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Clorox Won’t Be Stinking Up My House Anymore

I just sent the following email to the Clorox corporation via clorox.investor.relations@clorox.com:

I just want to let you know that I am deeply disturbed by your support of Donald
Trump’s television show.

His blatant race baiting has brought bigotry to a new low in America. Make no
mistake, Americans understand what Mr. Trump’s assertions that President Obama
didn’t earn the right to an ivy league education means.

Americans have historically shown that we don’t like it when our president is
attacked. We saw this during President Clinton’s impeachment, President’s
Bush’s actions in regard to the 9/11 attacks, and right now as our duly elected
president is being delegitimized by the likes of Mr. Trump.

When our president is unjustly attacked, we as Americans rally behind him. In
an effort to rally behind my president, I will no longer be purchasing your
products, as long as you continue to advertise during Mr. Trump’s show. I have
several Clorox products in my house now. They will be the last. I’m certain that
once I try your competitor’s products, my brand loyalty will irrevocably shift.

I am an American. I’m proud of my president. You should be too.

Sincerely,

 

Here’s the response I got from Clorox:

Dear Consumer,

Thank you for contacting us and for sharing your views about Donald Trump and NBC’s “The Celebrity Apprentice” program. We very much appreciate hearing from consumers as The Clorox Company remains committed to quality broadcasting.

We pride ourselves in being a responsible advertiser and have established long-standing and strict standards for the selection of television programming. Per our standards, we do not advertise in programs that display exploitive sex or violence; treat ethnic, religious or political groups in a disparaging manner; present facts inaccurately or distort them to blatantly partisan advantage; and treat individuals or groups in a demeaning manner. Clorox holds true to our advertising standards and also holds true to our nation’s heritage of free expression of political opinions so long as it does not impact the content and nature of a particular program. Currently, the content of The Celebrity Apprentice adheres to our programming guidelines. However, if this changes, we will reconsider our commercial advertisements in the program as we do not want to support programming that is in conflict with our standards.

Thank you again for taking time to share your views with us. We encourage you to also contact NBC to share your opinions.

Sincerely

Adam Oberweiser

Clorox Executive Offices

To which I say, “Fuck you, Clorox!” If this isn’t an example of someone blatantly distorting facts for partisan advantage, then I don’t know what is. You don’t make bleach strong enough to wipe the stink off what you’re supporting with your ad dollars. I’m going to use products that clean my house, rather than products that soil my country.

Enough said.

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We’re Screwed

Okay, we’ve been screwed for about thirty years now, but we got an indication of just how screwed we are this morning.

But the good news is that as we found out how very royally screwed we are, we also got an answer to a question that has confounded me for about a year and a half.

I’ve maintained for years now that our political parties are actors on the stage of political theater. We don’t have two parties that are on opposing sides. We have two parties that are beholden to precisely the same corporate interests. We have two parties that are designed to appeal to two distinctly different groups of people. We have one party that appeals to the authoritarian, “tough guy” and another party that appeals to the big thinker, “consider the big picture”. One party claims to be for the working man, while the other professes to tirelessly work to stay out of our lives. All of this is, of course theater. They’re both batting for the same team. One party is more shameless about who they’re working for, but make no mistake; democrats will take this country to precisely the same place that republicans will. They will just do it on a longer timeline. And along they way, I will give democrats credit for doing a few things for the American people, while republicans have done absolutely nothing for us for over thirty years. But at the end of the day, both parties are going to place the health and welfare of the corporations over yours every single time.

So the question with democrats is, “how big of a shill is my representative?” We already know that all republicans, with the exception of Ron Paul, are 100% shill.

Watching Obama acquiesce in perpetuity, to the point of absurdity had me wondering if it were possible for someone to be this bad at negotiation. Let’s review;

-He started off the health care debate by taking a public option off the table. Huh? Why not proclaim that anything short of a public option is a non-starter, and then back down slowly from there? But not our Obama! He starts in the middle and moves right from there. The end result was the Bob Dole plan from the 90s (subsequently the Mitt Romney plan). WooHoo! He got what republicans were willing to give eighteen years ago!

Republicans emphatically demanded that Obama cut 31B out of the 2011 budget. He releases a budget that cut 32B as his opening gambit. Was anyone surprised when republicans demanded he cut from where his budget started? He gave them more than they asked for as his opening move, and didn’t get any credit for that first 32B he cut. He then had to cut another 39B on top of that!

Be honest Obama supporters; if you were in the market for a new car, would you send Obama in to negotiate the price for you?

Honestly, he’s so fucking bad at this that it was becoming increasingly more difficult to believe that someone could suck at negotiating this much. I was honestly starting to think that he was the most wholly owned subsidiary of corporate America, that we’d ever seen in politics.

This morning, my question was finally answered. When Obama caved into the craziest among us, and released yet another form of his birth certificate, he definitively showed me that he just sucks at this. He’s the world’s most incompetent negotiator, truly.

He sent some very clear messages this morning. He told the world that there is no demand too crazy for him to acquiesce to. And there is no person too crazy for him to cave in to. He took off his shirt, and showed the world the tire marks on his back.

This weakness is about to fuck Americans like they’ve never been fucked before.Let me explain why this monumental display of weakness concerns me right at this moment in time.

Paul Ryan just came out with a budget plan that literally everyone, republican and democrat alike hates, despite the main stream media’s best efforts. Remember how they all used words like “courageous” and “bold” to describe the plan for the first week after it came out? It didn’t take long for Americans to figure out that this plan was going to fuck the old and the poor, for the sole purpose of making the rich richer. By Ryan’s own admission, his plan wasn’t going to balance the budget for forty years. Forty years? That’s at least five presidential administrations!

Republicans never intended for this preposterous plan to fly. I think they underestimated how big of a shit storm it would start, but they never really believed that they would pull it off. They made a tactical decision to open with the most draconian far right wing hand job they could, so that they could negotiate from there.

Obama had already demonstrated that he was going to start the negotiations from a right wing position when he appointed two well known social security haters to his debt commission. He was obviously planning on making cuts to social security and medicare. Given the birther cave-in this morning, I’m positive that republicans are now going to get way more out of Obama in terms of cutting those two programs than they initially imagined they could get. They would have to be in a halcyon induced coma not to seize on the spinelessness that Obama now openly wears on his sleeve.

In short, we’re fucked. We’re more fucked than we would be if Obama were merely being controlled by his corporate masters. Bill Clinton was obviously the most corporate friendly democratic president we’d ever had until now. Every subsequent democratic president was obviously going to slowly up the ante on the democratic party’s corporatism. This president predictably did, but he has no conviction. He has no conviction, and no hard deal-breakers. There’s nothing he’s not willing to compromise on. And even if he did have conviction, he doesn’t have the balls to stick to them.

He caved to the birthers. Enough said.


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Trumped

I’m desperate and I feel compelled to send an urgent plea to republicans, since you are the only ones that can alleviate my current state of agitation. Without your help I, and the rest of America, are going to have to suffer through seventeen months of supersized stupid.

My plea is this; Please, for the love of God, sane republicans must find your voice! If you don’t rally your troops, Donald Trump is going debase you and your party, forcing you to have to deny that you’re republicans again.

Every presidential election cycle starts with one right wing whack job setting the bar of crazy that every other republican presidential hopeful must keep pace with. Aren’t sane republicans tired of being embarrassed in this way? Where the fuck are you? Why are you allowing the crazies to hijack your party, and the country’s conversation again?

Half of all republicans don’t believe that President Obama was born here. My question is, where the fuck are the other half? Is there something wrong with your throats? Speak up! Save us!

Democrats suck in eighteen million different ways (that I regularly point out) but they are good at muzzling their crazies. Can you imagine a 9/11 truther doing national interviews in which he/she hints at a presidential run? Honestly, can anyone conceive of that ever happening? Of course not! And thank God, because I would be loathe to let that kind of nutbaggery define liberalism.

And if you think I’m being unfair in drawing parallels between truthers and birthers, let me set you straight right now. Both groups show contempt for America in a way that is unparalleled by any foreign entity. The birthers have to believe that the American government is so fucking incompetent, that it can be hoodwinked by a couple of guys cooking up a plot from their huts in Kenya. The truthers are so goddamned cynical, that they believe that George W Bush is evil, competent, and powerful enough to orchestrate an attack on his own country. And he would have to be so beloved, that the hundreds of people that would have to be involved in pulling off this coup, will maintain their silence until they die. If you believe either of these things, it’s hard to imagine anyone that could hate America more than you do.

Back to my plea to sane republicans. Why are non-batshit crazy republicans letting the lunatics taint the whole party? Donald Trump is whackoing it up for attention, and he’s dragging all of you down with him. And when he surges in the polls among republicans by going all birther on us, all of you republicans get dragged into the gutter with him. Forget the pain that I will be forced to endure if you don’t stand up, you must speak out to save yourselves! Why would you allow yourselves to be dragged onto this kind of crazy?

Here’s the best part; Donald Trump is not a birther. Donald Trump is not a racist. Donald Trump isn’t even a republican. If you look at the totality of what he’s said over the past twenty years, you would have to conclude what I’ve concluded; Donald Trump is a vapid media whore that will say anything to get a camera pointed at him. Over the years, he’s referred to Jimmy Carter, George W Bush, and Barack Obama as “the worst president in US history”. He sang Obama’s praises until about a year and a half ago. He rarely ever shows up to vote. He obviously doesn’t give a shit about politics. Twenty-five years ago, when he released a book that no one was buying, he proclaimed that he was going to run for president. Book sales soared, and the Trump presidential campaign never materialized. He’s just recycling an old play in order to get more money out of NBC, who he’s in contract negotiations with to renew his reality show.

So all of you silent, sane republicans are letting your party slip into the gutter again so that Donald Trump can get an extra two million per episode. Is it worth it? Are you all good with being labeled nutjobs, just so that Trump can delay his third bankruptcy for a few months?

Please, speak up so that we can have primaries that are about ideas and ideology. Make it clear to future GOP whackos that the well is dry, and they need not apply. Let’s start off this election cycle with serious candidates that have an actual platform. I’m so fucking tired of having to suffer through lunacy before we get down to the meat of the hypocrisy. Can’t we just cut to the chase and go straight for the lies and distortions? Must we always become the laughing stock of the world first?

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Sadomasochistic Voting

I know I’ve been a little absent lately, but not because I haven’t been paying attention to what’s going on. I’ve been so completely stunned by the bullshit coming out of Washington, that I needed to form my thoughts and do my research. And boy, did I research!

I’m going to disspell every stupid fucking thing that republicans have said in regard to the budget over the past three weeks, and I’m going to do it without sharing a single opinion.

Ready?

The first thing that I looked at was states’ GDP relative to their corporate tax rates. The tax rates among states range between 0% and 12%. I was surprised to find that Iowa had the highest tax rate by far at 12%. The next closest state was Minnesota with a 9.8% flat corporate tax rate. Here are the top ten states with the highest corporate tax rates (for the purpose of this post, I used the highest rate in states that have tiered tax rates):

Iowa – 12%
Minnesota – 9.8%
Illinois – 9.5%
Alaska – 9.4%
New Jersey – 9%
Rhode Island – 9%
Maine – 8.93%
California – 8.84%
Delaware – 8.7%
Indiana – 8.5%

Then I looked at the states with the highest GDP:

California – 1847B
Texas – 1224B
New York – 1144B
Florida – 744B
Illinois – 634B
Pennsylvania – 553B
New Jersey – 475B
Ohio – 472B
North Carolina – 400B
Georgia – 398B

That’s interesting, the state with the highest GDP (by far) is also one of the states with the highest tax rates. In fact, three out of the top ten states for GDP are also on the list of states with the highest corporate tax rates.

So that made me want to look at the states with the lowest corporate tax rates to see what their GDP is:

Washington – 0%, 323B
Nevada – 0%, 131B
South Dakota – 0%, 37B
Wyoming – 0%, 35B
Texas – 1%, 1224B
Ohio – 1.3%, 472B
Kansas – 4% – 123B
Colorado – 4.6%, 249B
Michigan – 4.95%, 383B
Mississippi – 5%, 92B

That’s weird, only two of the states with the lowest corporate tax rates are in the top ten for highest GDP. And one of those two states is Texas, where the oil developed before the low corporate state tax rate did.

Why aren’t any of the companies that put California at the top of the GDP food chain in any of the four states with no corporate taxes? Paying less taxes is what creates jobs, right? Shouldn’t all the jobs be in Washington, Wyoming, Nevada, and South Dakota? Washington ranks 14th for GDP. Nevada, South Dakota, and Wyoming rank 36th, 41st, and 48th. Why are Wyoming and South Dakota so unproductive, given their nonexistent corporate income tax rates? Weird.

Another weird thing that stuck out at me as I was compiling this data, is that five of the top ten highest states for GDP are solid democratic states. Three are republican and two are purple. Six of the lowest states for GDP are solidly republican, while four are democratic. That’s going to be relevant further down in this post.

The numbers clearly debunk the bullshit myth that low taxes = job creation so let’s move on.

The next thing I looked at was per capita income in each state. Seven of the top ten states with the highest per capita income are decidedly blue states. The other three are solidly red. Of the ten states with the lowest per capita income, seven are solidly red, one is blue, and two are purple.

I found it interesting that the top and bottom earners have an inverse proportion in political leanings. That inverse relationship led me to look at some other statistics, which produced some fascinating data;

Of the ten states that spend the most on K-12 education, eight are blue, while only two are red.

Seven of the states that spend the most on K-12 education are in the top ten for highest GDP.

Of the ten states that spend the least on K-12 education, nine are red, one is purple, none are blue.

Only one of the ten states that spends the least on K-12 education even cracked the top twenty for GDP.

What does any of this have to do with the title of this post? I’m finally getting there. Look, you know when you live in a shitty place. When you’re in a poor state or a poor neighborhood, you know it. There’s are no illusions about your lot in life. The biggest difference between republicans and democrats is that republicans fundamentally believe that shitty is normal, and that there’s no such thing as a government that can change that. They believe that government will only fuck things up more. Democrats believe (despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary) that government exists to serve the people. And it turns out that democrats were right. I say were because all of that is evaporating before our very eyes, but that’s another post.

So why do republicans keep voting for shitty government? Because it allows them to be right in their belief that government blows and on a visceral level, being right is all you need. They expect government to blow, so they’re not let down when it does. They keep voting for people that offer them more of the same non-governance bullshit that keeps them poor and uneducated because they’re sadomasochistic. They’re sadomasochistic, but they’re right!

The data here is clear; the democratic way is better. It’s better for you because it’s better for your neighbor. When your neighbor’s kid has a shot at a good education and a bright future, they won’t grow up, having to resort to robbing and killing you in order to survive. It makes sense to tax corporations and the mega-fucking-rich because they use more taxpayer resources than you do. This way works!

There’s no fucking reason to vote for the “screw your community, it’s each man for themselves” platform, unless satisfying your sadomasochistic tendencies is more gratifying to you than watching your kid graduate for college is.

The budget cuts that passed this week are going to speed up our race to the bottom. Make no mistake, Obama made this happen. He backed himself into a corner when he agreed to extend the Bush tax cuts. And if you didn’t see this week coming when that happened, you just weren’t paying attention.


The most fucked up thing about this, is that Obama is turning me into a sadomasochistic voter. When 2012 rolls around, despite my best efforts in the primaries, Obama is going to be our nominee. And in November, I’m going to have to hold my nose and vote for him for one single reason; the supreme court. The only thing that Obama is going to do for me, is to appoint a non-whacko to the court.


And what’s worse than the forced sadomasochism, is that I don’t get to enjoy the upside that republicans get. There’s no satisfaction in shitty government for me. It’s all pain and no gain for bitchy.


I need to figure out a way to make this sadomasochism thing work for me. Does anyone have any advice they can give me? What type of equipment should I invest in? Nipple clamps? And when I cut myself, where’s the best place to do it? Any and all suggestions are welcome!



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