Credit Card Bill Serves Congress More Than Consumers

The recent “credit card bill” is make-work for Congress. They want to look busy, they want to look like they care, so they pass a bill that doesn’t really address the major problem with credit cards today. All the senators and representatives want is to be re-elected so they can avoid a real job working their fingers to the bone like the rest of us. They don’t care about you or me or anyone else. The only people in this country they care about stares back at them from their mirrors.

While striking down the “universal default” clause is a good thing–if we consumers had some accountability, some way to check whether the banks were, in fact, abiding by the so-called “law,” which we don’t and Congress knows it–this bill does nothing to address the higher than high interest rates. The bill gives the banks NINE MONTHS to jack those interest rates to what the banks would deem an acceptable level (of greed).

The banks are borrowing our money from the Federal Reserve at nearly zero percent, yet they are charging the average credit card consumer double digit interest, not to mention collecting their percentages from the merchants on every purchase we make.

So, what does the bill do for us really? Nothing. It’s a vehicle to give every Congressman and woman some accomplishment to point to come election time. They certainly can’t point to the numerous bailouts or backing Obama’s plan to tax and tax again everything we consume as a feather in their caps now, can they?

Time to quit falling for this orchestrated crap and fire all of our so-called elected “employees” who’ve obviously forgotten that the People they were hired to serve do not smile back at them from their mirrors.

3.6 Trillion minus 100 Million Equals What?

According to the Washington Post and others, Obama will convene his cabinet for the first time with the sole purpose of finding $100 million in budget cuts.

This would be laughable if it weren’t so pathetic.

3.6 trillion minus 100 million = the most minimal policy of appeasement.

The Post article says this move signals the President’s determination to cut the deficit. And when will that be? Sometime after he’s out of office maybe? During my ten-year-old daughter’s lifetime perhaps? Or maybe when China forecloses on our land for the debt we owe right this very minute, some 12 trillion and counting. Or will the deficit be cut only after every American who doesn’t agree that Congress and the President are entitled to spend our future and that of our children and their children is branded some kind of extremist for actually giving a damn about their country?

I think it’s nothing more than a knee-jerk reaction by all of Washington to the tea parties and their turnout. Gee, free people of all political ideologies, or none at all, exercising their constitutional rights to assemble and protest bigger government, wasteful spending and further erosion of the Constitution must really threaten Congress, the President and the real powers that stand behind our would-be slavemasters’ thrones–powers such as that unconstitutional private corporation known as the Federal Reserve, who answers to no one and has already loaned 2 trillion of our tax money to unidentified recipients. Not even some members of Congress, again trying to simply appease us all, can get an answer as to where that 2 trillion went. We just have to take Ben Bernanke’s word that we’ll get it back.

And We the People aren’t supposed to be a trifle upset by any of it. We’re supposed to snooze right in slavery without so much as a snort of disapproval.

Right.

Obviously, Congress and the President think We the People can be lulled back to sleep by such blatant political games.  Or maybe they are dumb enough to believe we’re all just that stupid.Yeah, I bet the British King thought all those angry colonists in America were just morons without a clue, too.

And what’s even sillier is  our modern tyrants in Washington laboring under the belief that directing the national media to publish stories on what Congress and the President’s advisors consider to be emotional issues will keep us fighting amongst ourselves indefinitely, like it has in the past. This particular game is also known as stirring up a smoke screen to hide other, more egregious assaults on our civil rights such as House Bill HR 45.

For those Americans just waking up or still depending on the national media for all their news, HR 45 would make owning a firearm not registered with the Feds a felony. This is an outright attempt to abridge your second amendment rights while further eroding the Constitution of these United States. Not only that, but here in Montana, this bill would attempt to usurp the Constitution of the Sovereign State of Montana, which says that no resident shall be required to register any firearm. And how far behind can an annual tax on owning a firearm be? This is just the latest endaround on our individual civil rights Congress and the President thinks they can pull on us all–obviously, they don’t feel an outright ban on firearms will fly, and most assuredly it won’t, so they’ll simply tax our second amendment right to keep and bear arms out of existence.

So, where’s the stories on this bill, this HR 45, this would-be major step in eroding the Second Amendment? Nowhere, because the Congress and the President along with their bedfellows in the national media don’t want you to know. They’d rather disarm us all, one of the first things the Tyrant 101 manual says they should do. Hell, it worked for Hitler, didn’t it? And how’d that turn out anyway? Who was it that turned the tide of Fascism in Europe? America. And yet, once America is successfully subjugated, who will be left to defend freedom? Gee, like the Federal Reserve and their buddies in banking systems all over the world wouldn’t want everything on the planet under their tight control, and no questions asked–but you sure don’t see any stories in our national media on the dangers of the New World Order, do you? Hmmmm…wonder why that is?

Duh.

You don’t think the elitists in national media living their cushy lives want to survive, even at the expense of liberty, truth, and justice for all?

Again–duh.

I don’t know about you, but I’m sick of being treated like a serf by a government that’s supposed to be working for We the People and America’s best interests, and not the other way around.

We didn’t become the great nation we are by letting anyone or anything “appease” us into regulated serfdom.

3.6 trillion minus 100 million = more tea parties. We the People must exercise our right to peaceably assemble and protest, to effect meaningful and long-lasting change–a return to our Constitution–without bloodshed, before that right, too, is stripped away from extremists like us, we patriots all.

Only We the People can change the direction of this country and ensure the liberty of our generations, and the continuing and future greatness of America.

See you at the next Tea Party!

Let’s roll, People.

Good Old Boy Throwbacks

I don’t know about you, but single mothers generally learn first hand about gender discrimination practiced by good old boy throwbacks, and lest they forget their place, constant reminders thrown at them all the time. Neanderthals who still believe that a woman’s place is grovelling ten steps behind all men, and that includes female children as well.

I’ve got news for you cavemen out there–don’t terrorize my child. I will fuck you up, one way or another.

My daughter’s bus driver learned first-hand yesterday that even though I’m not six foot tall, I can still mess with his life, just as he thinks he’s entitled to mess with mine or my daughter’s.

The sixty-something subsitute driver missed the bus stop completely. Never even bothered to turn in. He didn’t know I was watching from the living room window. I saw the front end of the bus dip at our driveway, meaning he’d applied the brakes, then decided to motor on. That dip was also an indication that my child, as she stated later when I finally got her back, was screaming, “You missed my stop.” Repeatedly.

Did the man turn around as every other bus driver who’s ever missed our stop has done? No. He hands his cell phone to my hysterical child. She tells me that after she screamed and screamed, he told her he wasn’t going to bring her back. I said, “Put him on the line.” At this point he is no further than a quarter of a mile from my house.

He gives me this wanky hello and I said, “You will bring my daughter back or do I have to call [the district's transportation supervisor]?”

“Yeah, you better do that,” he says. And hangs up on me.

I did do just that, and the transportation supervisor suddenly cannot raise this driver on the two-way radio I heard barking in the background before he hung up on me. The transportation supervisor wants to stick up for the driver on one hand, but on the other, after he hears my story, he says, “I would’ve thought he would’ve just turned around.” Well, me, too, there fella. Meanwhile, I still have a hysterical child to rescue from this neanderthall substitute driver.

After learning the route from the transportation supervisor, and warning him to get the elementary principal on the road to run interference because I was going to seriously fuck this driver up,  I take off in my car. I’m clocking speeds above 80-miles an hour to get to the Glacier Gateway, where this bus is supposed to stop before taking off to Sun Prairie, a nice little jaunt that’s going to add thirty minutes to my daughter’s fear and my worry.

The clerks in the convenience store, one of whom just happens to be my close friend, haven’t seen the bus. At all. Now, I admit I turn into exorcist mom when anyone fucks with my kid, but I know I’m closing in on the red line–a genetic mindset passed down from my biological father, who isn’t much taller than I am, but the same man who once told an Army psychologist that he feels as if he has the strength of five men when he crosses over that red line. He, like me, doesn’t remember what happens after that, and he was in the doctor’s office because he literally picked up and threw a sergeant through a barracks window during basic training.  It’s only happened to me once in my life–so far–but one minute I’m arguing with my sister who’s abused me, physically and mentally, for nigh on twenty years and the next minute, she’s on the floor beneath me, her eyes bulging while her boyfriend and my boyfriend work to pry my hands off her neck–one finger at a time. With no other recourse left open to me except to cross the red line, I opt to call 911 instead. This neanderthall isn’t worth a trip to jail, although my child I would gladly die for, a hundred times.

While my friend and I are waiting–for the bus, for the deputy sheriff–I see the bus make the turn and head back toward the convenience store. Later my daughter would tell me she saw me waving, running toward the road and told the bus driver repeatedly, but did he stop? Hell, no. And that was his next mistake.

He and I could’ve waited together for the transportation supervisor and the deputy to show up right at the convenience store. I get in my car and chase this bus down, and follow him like stink on shit until he turns into my stop over an hour after my child should’ve been freed. I block the bus’s exit with my car and get my child safely into the passenger seat.

Then I tell this neanderthall, “We are going to wait for the deputy.”

He leaps off the bus, and starts in with his first lie. “I didn’t know [your daughter] was on the bus.”

What about that dip in the front end of the bus before he’d even passed my mailbox, or my child screaming “You missed my stop!” repeatedly?

“I was too far away to turn around.”

But he wasn’t too far away to turn around, not by a longshot, not when I can see the bus from the front step of my house.

I ask him why he didn’t answer his supervisor on the two-way after hanging up on me?

He says he loses communication with the bus barn when the butte gets in the way. But I already know, from where my daughter said she was when she called me hysterically crying–a quarter of a mile from my house–that he won’t lose communication on the two-way for at least six to ten miles and countless bus stops, if that. Thirty minutes or more before he briefly loses the ability to communicate on the two-way.

After he hung up on me, this neanderthall didn’t bother to tell my daughter anything about his plans for her. He let her cry instead. And she cried all the way to Sun Prairie, cried harder when he wouldn’t stop to let her out to me at Glacier Gateway, told her only after he’d finished delivering kids to Sun Prairie that he would, indeed, take her back, then failed to deliver on that the first chance he could.

Lights flashing, the deputy flew by me, my daughter, my Taurus holding this bus and its moron driver hostage  because, as I later learned, my friend had told him that when the bus passed us at Glacier Gateway, we couldn’t see any kids on it and I had taken off after the bus.  We couldn’t see a single child on that bus when it passed either. That’s because my daughter, after being told rudely that he wasn’t going to stop at the convenience store for her mother, despite the transportation supervisor telling him via two-way radio that her mother was searching for her, cowered in the seat then, further terrified. Do you think she’s going to trust adults after this? I don’t. I know both she and I will have emotional issues to deal with in future.

The deputy made his way back to us, and the transportation supervisor pulls in behind him, the high school principal (another neanderthall throwback) riding shotgun. After I tell my story to the deputy, the transportation supervisor holds out his cell phone–the elementary school principal, an enlightened man whom I admire for not allowing gender to cloud his equal and fair treatment of all people, is on the line.

I have a meeting this morning with him at 9:30 at the middle school, a mile from my home.

The deputy finally suggests this whole incident may have been a misunderstanding and, after I agree to concede, takes his leave, although I got the distinct impression he thought there might be more here than what met his keen eye.

Call me paranoid all you want, but I personally think after reviewing the evidence ad nauseam that this substitute driver may be a perv who was able to get past the background check because he just hasn’t been caught–yet.  Kids are snatched all the time by pervs, every single day. And always, the people who knew the outed perv say they’d never expected it to happen, he’s such a nice guy, blah, blah, blah. But too many things this substitute driver did just don’t add up to anything close to reasonable in my book and he may have thought he’d been handed a golden opportunity when I wasn’t waiting out there at the stop for my child. I hope he’s had the shit scared out of him now. How long that fear will serve to protect other children, if he is a perv as I suspect, remains to be seen. I will not put my child on any bus he’s driving, however. I intend to make that perfectly clear in this morning’s meeting.

I also have a few questions for the elementary principal: What happens after the bus driver calls in to the bus barn to report his bus is empty, meaning he’s delivered his precious cargo? What is the exact procedure? Does the transportation supervisor leave immediately, expecting each driver to take care of the rest of duties regarding refueling the bus, etc. and so forth? What if I had not answered my daughter’s call? Why did the bus driver give her his cell phone to make the call in the first place, especially when the bus was not yet a quarter mile from my house? What did the driver plan to do with my daughter if, as the high school neanderthall…er…principal suggested, they don’t like to leave kids at their respective stops without a parent there? Intimating all the while with tone and gesture that this whole episode was my fault somehow, that I should’ve called the district to let them know I’d planned for my nine-year-old daughter to get off and walk 100 feet home alone as an exercise in independence, then suggesting further that I had at some time in the past four years left instructions with the school district that if I wasn’t waiting there at the stop they were not to let my child off. (In fact, after I had time to cool down and reflect upon this last charge, the only instructions I have ever given to the regular bus drivers on my daughter’s route is if I am not there, they are to LEAVE my child anyway because she will go to the neighbor’s house to wait for me.) I will mention this today in my meeting with the elementary principal.

The high school principal, who arrogantly fancies himself a future district superintendent, also suggested I give them a signed letter in writing stating that the drivers are to let my child out, whether I’m there or not. Moron. Like I’m going to give a person I suspect might be a perv that much information. Or like I don’t personally know for a fact these drivers let a majority of the kids out at numerous stops along my daughter’s route without any parental supervision every single day. In fact, these drivers drop kids off at the convenience store with or without any parents in sight, and in one case witnessed by my close friend, a child waited from 4:00 p.m. to 8:30 before his mother showed up to get him. But, as single mothers are reminded constantly in word and deed, neanderthall good old boys will do anything to protect one of their own. And the instructions I will leave in writing with the elementary principal today will be that they are to leave my daughter off at my neighbor’s house, whether I’m there or not. My neighbor is a former marine who did time in Nam, his wife is my best friend, and neither will be nearly as nice or reasonable as I was if any driver fails to stop and let my child off the bus.

My child was terrorized by an insensitive and totally uncaring man she didn’t know for 45 minutes before he finally said, after all the other children got off the bus at Sun Prairie, that he would bring her back to her mother, then she was further terrified when he drove right by her frantic mother at the Glacier Gateway.

I asked her later why she wasn’t riding shotgun in the front seat of the bus when finally he allowed her to leave. I know she would’ve been in that shotgun seat if her regular driver was behind the wheel because he makes all his children feel safe. Of course, her regular driver would’ve turned around and let her off the bus, so this would never have happened–he did it before, the one time he missed our stop.

“I didn’t feel comfortable with [the substitute driver],” she said in answer to my question. She didn’t want to talk about the incident really, that was plain as the nose on her cute little face. And I don’t press these issues because I know she will talk about it eventually. Just not now, not while she’s still reliving the fear every time she thinks about it.

One other question I want answered, although I doubt I’ll ever get the truth: why did this man allow my daughter to cry for 45 minutes before he finally told her he would take her back to her mother? Did he enjoy my daughter’s suffering? That’s the way it looks to me. Another hallmark of the perv. And for that alone, he ought to be shot, or at the very least, castrated and sentenced to spend the rest of the years of his life learning that women are not chattel, are not less than him, and the high school principal can join him in his re-education of society and proper attitudes towards both genders of our species in these modern times. How easily these kinds of men forget that it was women who taught them not to shit in the cave.

If I don’t feel comfortable after today’s meeting, I may just pull my daughter out of this school district. Especially since I can no longer trust them to hire decent substitute drivers who care about the children, even the girls, nor can I depend on high school principal good old boy throwbacks treating my daughter with equal respect. Too bad the example set by the elementary school principal isn’t being emulated throughout the district, but attitudes bleed down from the top and good tends to finish last when neanderthalls are allowed to remain in charge.

My gut feeling remains that the substitute driver is a closet perv. That was my first impression when he leapt off the bus to lie repeatedly, like a cheap rug, to my face. And first impressions are…well, you know.

Happy Christmas and Merry New Year

Yeah, ok, the title’s old and tired, not unlike me, but the sentiment is stronger than ever.

May you have the greatest days of your life, beginning today.

Happy holidays–Christmas, Hanuka, Kwanzaa, or your particular flavor. May they be filled with joy and wonder, beauty and love.

Now, for the atheists, the politically correct, and any other damp rag looking for a few seconds of fame at the expense of everyone else’s joy–bite me. Your dentist will love you and your pocketbook.

Ha! Ha! Ha! Ho! Ho! Ho!

Have a drink on New Year’s Eve for me–I’ll be having several for all of you…

David Foster Wallace–an Apology.

In all the comments I’ve read springing up all over the Net like weeds upon the writer’s passage, the repeated mention of the pain he must’ve suffered seems a most arrogant presumption. To intimate or assume he was in the throes of some self-induced torture that he alone was responsible for is the epitome of arrogance.

Unmentioned remains the possibility, however far-fetched to some, that it was we as a society who caused his mortal wound, we who failed him and not the other way around. We have not shown the slightest inclination as a society to think, or to turn toward thinking and great thoughts, nor do we venerate intellect or intelligence. Quite the opposite.

I submit that he merely saw our ultimate end, and that end stole the last shred of hope, and by accepting that hope is dead, our lack of action, our unwillingness to change, our disinclination toward anything remotely resembling reason or common sense killed him.

When brilliant minds shine their lights on the changes we as a society must make to advance in a positive manner, yet we give only lip service to, or outright refuse, any real effort, what else can then follow? What further wisdom can be imparted that, without dissolving into nagging criticisms or continued harping, will convince us to act upon the truths to which we so often and publicly agree?

Not even death in so tragic a manner appears to disturb the course of this world or the fates of its people. We register our pain, our sorrow to be seen and acknowledged by those around us; in our public sympathies, in our shows of empathy, we mourn for his family and friends; and yet at first opportunity, we run back to our addictions, our self-indulgences, and never mention between ourselves or in any public venue that his death may have, indeed, been our collective fault, his passing or that of any other brilliant sensitive mind the result of our increasingly poor choices, his decision to leave this shallowing world in a time and manner of his own choosing reflective only of the absence of hope in the future of all of us as a whole.

Herein lies the real tragedy–that all but a thinking few will ever acknowledge, or even accept, that maybe we owe Dave and other brilliant souls lost in a similar manner an apology.

I am sorry, Dave. Truly. I will not, from this moment on, fail to encourage thinking, to spread kindness and hope, to try in every way, however large or small, to change the fate of this world, wherever and whenever I can. For all you gave us, we owe you that much at least.

The Implausible Hero

My alter-ego’s new book, The Implausible Hero, was released today by publisher, Jigsaw Press! To celebrate this momentous occasion, I’m including a link to the YouTube video here and I’m also going to attempt the nearly impossible and embed the code in this post so you see this video if you choose. Any comments here, or any ratings and/or comments on the YouTube site would be very much appreciated. A first chapter excerpt of the book is available at both Jigsaw Press and M.L. Bushman’s website where you can order a signed hardcover or download the eBook.

If you get a break in the stream of the video, just press pause and let ‘er load a bit ahead. In my opinion, it’s worth the wait, but what would I know? I’m just a writer.

Amazon: Money is God and Greed is Good

This blog was so good, I asked M.L. Bushman if I might share it as well. Kris

There are times in history when you are presented the unique opportunity to stand up in defense of what’s right, ethically and morally, not only for yourself, but for others as well. Almost as if you are being tested as to strength of character and/or being forced to bare your true colors for all to see.

Amazon’s recent decision to strongarm independent publishers and their authors into using the substandard BookSurge printing company owned by non other than Amazon have brought divisions in the publishing industry to light–those who still believe in doing good versus those for whom money is God, while the frightened or merely confused sit on the sidelines and watch to see how this greedy grab for power plays out.

Jeff Bezos obviously believes now that money is God, that greed is good. He sees his customers not as real people, but merely as vehicles to increase his wealth. He’s decided we authors and publishers should now provide cheaper cars to further fatten his coffers, we should hand him our keys and let his lordship dictate how much gruel we peasants are allotted for any given sale while he plots a space colony in lieu of first paying his bills.

Complain all you want about other bookstores or chains, but Amazon is just as bad, if not worse, for all aspects of this business. It’s bad for the bookstores, chain or no (just check out the new text messaging service where a customer can use their cell phone from within the walls of any bookstore to compare prices and even order from Amazon); bad for publishers, independent or otherwise, especially those who would oppose the Amazon; bad, bad, bad for the authors caught in the middle of this squeeze play–authors whose own fellows, in some cases, won’t stand up beside them because they are sold on the idea that they “need” Amazon.

Most of all, however, Amazon is particularly bad for the customers, who will foot the bills. And tell me, unless we authors and publishers work diligently together to enlist the support of consumers, who will ultimately be blamed for the rising costs of books? The answer is only a look in the mirror away for any one of us. Unless we stand together and make Amazon’s greed an issue no customer will ever forget, we publishers and authors will bear the brunt of the blame, not Amazon. Just as publishers and authors shoulder the blame every time a book is poorly produced. And don’t think for a minute Jeff Bezos doesn’t realize this, too.

Whatever will I do without Amazon? Well, necessity is the mother of invention and change may be stirring in the wind, below anyone’s horizon right now. Although the references to David and Goliath abound, the story of one small soul felling a monster with a single well-placed stone might simply exist to encourage those would to stand up and try, despite the risk, in spite of the odds.

If you think about it, Jeff did virtually the same thing himself, but now, well, he’s made a very poor choice that suggests he’s lost his way, he’s completely forgotten his roots.

You might not believe in karma, but the truth is, we always get what we give. Always. And the longer what we gave to the world takes to come back around to us, the better or worse the return is. Always.

Boycott Amazon.

Aaron Russo’s America: From Freedom to Fascism

This is a guest blog by M.L. Bushman, who has my full support…Kris.

The time for sitting on the sidelines is over, America.

Watch all 11 parts of Aaron Russo’s America: Freedom to Fascism on YouTube

You’ll see what I mean. Hell, you might be inspired like me to join the revolution.

I’ve been calling for a binding national referendum, a national vote once a year to return to the citizens of this country the power that rightfully belongs to us by giving us the authority to oversee, to approve, of what Congress and even the President does purportedly on our behalf.

After seeing this movie by Aaron Russo, I realize now that those whores with the title US Senator and US Representative preceding their names will never accede to this demand, not so long as their every move is the result of a string pulled not by their hearts, their consciences, or even their so-called patriotism or respective religions, but by those private interests that make up the Federal Reserve, whose one aim is to enslave the world.

Well, folks, I have only one thing to say to these would-be world dominators and their puppets:

I have just begun to fight.

Watch the movie. Make your choice. Doing nothing is the coward’s way out. And our forefathers were not cowards, by any stretch of the imagination.

M.L. Bushman

Threads, a Blaine Horney Mystery by Kris Karrel

Yep, the eBook was released September 30, 2007, by Jigsaw Press! The paperback is on its way, too!

Boy, am I thrilled! Can you say “published author”? Woo-hoo.

Now, for a limited time, my publisher, Jigsaw Press, has decided to offer the world at large a free download of the eBook.

Who doesn’t like free?

So head on over to my website, Kris Karrel, or Jigsaw Press, and get that free download! You can pre-order the paperback, too. And if you’re of a mind, I’d sure appreciate it if get in touch with me or the publisher and leave some feedback on the story, pro or con.

For those of you yet undecided, here’s a peek at the back cover copy:

Why the ethics of this side job began to nag as the miles passed under the tires, the Texas Ranger didn’t have a clue. A personal favor for an unidentified friend of his captain wouldn’t exactly hurt his career. The double homicide was cold enough, a year old yesterday. And out of his or any Ranger’s usual jurisdiction, whole states out—Morrison, Montana, a town so small it didn’t rate a dot on a map.

Should be cut-and-dried easy.

Especially for a Ranger with a psychic gift, one that in the blink of his mind’s eye crisscrossed the world in threads, the ectoplasmic trails of people past and present, the residue of their daily lives, any moment of which he might experience simply by crossing their paths.

When it worked.

Always a downside to everything. Like a hangover chases good whiskey, or a high-class escort expects to be paid, or the name on some mythical office should he ever leave the Rangers to form an agency of his own.

Horney Investigations.

Beat Blaine Horney, PI or B. Horney, Private Investigator, but not by much.

A steady paycheck had a lot more appeal, for now anyway.

Side jobs notwithstanding.

Will Cindy Sheehan Please Go Home? And Stay There.

The woman who lost her son in the Iraq war and turned herself into a media sensation is back. More’s the pity.

All along, I’ve felt this woman was just satisfying some deep-seated need for attention. And her so-called return from “retirement” justifies my belief.

Won’t someone close to her, someone who cares about her, simply take her aside and explain how ridiculous she now looks to the rest of us? It’s the kindest thing I think anyone who cares about her can do.

Some people don’t know when to quit. Others quit and then return, hoping to regain a measure of former glory, perhaps leverage what little interest there is into new heights. And some, like Cindy, need therapy, lots of it.