April, 2010 | The Bitchy Pundit - Part 2

Dick Cheney Is A Scared Little Girl

April 12, 2010 by Bitchy

We’ve had it wrong for years. Dick Cheney isn’t Darth Vader. He’s a scared little girl who is afraid of his own shadow (do vampires cast shadows?). This is a belief that I’ve held for years and the more I listen to him, the more I read about him, the more convinced I am that I’m right.

Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, a former top aid to Colin Powell came out last week and revealed that Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Bush all knew that hundreds of men that were held at gitmo were innocent. Read the full article here.

None of this amounts to a shocking revelation to anyone that has been paying attention to how the Bush administration handled the “war on terror”. We’ve known for years that most of the people that landed in gitmo were turned in for a bounty. There was no intelligence gathering involved in this operation. Anyone that turned anybody in as a “suspected terrorist” promptly received a $5,000 reward with no questions asked. It didn’t take long for Afghans and Pakistanis to realize that they can make some quick cash and take care of their rivals by simply turning them in as terrorists. This was a lazy, stupid, and ineffective way to conduct a “war” (or two). This approach isn’t keeping anyone safe, it oppresses people in order to create an illusion of safety. We could eliminate nearly all drunk driving fatalities in the US if we instigated a law that would prohibit anyone from driving their cars after 9 pm. Does that sound like a good plan to anyone?

I believe that each of the top ranking buffoons that were involved in designing this approach on the “war on terror” had different motivations. I want to focus in on Cheney because he fascinates me more than any of the other players in this comedy of errors.

For the past ten years, we’ve heard nothing but dire warnings coming out of Dick Cheney. He’s afraid of of everything and everyone, and he’s trying really hard to make us afraid as well. Unlike Karl Rove, I believe that Dick Cheney sincerely believes what he’s saying. Why do I believe that? Because of the infamous underground bunker and the blurring out of his residence on Google maps. Trust me, this guy is one giant pussy with serious daddy issues!

I believe that Dick Cheney has always had an authoritarian personality but somewhere along the line, madness set in to compound the problem. Watch this video of him in 1994:

That is not the batshit crazy paranoiac we’re afflicted with today. Something inexplicably horrific happened to him between 1994 and 2000. 1994 Dick Cheney doesn’t have that crazy look in his eyes that 2002 Dick Cheney has.

As perplexing as the transformation is, that’s not the most confusing occurrence in this whole situation. The thing that confuses me the most is the inverted reality of the republican party. I don’t understand why everyone thinks of republicans as the “tough guys” when it’s clear that they’re all a bunch of scared little girls. For eight long years, republicans in Wyoming were crapping their pants with fear of another terrorist attack. Here’s a newsflash Wyoming; NO ONE IS COMING TO GET YOU. You’re not important enough to “get”. Terrorism is about creating the most impact with the fewest resources. You could bomb ten square miles in Wyoming and only amass a casualty rate of three. You’re simply not worth going after. Same goes for you, South Carolina, Kentucky, Georgia, and every other pussy inhabited state in middle America. I’m not trying to denigrate these states (I know, imagine how bad it would be if I was). I’m simply pointing out that as a rational person, I understand where the likely targets for future attacks are.

I moved to Manhattan after 9/11. I did so believing then, as I do now, that New York is most definitely going to suffer another terrorist attack. We’ve endured the only two foreign attacks on US soil, and we’re prepared to endure more if we have to. We understand that we are the highest of high value targets. I know many, many people that were here in New York when 9/11 happened. Guess what? They’re all still here. What’s more, 74% of us in Manhattan voted for John Kerry in 2004. 83% of us voted for Barack Obama in 2008. So why are liberals seen as weak when conservatives are regarded as tough and strong?

We have it all completely backwards. Liberals became increasingly impervious to Dick Cheney’s prophecies of Armageddon with each passing year of the Bush administration while conservatives cowered in fear.

You’re just a fucking frightened little girly man, Dick Cheney. And I hope that America wakes up and sees you for who you are because as much as you’re loathed in the world, you’re still being overestimated.

Who’s Afraid Of Virginia?

April 8, 2010 by Bitchy

Happy Confederate History Month, everyone!

Poor Virginians. Just 13 weeks into the term of their new governor, Bob McDonnell, Virginia has become the laughing stock of the country. I just want to let everyone know that it wasn’t their fault.

First, a little background. Mr. McDonnell was sworn in as the governor of Virginia on January 16th of this year. During his very short tenure as governor, he has reversed (by executive order) non-discrimination protections for gay state workers that were put in place by former governor Tim Kaine. The next item on his agenda was to proclaim that April would be “Confederate History Month” in Virginia. You can read the proclamation here. Did you happen to notice anything missing from his “celebration” of the confederacy? Whoopsie, he forgot all about that whole slavery misunderstanding. He finally apologized for his little memory lapse yesterday.

So far, Bob McDonnell’s thirteen week tenure as governor can best be summed up as an increase of discrimination and celebration of bigotry. Such a proud moment for Virginia!

As I said earlier, this situation isn’t the fault of Virginians. They didn’t vote for this. Bob McDonnell ran as a moderate whose primary focus for Virginia would be job creation. Here’s a Time Magazine article on McDonnell’s campaign from last November. Here’s another one from The Washington Post. He didn’t run as a far right winger whose focus was going to be to stir up hate and bigotry, which tells me that he knows that he couldn’t get elected to the position of dog catcher if he ran under his real agenda. He pulled a complete bait and switch on Virginians because he knew that they wouldn’t have him if they knew who he really was. In my opinion, he’s shown nothing but contempt for Virginians by playing them for fools.

If you really believe that what you’re doing is good for the people in your state, you would run on that platform. Lying about who and what you are says two things to me;

1) You don’t believe your own bullshit on any sort of intellectual level.

2) You know that you can’t get elected by the people because your views are not widely shared.

In short, Bob McDonnell is a viscerally hate fueled coward. You’re a coward, Bob McDonnell because you were too chicken shit to show the voters who you are so that they could make an informed decision about whether or not to vote for you. And your hatred is so viscerally entrenched in who you are, that it’s completely suppressed any rational thought that you may ever have.

I say that because Bob McDonnell gave the rebuttal to President Obama’s state of the union earlier this year, which is a very clear sign that he and republican leaders had national aspirations. Those aspirations have evaporated in the twelve weeks since he made that rebuttal. There’s NO WAY to get elected to national office on an anti-gay, pro-confederacy record. Buh bye, Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. Any rational person regardless of ideology can tell you that you can’t win a national election with a record like the one Bob McDonnell is creating. His hate for blacks and gays has blinded him so completely that what was a bright political future a few weeks ago, is now a distant memory.

Bob McDonnell fucked himself and he fucked Virginia.

But don’t go hating Virginians for this. They didn’t know although admittedly, he had a pretty questionable background going into the election. Unfortunately, his opponent was a terrible campaigner and the Obama administration were too cowardly to support him. Thanks for that, Rahm I really appreciate it!

Fun Facts

April 6, 2010April 5, 2010 by Bitchy

I’ve been listening to republicans try and diminish the 162,000 jobs that were created last month all weekend. I find it ludicrous on it’s face, that they’re complaining that this administration hasn’t managed to clean up after their unmitigated disaster fast enough! Here’s a newsflash for John Boehner; if your party hadn’t made such a huge mess of the economy, monthly job creation numbers wouldn’t even make headline news!

But beyond the obvious absurdity of the republican reaction to the job creation numbers, there’s a history of fun facts that I thought everyone would find interesting.

Let’s start with this – George W Bush didn’t create his first job until the beginning of his second term. That’s right, not one single fucking job for 4 years. And you wanna know who he put the onus on for that? You guessed it, it was Clinton’s fault. I have audio of Bush, Cheney, Rove, and Fleischer, and McClellan all blaming Clinton for the lack of job growth. Given how they handled Bush’s poor performance, republicans naturally feel that it’s unfair for Obama to ever so much as hint at the fact that the mess we’re in now is Bush’s fault.

Here’s another fun fact; in the last 60 years, the only person that created fewer jobs than a Bush was Eisenhower, in his second term. Poppy and W were the #2 and #3 worst presidents for job creation. Here are some numbers (the numbers represent millions of jobs created):

Truman 1949 -1952 5.2
Eisenhower 1953 – 1956 2.7
Eisenhower 1957 – 1960 0.8
Kennedy/Johnson 1961 – 1964 5.7
Johnson 1965 – 1968 9.8
Nixon 1969 – 1972 6.1
Nixon/Ford 1972 – 1976 5.2
Carter 1977 – 1980 10.4
Reagan 1981 – 1984 5.2
Reagan 1985 – 1988 10.8
Bush 1989 – 1992 2.5
Clinton 1993 – 1996 11.6
Clinton 1997 – 2000 11.5
Bush 2001 – 2004 (0.1)
Bush 2005 – 2008 5.1

It’s interesting that Poppy Bush didn’t blame Reagan for his abysmal performance, isn’t it? Jimmy Carter, by the way, kicked some job creation ass!

Another fun fact; wages went up not at all under the 8 years of George W Bush. So he didn’t create any new jobs, and for those that were employed, he kept your wages stagnant.

Now let’s look at some other fun facts – spending. The numbers on the right represent the change in spending relative to GDP:

Truman 1949 -1952 -23.9
Eisenhower 1953 – 1956 -10.4
Eisenhower 1957 – 1960 -7.9
Kennedy/Johnson 1961 – 1964 -6.7
Johnson 1965 – 1968 -6.8
Nixon 1969 – 1972 -5.4
Nixon/Ford 1972 – 1976 -0.9
Carter 1977 – 1980 -2.8
Reagan 1981 – 1984 +7.3
Reagan 1985 – 1988 +11.2
Bush 1989 – 1992 +12.2
Clinton 1993 – 1996 +3.0
Clinton 1997 – 2000 -9.8
Bush 2001 – 2004 +5.6
Bush 2005 – 2008 +6.3

Can you figure out who the fiscal conservatives are?

When I look at these sets of numbers I have to ask, “Where did the money under republicans go?” We saw less job growth and higher spending under republicans. Their approach is to spend more and tax corporations less. Keep in mind that when republicans talk about cutting taxes, they’re never talking about cutting your taxes. They’re talking about cutting corporate taxes. I hate to break it to you, but you’re not making “game changing” money. Adjusting your taxes up or down 3% – 6% amounts to your annual latte spending. And as they cut corporate taxes and increase corporate tax loop holes, they accomplish nothing in terms of creating jobs for you.

In Reagan’s case, all of that wild spending went into defense which created a crap load of defense jobs. Ironically, Reagan is the best example of how government can effectively create jobs.

These numbers don’t lie. I’m not an ideologue. I like living in the fact based community.

So next time you’re trapped at Thanksgiving dinner with your republican relatives, show them these numbers and help disabuse them of the mythology that they’ve been spewing for all of these years.

Code Pink Has Reached Code Red

April 1, 2010 by Bitchy

They actually reached code red a long time ago.

Here’s some video of code red at a Karl Rove book signing in Los Angeles on Monday:

Much to my dismay, after watching this I had to side with Rove. It’s hard to throw in with angry, red faced lunatics no matter what they’re saying. It’s hard for me to throw in with them, but I fear that it’s not hard for everyone. You wanna know who posted this video on youtube? Well, several people posted it, but the copy that I embedded was posted by Michael Moore. Given that Michael Moore has been prone to this type of behavior, I took his posting of this video as an implicit endorsement of the behavior contained in this video.

In my opinion, condoning this type of behavior, implicitly or otherwise hurts the message. It turns the conversation away from the facts and moves the focus to the tactics. Karl Rove’s response to what code pink did, “…this goes to show the totalitarianism of the left.” was 100% correct. There’s no arguing against the point that he made, given what everyone witnessed. They managed to turn a calculating liar into a victim. Nice job code pink. Not only didn’t anyone hear what you have to say, but you managed to make anyone else that says it into a whacko.

They should have made an attempt at civilized discourse. Ask him a question and then politely wait for him to answer it before asking the next question. I’ve watched Karl Rove twist himself into a pretzel trying to “explain” the enormous amounts of evidence against him and the Bush administration. It’s not pretty, and he’s not very good at it. He does very well when confronted by angry people. As you saw in the video, he had to summarily dismiss the downing street memos. How much more effective would progressives have been if they then followed up by asking him about Lawrence Wilkerson’s account of the Colin Powell speech, making the case for the US to go into Iraq? And then a follow up question about General Eric Shinseki’s dismissal? How many sources do you think Karl Rove would have to dismiss before sounding like a jackass? Don’t you think that would have been a more effective approach? It would have made Karl Rove the subject of the reporting. What we ended up with was yet another story about crazy extremists.

It’s a slippery slope to extremism. People don’t start off as extremists. It’s something that happens slowly over time so that people don’t realize that they’re becoming radicalized. It starts by condoning crap like this.

Don’t let yourself fall into that trap. Republicans have boxed themselves in by doing the very same thing with the tea party racists. It’s not possible to speak out against the tea partiers while remaining silent about code pink without being a hypocrite.

You have to denounce this from the inside if you have any hope of stopping it. You don’t have to support everyone that agrees with you. So go out there and comment and denounce from the rational left! Let the right deal with their own crazy. If they dismantle it on their side, then good for us! If they don’t, we need to trust that cooler heads will prevail.