industrial Capitalism in its death throws. It appears that the current fiscal crisis has finally taught American Capitalism the same lessons that Europeans learned so many years ago. That the naked unbridled quest for greed is bad. That community is necessary.

Capital is resilient. It has sent one more volley back that we must return. Down to sets to love and facing elimination, Capital is taking a swing for the fences. It wants to get back in the game, so it has conceded what it must. It will offer some kind of health care. It will work to resolve what it can of the growing nightmare that is global warming.

I could list ad infinitum the possible forces that will mitigate the destructive impulses of our Capitalist economy.

But there are certain things that Capital will not concede. It will never concede the private appropriation of the surplus of the means and goods we produce socially.

To grasp this idea all you need to know is the consequence of my point. We will never have a rationale society as long as there is Capitalism.

I wish President Hussein all the luck in the world taming the beast he rides. But we all know how this ride ends. Either in oblivion, or the socially organized production of means of production.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

You just said eloquently everything I said drunkenly last night. Including my breezing through the living room with a rum and coke saying that Obama better give a big shout out to Keifer Sutherland and President Palmer. That really happened. All I have to say is that I hope Obama can stay on the horse when he finally enters the real lion's den that awaits him.

Anonymous said...

Also, Romius my friend. About the green shit. Seriously. Have you considered the fact that you might be eating something with food coloring in it? Even red food coloring comes out of your body in shades of green. Don't forget, I have real medical training and have seen MUCH shit in my time. I am an authority on the shit.

KELSO'S NUTS said...

Take a few days of eating really healthy stuff like green salads, whole wheat pasta and chicken or turkey or vegetarian. Drink psyllium fiber. Then see if you get improvement before having an anxiety attack about cancer! This advice brought to you by a total hypochondriac.

Philosophically speaking, capitalism tends to allocate goods, reaources and wealth more efficiently and less fairly. Communism tends to allocate goods, reaources and wealth more fairly and less efficiently. You pick your poison.

I like where I'm at in the capitalist system so I'm sticking with it!

One system that allocates goods, reaources and wealth both unfairly and inefficiently is American Theocratic Authoritarianism.

Fawkes said...

Got bored... Skipped after reading about 1/4 of it


....Didn't bother reading the other comments either.

Romius T. said...

Thanks steph,

I did eat some asparagus...maybe that is the cause. Either that or I am dying.

Kelso

if I eat a lot more greens won't I shit green even more thus multiplying my fears?

best bet is to eat all meat and see what happens.

i just hope one day we can have some european socialism. thats all I can hope for in the belly of the beast

MR FAWKES

i am pretty sure you are supposed to keep your boredom to yourself. you had the same reaction I am sure 99% of the readers of this blog have to most of my posts. Sheer boredom.

KELSO'S NUTS said...

ROMIUS T: I don't think any country on earth practices socialism. China is an authoritarian oligarchy and Cuba is a populist dictatorship.

The Northern European countries, just like the Andino South American countries ex-Colombia & Peru, are not socialist either. They're capitalist social republics whose generous public sector has as much to do with their economic success and fiscal and monetary conservatism as it does with any collectivization.

I understand that "socialism" as conceived by Marx & Engels was not quite a the final version of the ideal society in their philosophy but to get to "socialism" there still had to be collectivization of wealth and productive capacity first.

The countries like Sweden may seem "socialist" when compared with the US but they are very much capitalist, even small "c" conservative in their economic policy. It is not in their culture to tolerate extreme dispersion of wealth but there is a more or less a 20/80 structure. It's psycho in the US, of course, on the order of 5/93 or something.

The European, South American, Canadian, Oceanic style is maybe closer to Paul Krugman than to Karl Marx.

My father read some of my great uncles' diaries to me when I was little. They were Bolsheviks who won Red October. They came to England and the Americas soon after the Revolution because they discovered that even in a collectivized system there's structure and bosses and the new bosses very much were chosen by how much of the bloodlines of the Tsarist bosses they had. Thus, while my great uncles had more to eat, their opportunities were just as limited being Jewish in a Socialist state as they were in a Monarchist one. Sure, the former Christians called them "comrade" instead of "scumbag" but their kind still had to pick up trash and their kids would never get accepted into Komsomol.

Romius T. said...

all we can hope for here in the belly of the beast is to rteduce the rapiong excesses of capitalism. to ask for a softer side of nearly socialism.

if we were to achieve ehat they have in scandanavia we would be so far from where we are it would be an incredible victory for the world.

then we can talk about reducing work and the steps to socialism and after that we can imagine a society like "from each according to his abilities to each acccording to his needs."