Today's Intel Report: Because TV News Sucks So Bad

Homeless couple living in Las Vegas flood tunnels

Think we're not in a depression?
Take a look above at the nice living quarters this couple has in the flood channels under Las Vegas. They say it is too dangerous to live above on the streets.
According to this New York Times article, unprovoked attacks on the homeless are at an all-time high. Tent cities are popping up everywhere, and societal angst has brought up the ugly spectre of picking on the weakest among us.
From the article:

In Portland, Ore., twin brothers were charged with five unprovoked attacks against homeless people in a park. One of the victims was a man beaten with his own bike, another a woman pushed down a steep staircase.
In Cleveland, a man leaving a homeless shelter to visit his mother was “savagely beaten by a group of thugs,” the police said.
In Los Angeles, a homeless man who was a neighborhood fixture was doused in gasoline and set on fire.
In Boston, a homeless Army veteran was beaten to death as witnesses near Faneuil Hall reportedly looked on.
And in Jacksonville, N.C., a group of young men fatally stabbed a homeless man behind a shopping strip, cutting open his abdomen with a beer bottle.
In Las Vegas, home to a large population of the homeless, there were no reported killings of any of them last year, but many say hostilities have risen as the city moves to get them out of the parks and off the streets.
Some of the Las Vegas homeless resort to living in a maze of underground flood channels beneath the Strip. There they face flash floods, disease, black widows and dank, pitch-dark conditions, but some tunnel dwellers say life there is better than being harassed and threatened by assailants and the police.
“Out there, anything goes,” said Manny Lang, who has lived in the tunnels for months, recalling the stones and profanities with which a group of teenagers pelted him last winter when he slept above ground. “But in here, nothing’s going to happen to us.”
Their plight is a revealing commentary on the violence facing street people, said Matt O’Brien, a Las Vegas writer who runs an outreach group for the homeless.
“It’s hard to believe that tunnels that can fill a foot per minute with floodwater could be safer than aboveground Vegas,” Mr. O’Brien said, “but many homeless people think they are. No outsider is going to attack you down there in the dark.”

And Now For A Word On Health Care: "Astroturf"

Let me start by saying this:
When I went to my Doctor for my yearly check up, before President Obama was elected, we had a discussion on health care.
I asked him, "in a perfect world, how would you handle public health care"?

--He said, and I'm not kidding, "All you patients need to get together and burn down the insurance companies".

Listen people; this flap about "teabagging" Congress in a mass resistance against sensible changes in health care delivery has gone too far.
The "low-information voter" is consistantly being manipulated by incredibly powerful corporate forces. Watching some of the activists shouting down town halls, you'd think you were seeing some grass-roots movement like the protests against a war or something.
But wait; these poor people are being steered by none other than the insurance companies that have been ripping them off all along.
Additionally, many of the "protestors" I have seen on video are clearly old enough to be recieving Medicare and Social Security themselves. That's Socialism!

Come on folks, let's get down to the roots of this: The conservative movement is on a full-out attack on Obama and anything that represents progressive, healthy change.
Their war rooms have been working on the strategy long before Obama's election. The first shot across the bow was the phoney "Birthers" movement, claiming Obama was not an American citizen and not constitutionally qualified to be president.
Hello!!! His mother was from Kansas. Obama could have been born on Mars, but his mother was an American so he is an American. Done. Over.
There is an underlying element of Racism that is driving the "Birther" movement and now the phoney teabag health-care protest scene.
When a supposed "grass-roots" movement is proven to be driven by huge corporations such as the Insurance companies, it's not "grass roots", it's "Astroturf".
Seriously, Why do working class people get brainwashed into voting against their own best interests?