The Pissed Off Blog


There’s been a lot of stuff in the news recently that has pissed me off…..


Arlen Specter pisses me off. Specter is the senior US Senator from Pennsylvania. Now historically I have not had issue with him, as he certainly is a very moderate Republican. If anything I gained a solid measure of respect for him a couple of years ago when he came out and criticized President Bush’s plans to wiretap US citizens without warrants (The NSA terrorist surveillance program). But I have lost a lot of that respect based on his overzealous actions with respect to “Spygate”. I know Senator Specter is a Philadelphia Eagles fan and is angry at the notion that the Patriots may have cheated his team out of a Super Bowl back in 2005. But to still be pushing the issue after the NFL has conducted a full scale probe is ridiculous. The Patriots have been punished. The Boston Herald has been forced to apologize for their mistaken allegations about the incident. NFL fans across the country are ready to move on. But Ol’ Arlen wants to still run the issue in the ground and threaten the NFL’s antitrust exemption.


Here’s the thing. Gas is $4 a gallon. People are having their homes foreclosed at a record rate. Our young men are STILL dying in Iraq. And all this cat can worry about is whether a football team taped some signals???? Please, it sounds like the Senator needs to get his priorities in order. And if I was a voter in Pennsylvania I would sure remind him.


Speaking of the war, there’s the report from top officials at the Veterans Health Administration that an average of 126 veterans a week (18 a day) are committing suicide. A whole generation of young men is coming home from the war with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and other demons and are not being properly treated or cared for. Please feel free to check out the link (http://www.military.com/news/article/va-sued-over-care-high-suicide-rates.html).These are the casualties of war no one speaks of. And further proof that we need to support the troops by both getting them the hell out of Iraq and Afghanistan as quickly as possible and making sure that proper funds go towards treating them once they are back. The fact that so many of the “support the troops” people from back in the day are silent on this, pisses me off.


Lastly, it’s been a crazy couple of weeks in the Democratic presidential campaign. Hill-cifer Clinton (thanks RK) just put her foot in her mouth with the Bobby Kennedy assassination comment. Even if the comment was made without insidious intent, it was just plain reckless in light of what Senator Obama has had to deal with in the last year (getting Secret Service protection). Of course, I am also pissed that Mike Huckabee’s “joke” told to a NRA audience, which was much more blatant and disrespectful, was reported far less strongly. There is no place in the campaign for these sorts of comments.


Keeping with the campaign, it pisses me off that the Clinton camp, after her wins in Kentucky and West Virginia, tried to float the notion that Obama would have trouble in the general election because he couldn’t court white working class voters. If you look at the campaign as a whole (rather than through the desperate lens of Clinton’s losing campaign) you would see that those notions couldn’t be further from the truth. It’s interesting that Obama didn’t have a problem with white working class voters when he won 60% of the vote in Vermont, the state with the second highest Caucasian population in the Union. He didn’t have a problem when he won caucuses and primaries in 5 of the other 10 whitest states (Maine, North Dakota, Iowa, Wyoming, Idaho) and barely lost in a 6th (New Hampshire). Yet, he loses in two of the most redneck states in the country, West Virginia and Kentucky (I can say that...I was born in one and have roots in the other) and suddenly it’s an issue. It sounds to me like, if anything, Obama has an Appalachia issue more than a white working class voter issue.


Lastly, continued prayers out to the Kennedy family.