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I’m taking a break from talking about massage this week.

I’ve always hated election time. All the constant television ads, telemarketing phone calls from political action committees, and all the rest of it. And now that we have social media to vent our opinions on, it just seems to be magnified a thousandfold.

I have always mostly stayed out of the fray. I don’t discuss politics (or religion) with clients at my office. If any of them bring up those subjects, if it’s in a general tone, I let it pass. If they start with specifics, I usually say “You’re here to relax, and a debate is not relaxing. Let’s focus on your (neck, back, whatever) instead and see if we can help you feel better.”

I haven’t said a word about my choice of candidates until a couple of weeks ago. I have several thousand massage therapists on my social networks, and other friends from all walks of life as well. I have seen some of them nearly working themselves up to a heart attack with their political rants on FB. I no longer see them posting pictures of their kids or their dog or talking about their day; it’s all politics, all the time.

Then one day, I thought to myself, I just can’t be quiet any longer.  I’ve worried about offending people, but then again, in the past five years, nearly every blog I’ve ever written has offended people. I’ve had people un-friend me on social networks on account of my blog. I’ve ticked off not only individuals, but entire companies and organizations with my revelations and opinions about the politics of massage, and in the general scheme of things, I’m not known for keeping my mouth shut. So in the past couple of weeks, I’ve been letting my opinions be known, and like other people who are doing the same on FB, facilitating some juicy arguments. READ MORE...

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Comment by Laura Allen on November 29, 2012 at 3:13pm

Chris,

Thank you so much for your service and serving the rest of us. My dad was a career military man who served two tours in Vietnam, and my brother served in the Persian Gulf. I appreciate your sacrifices and your contribution.

LA

Comment by Chris on November 27, 2012 at 8:28pm

The election is long over, but in keeping with your last paragraph asserting the importance of voting one's conscience, I agree with this axiom.

What follows is some observations I've developed after serving two combat tours on behalf of this country and what I learned by those who fund interminable war. 

Americka has become a nation of enablers and apologists for tyranny, fascism, and mass murder. Those who cling to status quo politics (i.e., the duopoly) will condemn the Nazi and gulag guards of times past even as they celebrate their own mercenaries and torturers – note the assassination of Bin Laden now ensconced in film and pop cultural legend as a case in point. Or the silent slaughter of innocents under Obama’s drone strike programs void of accountability, much less registering a blip of compassion, concern, or angst for the victims; sadly, Amerika has an anti septic view of human life, and those we terminate in the name of defense are forgotten as soon as the daily news is tossed in the can.

 

I personally find appalling -- even as they explain it away -- if not outright cheer, the unspeakable crimes committed by military and political eunuhs under the rubric of a meme entitled “The war on terror.” They don’t care how many innocents are wiped out as long as their munitions, bomb and tank factories are humming along with the escalating profits they produce for investment portfolios of the soulless -- and impotent -- mired in material addictions.

 

Safely ensconced in academic luna parks, or their pretty little house on Sunny Side street, your leading intellectuals lean slightly right or left, but never enough to rock the blazing gunboat, lest they sour the cocktail parties or -- god forbid -- have their tenure revoked. Mouths stuffed with antipasti, they’re expert at sidestepping Israel’s prolific crimes against humanity like the death of American activist Rachel Corrie, crushed by a Israeli bulldozer for refusing to move while standing in front of a house owned by a elderly Palestinian; then the 9/11 faux investigation which white washed Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfield’s crimes against humanity in which leading Democratic leaders were highly culpability by sweeping it under the rug; or the parasitic Federal Reserve, and as another joke election is over, they’re all gung ho about candidates positioning themselves for the next faux election, and who will continue to back illegal wars and banking frauds, since each is supposedly the lesser of two evils. Much less might we wonder why a single bankster has not been prosecuted under Obama’s Justice Dept.

 

For the past five presidential elections, winning candidates have won 52.9%, 50.7%, 47.9%, 49.2% and 43% of the popular votes respectively, so there hasn’t been an overwhelming mandate for any of them, but with the runner ups from the other major party often close behind, and in 2000, actually ahead in the popular vote count, the two-party system has gotten a stranglehold on our public life and pocketbooks. As for our senators, only two are not Democrat or Republican. An Amerikan (spelling is intentional by the way) election, then, is basically a rigged referendum for this thoroughly corrupt and murderous system, and simply by voting, you will give it the green light to go on killing and looting their strangle hold on weaker nations. Every four years, we’re railroaded into sanctioning endless war and bottomless corruption. If disappointed, we’re then steered by our brainwashing and dumbing down media to a near clone of our current rapist.

 

The Good Old Party spooks the upper and middle classes by threatening, If you don’t vote for us, the Dems will take your hard-earned cash and give it to the freeloaders, crack-heads and other miscellaneous losers, while the Democrats, in turn, scare the lower rungs by snarling, If you don’t vote for us, the Republicans will let your retired, diapered ass rot under a bridge, on a piece of cardboard, but lordy, lordy, lordy, it is already happening, but let us not sweat the details much less wake up to our own illusions.

 

It is fitting that as our most important vote has become nearly meaningless, we’re offered myriad opportunities to vote for all sorts of irrelevant acts and personalities, from singing oafs to dancing buffoons, to steroid-charged sluggers. Americans have never voted so much for so little.

 

Each party paints the other as the greater evil, though both are equally whorish to a military banking complex that has wrought so much grief and destruction worldwide, including here. As they offshore your job, they may toss you a free cell phone or allow you to wed your same sex lover, but isn’t time, seriously, we demand that our money be spent responsibly, for our benefits? But no, we can only beg for small change, instead of real ones, and must vote, again, for proven liars and criminals, and hope, against all evidence, that they won’t impale us this time. So how does it feel to have so much evil, deceit and betrayal hardening through the entire length of your being? But what’s worst about this is that you yourself have allowed it to happen, have enabled it, if only symbolically, by voting for one of the two parties that are pro war and pro corruption. They will likely get 99% of your votes, in fact, so Amerika will have endorsed overwhelmingly, again, an openly criminal agenda, and the world will again be aghast.

 

With his cartoon dynamite, Netanyahu’s recent UN speech brings to mind Powell and his phony chart before the Iraq invasion, but Bush at least tried to convince that a war was necessary, whereas Obama hasn’t even bother. Ignoring congress and the Amerikan public, he simply ordered a massive bombing campaign against Libya, which he mockingly dubbed a “kinetic military action,” unleashed lesser strikes against Somalia, Yemen and Pakistan, and sent terroristic proxies into Syria, all without significant protest from our dozing public or groveling intelligentsia.

 

Pumped with nonstop propaganda from our corporate media in this mad house of mirrors, we neither see nor care how others perceive us, for even as international protests mount, our flags burnt, our soldiers killed by supposed allies and poll after poll shows us among the most despised nations on earth, we still believe we’re loved and admired worldwide. Our politicians are only too glad to pander to this vanity. Romney, “We have a moral responsibility to keep America the strongest nation on earth, the hope of the earth, the shining city on the hill.” Obama, “Never bet against the United States. The United States has been, and will always be, the one indispensable nation in world affairs.” Only children believe in everlasting anything, but that’s how our daddy and mommy politicians talk to us these days.

 

So the world will again be aghast, as will posterity, unless we can prove that we’re not behind the winning criminal. Already, nearly half of Americans don’t cast ballots in any election, but we must make this abstention purposeful, as a clear sign of protest and not an act of apathy. The world must see that Americans aren’t all deranged and hypnotized as those who cheer and vote for one lying criminal after another. We’re better than this, so let’s prove it. Imagine thousands in public places, declaring, “NOT IN OUR NAME!” The sooner we can affect a divorce between us and our rogue government, the sooner we can get rid of it. If nothing else, to resist this electoral farce is to wash our hands, partially, at least, of the innocent blood being spilled. It is the only moral decision.

 

 

Comment by Laura Allen on November 18, 2012 at 7:54am

Relax and Rejuvinate,

I stated my opinion and I don't expect you to agree with it. I don't expect to sway anyone else to agree with it. I voice it because there is freedom of speech here, and I CAN voice it. I don't have to defend my opinion to you or anyone else. You are entitled to yours, and I am entitled to mine. You don't have the slightest idea what I believe about God, and you're getting a lot of exercise jumping to conclusions. I personally count Christians, pagans, Muslims, Buddhists, Jews, atheists, and many other people among my friends...and even a few Mormons. There just don't happen to be many Mormons here where I live, but I actually was in business with a Mormon couple years ago. Their religion was no a deterrent to my being friends or business partners with them, nor was my lack of religion and issue to them. They didn't come to work every day trying to convert me, nor did I try to impress my beliefs on them. I don't EVER have to defend my opinion to you, and you are sadly mistaken in thinking that ANYONE has to defend their opinion to you. If you're looking for an argument, look somewhere else.

Comment by Relax & Rejuvenate on November 5, 2012 at 9:06am

I am a conservative and I pay my employees very well, offer benefits without being forced to by the government -- but what does any of that matter?

Someone states "I support X becuase of Y & Z:" but the record indicates X does not really believe in Y -- by paying women who work for him less than men doing the same job, and he really does not believe in Z either -- was against gay marriage for 3 ofh is 4 years in office and cozies up to regimes that would stone both Y & Z.

 

That is the issue. If you are going to voice your opinion in an effort to sway others -- and don't tell me that is not the goal, for if it was not, there is no point in voicing an opinion -- then be prepared to defend it.

Comment by Gordon J. Wallis on November 3, 2012 at 11:11am

She may be a liberal, but she pays her employees well.  Dude, you need to relax and rejuvenate.. Get a massage or something.

Comment by Relax & Rejuvenate on November 3, 2012 at 8:26am

I guess you forgot to read anything after you cast your first vote

"And we can all rest peacefully, secure in the knowledge that whomever wins, the administration that follows them will blame everything that is wrong on them, because that’s the American way."

 

Ronald Reagan never once blamed Jimmy Carter for anything he inherited, unlike the candidate you are supporting, who promised hope, change and a new tone in Washington. What a total hypocrite?

 

And what about the fact obama pays women on his WH staff 81% of what he pays the men doing the same job? I thought Romney was leading the war on women?

 

You are supporting a President who is sucking up to the Muslim world, which codifies in their governance structure treatment of women as property, and has recently shot and stoned them for daring to exercise opinions or act against Shria Law, which governs Islamic nations. And  your candidate shovels money at them, and you think he is so benevolent and believes in the equal treatment of all people.  Any idea what Shria Law holds for gays? Obama does, yet he kisses up to these countries and his justice department is willing to allow Muslims to practice Shria law in this country.

 

You talk of people having beliefs that make them INTOLERANT of those who are different than you, yet you voice that same level of intolerance over people who chose to believe in God in a way different than you. They are not suitable to lead this country because you disagree with their religious beliefs -- which don't happen to play a role in governance!

 

And you are also dead wrong about the 1st Amendment. Try reading it some time. "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

As usual, the opinions of a liberal contradict the facts behind them.

 

 

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