October, 2010 | The Bitchy Pundit

Speaker Boehner, Darrell Issa, And Obama’s 2nd Term

October 28, 2010 by Bitchy

These things are intertwined in a significant way beyond just causing some Americans grief. I am finally ready to accept that republicans are going to take the house on Tuesday. Their strategy of demonizing Obama has worked in getting their whack job base of 25% of Americans fired up to vote. Their strategy of stalling every fucking piece of legislation that could hasten our recovery has succeeded in making independents apathetic. And Obama’s lack of courage has succeeded in demoralizing his base. The two ugliest words in the English language “Speaker Boehner”, are about to become a reality. And yes, I did just vomit in my mouth a little as I typed that.

I believe that this victory is going to set off a chain of events that will virtually guarantee that Obama secures a second term.

The first thing that will happen is that republicans will finally share the blame for anything that happens (or doesn’t) over the next two years. They can keep killing job creation programs, but they will take some of the blame for the lack of jobs.

The next thing that will happen is that republicans are going to start a procedural witch hunt against Obama. Congressman Darrell Issa, a republican back bencher from southern California is the ranking member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. He has promised us that he will subpoena the shit out of the administration in an effort to crucify them.

A little background on Darrell Issa; he’s not a back bencher by design. He’s a back bencher because he’s an incompetent joker. Seriously, follow his tweets – they’re comical. He’s the guy that orchestrated the recall of Governor Gray Davis in 2003. His plan was to swoop in and steal the Governorship of California for himself. But moron didn’t count on the Terminator coming in and trumping Issa’s fortune with fame. So Issa has been a back bench sitting schmuck that has been trying (unsuccessfully) to force himself in the game for years. I don’t believe that he’s fundamentally a whack job, but he’s been playing it up for the crazies for the past few years. He didn’t even bother to try and put together a run for governor this year, so he has to, on some level, know that he’s never going to get further than where he is right now.

Darrell Issa is an attention starved political hack who will most definitely deliver on his promise to subpoena the shit out of Obama, just to grab some attention for himself and try and elevate himself in his party. And as with everything Darell Issa touches, this will turn to shit for the republicans.

Right now, most Americans don’t know why the unemployment rate is high. They’re clueless about the republican strategy to stall and block every goddamned thing on Obama’s agenda. All they know is that the economy isn’t getting better. Issa’s strategy will shine a light on what’s going on in our political system because nothing gets people’s attention like presidential subpoenas.

You wanna know what else is going to happen? Americans are going to rally behind Obama, because no one likes a bully. That’s not an opinion. We have historical precedent from the Clinton years. During the impeachment proceedings, Bill Clinton’s approval jumped ten points to 73%, the highest approval rating of his presidency.

Read me now and quote me later; a congressional witch hunt of President Obama will make him one of the most wildly popular presidents in history.

Why am I so confident? I have two reasons; Obama is generally very likable as a person and, he hasn’t actually done anything offensive. Because he has an easy going and friendly demeanor, people want to like him. He’s just a naturally charismatic person. He would have to do something pretty offensive in order to reverse peoples natural predisposition to liking him. He hasn’t done that, and he won’t because he’s so measured and cautious. At worst, Obama is utterly ineffective. He’s nowhere near offensive. Sure, he hasn’t made a whole lot of things happen that he could have, but he also hasn’t precipitated our problems. He’s just kind of weak.

Polls consistently show that Americans still blame W for our current troubles. This is not going to change. It definitely won’t change if Americans have to watch him being bullied by congressional republicans.

Right now, the biggest threat to Obama’s reelection is Mike Bloomberg. He’s going to run as a third party candidate. My bet is that Bloomberg will claim more votes than any other third party candidate ever has. He’s going to blow Ross Perot’s 18.9% of the vote out of the water. I believe that he will get a significant chunk of the independent vote, as well as siphoning off both republican and democratic voters. I’m pretty sure that he will take more democrats than republicans, given his recent stance on gay marriage.

But when the bullying factor is taken into account, I believe that democrats and independents will rally around Obama, ineffective or not.

This strategy that republicans have employed for the past two years is going to explode in their faces in 2012. And they’re too stupid to realize it.

They have bullies for sixteen long years now. During that time, they’ve whittled their supporters down further and further. The remaining 25% of diehards will be all they have left soon enough.

The sunny optimist in me hopes that becoming a regional southern party will eventually force republicans to change their strategy, and actually try to govern. I know, I know…I’m living in a fantasy world.

On a positive note, we definitely won’t be living with the second most ugly words in the English language, “Majority Leader McConnell”. Republicans will not be taking the senate. There really is a bright spot in every black cloud, if you just look hard enough!

Bitchy’s First Political Ad

October 13, 2010 by Bitchy

I hope you guys like it.

I felt compelled to make it because I’m really disturbed by the amount of money that Meg Whitman has shelled out to buy this election.

I’m fairly certain that someone that spends nearly $200,000,000 of their own money to obtain a job that pays $175,000 per year isn’t going to be looking out for the constituency in the state of California. The math here simply doesn’t make sense.

Additionally, I really think that it says something about a candidate when they can’t raise the money they need to win an election. If she can’t manage to garner the contributions she needs to put up a good fight against Jerry Brown, how is she going to manage the state of California? She was on the board of Goldman Sachs, for gods sake. She’s gotten tons of money from her rich friends and yet, she still has to pony up thirty seven times the amount of money that an average winning senate costs? This whole situation is nothing but stinky. Nothing about this woman indicates that she’s in any way ready to manage the world’s eighth largest economy.

Please, please, please spread the word! California will not fare well if Megalomaniac manages to buy the governorship.

Here’s the link if you want to (PLEASE) share the video;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmUJc3tVXUw

Jerks, Freeloaders And Ingrates

October 7, 2010October 6, 2010 by Bitchy

That’s what the Cranicks of Obion, Tennessee are according to Kevin Williamson of The National Review. You see, their house burned down while firefighters watched a few days ago. Why? Because they didn’t pay their annual fee of $75 to the fire department from a neighboring town in order to be eligible for services from that fire department.

Kevin Williamson isn’t alone in his assessment of the Cranick’s fate. Take a look at the charming comments here.

I think that most Americans agree that this is an asshole point of view. And most of the opinions on the web express moral outrage over what happened here, so we can take comfort in knowing that the assholes are outnumbered by the rest of us. But I can’t just leave my thoughts at “they’re just assholes”. It’s more than that. They’re idiots. Sure if you’re mean enough, you can take modicum of twisted satisfaction from the belief that these deadbeats got what they deserved. But what about everyone else? What about the neighborhood that now has a burned out house on the block, thereby lowering everyone’s property value? What about the kids? Did they get what they deserved? What about the bank that holds the mortgage on a home that is most definitely going to go into foreclosure over this? What about the community that now has more homeless people living in it? Does being panhandled by a ten year old child while getting your morning coffee sound beneficial to anyone?

The “mean girls” of the world are completely incapable of thinking their meanness through. They take too much satisfaction from being mean to put any thought into the long term effects of their nasty utopia.

But they’re fucking morons. I don’t want to waste any more time talking about them. Let’s talk about the far left liberals who see this incident as proof that privatization doesn’t work. They’re wrong. There was no corporation involved here. The fire department involved in this incident was a neighboring town’s fire department; i.e. a government entity.

Let’s be clear about what happened here; a government agency sat back and watched a family’s home burn down because that family didn’t pay the annual fee that would have given them access to that fire department’s services. Don’t worry, I’m not getting all “pro corporate” on you. I’m just trying to get the facts straight here. This was a failure of government. Two governments, to be exact. The local government in Obion failed to create the infrastructure that would ensure fire response in their town. The South Fulton government failed, when they instructed their fire department to sit back and callously watch as someone’s house burned down to the ground.

Here’s the most absurd part of this whole thing – the local representatives for Obion (all republicans) voted down a 13 cent property tax increase to create a fire department for Obion! This was bad government. And this is why so many people believe that government is bad.

This tragedy wasn’t a result of privatization gone wrong. And if you’re using it to make that point, you’re creating a false argument. Do I support the privatization of community services? Fuck no, I’m not an idiot.

This story does demonstrate why that won’t work. The Cranik’s failure to pay the annual fee of $75 (I’ve spent more than that on lunch!) demonstrates that voluntary fees for these types of services don’t work. They need to be paid for through mandatory taxation. Who among us hasn’t made choices about what we cut from our monthly expenses when times are tough? Who among us hasn’t dropped health insurance at one time or another because we simply couldn’t afford it? Haven’t we all taken that gamble before? You need to eat every day, so that’s not an expense that can be cut. You need a roof over your head, so that’s not an expense that can be cut. So when you look for expenses that can be eliminated, it’s human nature to take a gamble with expenses that don’t appear to be an immediate need. Don’t be so fucking judgmental with other people, because I know you’ve done it yourself.

You can’t do that with taxes. They’re taken out before you can even make those decisions. It’s out of your hands, so the fire department will put out the fire in your house. And these services are cheaper if every single member of the community pays in.

I have no idea how the South Fulton fire department came up with that $75 per household figure, but it sounds rather arbitrary to me. What if only 50% of Obion residents paid in? Would it still cost South Fulton $75 per household to respond to Obion fires? What if 100% of Obion residents paid in? Would it cost less than $75 per household? Who the hell knows. I do know that they had already used resources to arrive at the scene, so not putting out the fire before it spread was just inane.

The house shouldn’t have burned down while the people that could have stopped it watched. Most reasonable people can agree on that. How to prevent it from happening in the future shouldn’t be approached from an ideological perspective. It should be based on reasonable solutions. Two local governments failed. That doesn’t mean that government sucks (I’m talking to you, intellectually lazy conservatives and teabaggers). It means that you need to improve the government because there is no more efficient way to run fire departments, than to centralize through one entity. The homeowners failed, but this service should never have been provided on the basis of a voluntary “fee”. I don’t know why or how some people can look at a “fee” as something that’s better than a tax. You need a fucking fire department!

Personally, I think that fire departments should be run on a state level with partnerships on the county level. It seems to me that centralizing shared services would lower the overall cost. And the taxes to pay for fire departments should be collected on a state level. This ensures that you have an even per capita contribution and allocation. But that’s just my opinion, and I’m certainly not convinced that my way is the best way to do it. Maybe there are advantages to having each municipality run their own fire departments. That’s a debate I’m happy to have. But I will not entertain the “government = bad, so no government = good” bullshit. That’s just stupid and lazy.

If you don’t believe that good government is possible, then you ensure that you will never get good government.

The War Within

October 6, 2010 by Bitchy

I was surprised by how the various factions of the media handled the Sharron Angle tape that leaked over the weekend. Everybody seemed to focus in on her. Her disdain for the republican “establishment”, her willingness to make a back room deal to get the tea party candidate out of the race, and lastly, her admission that she may not win.

Personally, I didn’t think that any of that was the actual story here. Maybe because I don’t find Sharron Angle all that interesting. She’s just another run of the mill nasty bitch. She’s not the story here. But before I get to the story, I do want to point out one thing about her; she’s a hypocrite of the largest magnitude. In the tape, she accuses republicans of losing “their principles”. How rich, since this stupid bitch has spent every single day since she won the republican primary, back peddling on every fucking thing she stood for before winning the primary.

Enough of the dumb bitch. Here’s what I think the story really is. Here’s a lovely anti-Angle web video that highlights the portion of the tape that I found interesting;

It’s not her willingness to make back room deals that I find most interesting. She’s a politician, and a nasty one at that. Back room dealing is par for the course when you have that combination. It’s her easy access to Jim DeMint that fascinates me.

Jim DeMint is actively supporting the tea party nutbags, much to Mitch McConnell’s dismay. There is a war going on within the republican establishment, and no one is talking about it. Everyone is focused in on how the teabaggers are tearing the republican electorate apart. I think that the more interesting battle is happening among republican party elders. I haven’t seen one single shred of reporting on the DeMint/McConnell battle, but I know there’s one going on.

We all heard about how unhappy McConnell was when Rand Paul beat out his hand picked candidate for Jim Bunning’s open senate seat in Kentucky. But why didn’t anyone dig deeper? Why didn’t anyone talk about the strong support that Paul got from DeMint? Why didn’t anyone do a little digging into the relationship between McConnell and DeMint? Does the media think that party infighting doesn’t make for salacious news? I honestly don’t know why the media isn’t reporting on this. I can’t even throw out a conspiratorial guess.

And because they’re not reporting on this, I don’t know anything. This post will be made up almost entirely of conjecture and assumption (something I’m not generally fond of basing a post or an opinion on). But something is definitely happening within the republican establishment. They’re not as in sync as they would have us believe.

What is Jim DeMint’s problem with the current makeup of the republican party? Why is he looking to shift it? What are his issues with McConnell’s hand picked candidates? Is he just making a power play? Is he enamored with the tea party, purely out of self interest or does he have issues with the current establishment? I say “current” establishment because with the exception of Christine O’Donnell, all of the teabaggers that are running have embraced the establishment and are eager to walk among them. Does DeMint hope that McConnell won’t be able to control them and put them in line? Or is he just trying to boost republican populist cred with the teabaggers, all the while intending to work with McConnell to whip them into shape? If that’s his plan, it doesn’t appear that McConnell is in on it.

Anyway, I want to know what the story is with the infighting! Why won’t anyone look into this?

I’m curious as both a rubbernecker, and as an amateur strategist. I believe that this infighting may be the republicans’ achilles heel.

Will somebody please, for the love of god, go out there and report?

The Other Big C

October 1, 2010 by Bitchy

I’m talking about Sharon Angle. She’s a cunt. I hate to use that word, but the English language doesn’t contain another, more loathsome word that I can use in order to be more accurate, so I had to settle for cunt.

She’s not just crazy, she’s a mean, nasty cunt. Everything she says when she’s not self-censoring, is complete bile.

Remember this golden oldie?

Yes Americans, your problem is that you’re just fucking lazy! You’re lazy and shameless. And Sharon Angle’s aim is to stop enabling you! Sure, we’ve always had unemployment insurance (much to her dismay) but in 2008, eight million of you just up and decided that you were going to take advantage of the unemployment insurance lavishness and give up the jobs you had. Never mind the fact that those jobs paid exponentially more than what unemployment insurance was paying you. Your laziness finally overrode your…well…I’m not sure what Sharon Angle thinks it overrode, since you’re all worthless leaches. I’m not sure what it is that she thinks kept you working for all of those years, but I’m certain that she doesn’t attribute it to anything good. There’s nothing good about you, fucking lazy bastards!

If Sharon Angle is right, you know what else we need to end? Health insurance. Because having health insurance will obviously entice you to get cancer! You’re nothing but a lazy, shameless abuser of the system so it stands to reason that you will get cancer, just to bleed Sharon Angle dry of every penny she has!

I sarcastically made that point last year, when I initially heard her remarks regarding the unemployed. But as Stephen Colbert has discovered, by looking at his significantly high percentage of republican viewers, it’s hard to parody the absurd. And here’s another gem from a few months ago that paralleled my “sarcasm”.

Yeah! Fuck the babies! Unless of course, you’re even thinking about aborting your rapist’s baby. In that instance, Sharon must step in to make sure that you don’t cruelly terminate that poor life. But once she’s done taking your free will away from you, you’re on your own if you need prenatal care. Fuck you, you leach!

Sharon, I don’t think that you fundamentally understand how insurance works. Let me explain it to you, you stupid bitch; we all get insurance so that we can pool risk. We all put money in, and then when one of us needs medical care, we take money out. If we all started deciding whose medical needs we’re unwilling to pay for, we end up with a pool that’s too shallow to meet anyone’s needs.

For instance Sharon, I’m not willing to pay for your hysterectomy and ongoing hormone therapy treatments. You were irresponsible when you decided that getting old was a good idea. You can do whatever the fuck you want with your beard; shave it, wax it, groom it and let it grow long, I don’t care. I’m just not paying to prevent you from having it. Fuck you, I’m not paying for that. And your husbands penis maintenance is out too. I’m not paying for the viagra that he needs, just to fuck you, and I don’t give a damned about any kind of prostate or testicular cancer he may get. Again, he just needs to be more responsible and avoid those things. I don’t have penis maintenance woes, so I shouldn’t have to pay for anyone else’s.

Honestly, this woman is so mean that it’s made her irrational.

But she’s not the only one. Did you see this charming speech by Mike Huckabee?

He’s supposed to be the pious theologian in the republican party? I have two main issues with Huckabee; he’s an idiot, and he’s too mean to ever actually know God.

Let’s start with the stupidity. His analogy is ridiculous. It’s predicated on the belief that if you’re sick, you’re dead. A better analogy would have been if you tried to buy life insurance on someone that passed away yesterday. The point of not letting insurance companies deny you for a pre-existing condition, is to make sure that you don’t die! Huckabee’s premise is that you’re as good as dead. Fucking asshole. Really, he’s just a giant asshole.

I don’t know which God he prays to, but I’m not familiar with any religious text that advocates for just letting the sick die, because they would cost too much if we didn’t.

These people are so fucking viscerally mean, that they can’t think straight. It’s not that they’re looking out for themselves. They’re not. They’re undermining their own self interest. They’re blinded by their nastiness. A person that is protecting their own self interest would understand that giving everyone access to affordable health care is vital to our country’s livelihood. Healthy people can work. They can contribute to our GDP. They can pay taxes. If they’re not being bankrupted by medical bills, they can buy homes which makes all of the homes around theirs worth more. This isn’t some convoluted argument, designed to confuse people. This is simple logic that should be obvious to everyone. Everyone that isn’t mean spirited, that is.

Teabaggers and republicans that perpetually believe that their pockets are being picked by the government in order to help other people are fundamentally mean. And that kind of mean supercedes ones ability to truly look out for themselves. Nobody is picking your pocket, because whatever is in your pocket was in some part placed there, on the backs of others. You didn’t make it on your own, regardless of how much you kid yourself. If you went to public school, used a road, ever drank tap water, or did anything in this country, it’s because we all paid for it together. Tax dollars flow from you, and tax dollars flow to you. Get a grip, haters.

I’m not a bleeding heart liberal. I’m the smart kind of capitalist. I understand that keeping people healthy costs a fraction of what dealing with them once they’re sick does.

Can you tell how bitchy these damned people make me?