2010 | The Bitchy Pundit - Part 2

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?

I Whine Because You Blow

September 29, 2010 by Bitchy

In the past week, Joe Biden has joined the white house administration chorus in crapping on the democratic base. Here, watch;

Buck up? That sounds familiar. Hmmm…where have I heard that before? Oh right I heard it from Obama here. I’ve heard this enough from the administration to now be able to decisively say that these aren’t gaffes. This is a mystifying strategy. I don’t know what they’re trying to accomplish, but I can tell you that the result is a division in the democratic party.

This happened on MSNBC yesterday:

I wasn’t watching it because I wasn’t home, but I was checking twitter from my iPhone. My twitter feed exploded with anti-Cenk tweets. I had no idea what was going on, so I had to wait until I got home to catch up. I watched the clip and agreed with most of what Cenk said (although a less red-faced delivery might have been more appealing). I listened to Cenk’s show later (The Young Turks) and heard him say that he thought all of those tweets were a concerted effort to astroturf (sometimes right wing media outlets will tell their fans to pile on a specific left wing pundit on a specific day) him. They weren’t. They were tweeted by members of the democratic base that I follow.

These people are active democrats that buy into the idea that the health reform bill was “historic”. They buy into the white houses’ narrative that the administration has delivered on “70% of the promises made in the campaign, in twenty short months”. I suppose that’s one way to look at it, but you have to overlook a whole lot in order to maintain that point of view.

Was the health reform bill historic? No. Was the fact that something happened with health care legislation historic? Yes, but only in that, the last time we reformed health care was fourteen years ago. When something occurs that infrequently, it’s not unreasonable to refer to it as “historic”.

I don’t believe it was historic because it didn’t fundamentally change the system. We all still have to buy our health insurance from private companies, and there is still nothing place to prevent them from gauging us with obscene rate increases every year. I’m not saying it didn’t help some people out. I know that it did. I see comments and blogs from people that have been able to obtain health coverage for the first time in years, every single day. I thoroughly appreciate the difference this reform has made, for the small number of people that it’s helped.

But let’s be honest, this bill wasn’t much more than adequate. It was the bare minimum that could have been passed, and still labeled a “win” for Obama. As lacking as this bill is, there would still have been one way that I would have been satisfied with it – if the administration had actually fought to get the best thing they could, I could have championed this bill. But they clearly didn’t. Does anyone remember President Obama’s moving speech, strongly advocating for a public option? Yeah, me neither. Does anyone remember President Obama strongly advocating for a medicare buy in? Yeah, me neither. Does anyone remember seeing a single republican standing on the senate floor, reading the phone book in an effort to filibuster the passage of the bill? Yeah, me neither.

I could have accepted this crapfest of a health reform bill if you had tried and failed. You didn’t. Don’t tell me to buck up. Fuck you.

Same thing with financial reform. This administration didn’t do a goddamned thing to regulate the derivatives market, which is the thing that every economist agrees, is the root of our financial instability. They didn’t even try.

I will buck up when, and only when you don’t fuck up. And I’m not a whiner, a retard, or a vicious part of the professional left that is trying to undermine you. I’m trying to make you better. If you wanted an uninformed, sycophantic base, you should have run as a republican. Oh yeah, and fuck you!

Even with this split between democrats that need to believe, and democrats that need to think critically, I’m positive that one thing will happen – we will all collectively show up to vote. Active democrats don’t sit out elections, any more than active republicans do. You know who’s not going to show up? Everyone else. The people that turned out en masse to vote for change in 2008 will not be there for you this time. And if you don’t start to deliver meaningful change in the next two years, they’re not going to show up for you in 2012 either.

The sycophants in the democratic party will show up because they feel that you’ve given them enough change that they can stay on board. Disgruntled democrats will show up because we realize that you suck less than republicans. You’re wasting your time crapping on your base. We’re going to be there for you one way or another, but no one else will. You’ve disenfranchised and demoralized everyone else with your half assed legislative “victories”.

This administration sucks at politics if they can’t figure that out. Pointing at your base and saying, “A HA! This is your fault!” when you lose in November is stupid, and it won’t help you get your shit together for 2012. This strategy makes Obama a lot like Bush in that, both love pointing the finger at someone else when they fuck up.

I whine, because you blow. And my whining is not the root of your problems. You blowing is.

Did You Fall For It, Gays?

September 22, 2010 by Bitchy

Are you pissed at Obama for failing to repeal DADT? Maybe you blame Harry Reid? If you answered “yes” to either of those questions, you got played.

If you’re a regular reader of my blog, you know that I’m not a Harry Reid fan. You also know that I’m not an Obama apologist. After reading some of the reactions to the travesty yesterday, I felt compelled to go through how this happened.

Let me first start by saying that I viscerally wish that President Obama would come out of the closet already, and enthusiastically support gay rights in a demonstrable way. But intellectually, I feel that he would be hurting the gay cause if he did. As it was, this vote happened fairly quietly. Fox news and right wing radio weren’t hammering away at the issue. They were focused in rehabbing the nutbaggery that is Christine O’Donnell. Does anyone think they would have largely ignored DADT if Obama were out there audibly supporting its repeal? Let’s be honest here, anything that Obama comes out for becomes the epicenter of hate and controversy. I’m not saying that Obama shouldn’t take a stand on anything, for fear that he will start a political firestorm. I’m saying that given Obama’s pervasive and persistent weakness over the past twenty-one months, he made the right calculation in laying low on this one. In doing so, he increased Harry Reid’s (admittedly low) odds of making something good happen in the senate.

Here’s what went down yesterday; all forty republicans joined hands and created a filibuster. Two democrats joined them, but they were irrelevant since all forty republicans were united. As an aside, one of those two irrelevant democrats is going to get voted out of office in November. I say fuck you and good riddance, Blanche Lincoln. No one is going to remember you ten minutes after you’re gone. Anyway, back to yesterday’s vote. Republicans, and republicans alone blocked the repeal. Period. Every single one of them united to block the vote from taking place. Harry Reid (uncharacteristically) didn’t do anything wrong.

Actually, politically speaking he did make one mistake. He rolled the DREAM Act into the DADT bill. The DREAM Act creates a path to citizenship for certain illegal immigrants. Specifically, to illegal immigrants who have served in the US military for two years and minors who have been in the country for five years prior to the bills’ passage, and are obtaining high school and college diplomas. The DREAM Act is a bill written by Dick Durbin a year and a half ago, and it’s good for all of us. It’s good for all of us because it will help military recruitment and it will chip away at the skilled labor shortage in the US. Even in this crap ass economy, we don’t have the labor pool to match the jobs that are available. Our college graduation rate is going down, and we don’t have the skilled computer professionals that we need. As a recruiter, I do my best to hire a US citizen whenever I can. That hasn’t been as possible as one might think (even in the past year). I’m still having to process H1B visas for foreign workers. We need all the college grads we can get if we expect to hold our position in the world.

The DREAM Act is obviously a popular bill within the Latino community. I think that if Reid was good at playing politics, he would have called a vote on DREAM as a stand alone bill. This would force republicans to either filibuster it, thereby guaranteeing that the GOP wouldn’t receive a single Latino vote in the November elections, or passing it thereby undermining their SB 1070 rhetoric.

But he sucks at politics, so he combined them. This left Mitch McConnell with the opening to comically say that he would allow a vote on DADT if DREAM was removed from the bill. Oh, and he was going to buy every US citizen a pony. Make no mistake, Mitch McConnell was never going to allow this vote to take place. Democrats in the senate acquiesced to republicans 170 times on the health reform bill, only to receive zero republican votes. In fact, I can count the number of affirmative republican votes over the past twenty-one months on my hands! Mitch McConnell is Lucy with her football from the Peanuts cartoons. It’s a fucking joke anytime he says he will work with democrats “if”. So he wanted Harry Reid to throw one group under the bus in order to give another group rights they should have had all along? That’s a bullshit choice, and I’m glad that Reid didn’t cave into that crap.

To summarize, Harry Reid didn’t make any mistakes that would have changed the outcome yesterday. Don’t let Mitch McConnell tell you otherwise. This vote (as with every other vote) was, for Mitch McConnell, about making people hate Obama. Did you fall for it, gays?

There will theoretically be another attempt at a vote on this issue after the election, during the lame duck session. I suggest focusing your Obama/Reid ire on a target that deserves it; Scott Brown. Why do I single him out? Because he represents the bluest of states, where gay marriage is legal. He did not represent his constituents yesterday. We need to put a world of hurt and pressure on Scott Brown. And you should start putting pressure on the ladies of Maine, since they’re low hanging fruit.

My guess is that if we can peel off one single republican, Reid will get all of the democrats in line since Obama explicitly stated that he would repeal Don’t Ask Don’t Tell this year. Once republicans united, the two democrats that joined them were irrelevant so I’m guessing that Reid didn’t fight as hard for them as he would if he had a republican. We won’t know for sure, until we get a republican.

So you can misplace your anger with Obama, or you can do something constructive with that anger. Call everyone you know in Maine and Massachusetts. Start Facebook pages pledging to vote against Brown, Collins, and Snowe. Organize rallies and money bombs to raise money to run commercials in those states.

Don’t fall for the “hate Obama” ploy. Let’s work together to get er done!

You Got Roved, Karl

September 20, 2010 by Bitchy

I’ve never been of the belief that Karl Rove was a genius. I’ve always held the opinion that he was just inconceivably sleazy, on a level that no one could see coming. My opinions have all been upheld this week.

Before I get into the events of the past week, I want to go into how my opinion of Karl Rove as a sleazebag with average intelligence came to be. Karl Rove isn’t a brilliant strategist. He’s a street fighter. A strategist comes up with solutions and long term plans. Karl Rove has historically created chaos to remedy problems. He’s never actually created a strategy, beyond deflecting the problem in front of him at that moment, with no regard to long term consequences.

One of my favorite examples of Rove’s sleaziness goes back to when W was running for Governor of Texas. A few days before the election, Rove called the media to let them know that a bug was found at campaign headquarters. The media showed up in time to watch the FBI remove a bug from the Bush for Governor offices. This, naturally led voters to the assumption that Ann Richard’s (the wildly popular incumbent Governor) campaign had planted the bug. This swung the election in W’s favor. A few weeks after the election, the FBI issued a report that said that the battery on that bug had been depleted by 15 minutes at the time that they seized it. So in 15 minutes time, this bug was planted, discovered, and the media and the FBI got wind of it? Nice work, Karl. But was that genius, or the kind of sleaze that no rational person could have been prepared for?

Remember when Dan Rather was fired from CBS over his reporting on Bush’s questionable military service? I honestly don’t know how CBS missed the fact that the memo they had was a forgery. That was definitely their fuck up. What no one seemed to talk about, was the fact that the week after the story aired, they interviewed the secretary that typed the original memo. She said that the fake memo was identical to the one she had typed for her boss, Lieutenant Colonel Jerry Killian. How would that be possible, unless the forger had the original memos? That had Karl Rove’s fingerprints all over it. Okay, I’ll have him a little credit for genius on that one, but it was still 90% sleaze and 10% genius.

Now onto the events of the week. I’m sure you guys all heard the clips of Karl Rove referring to Christine O’Donnell as a nut, and pointing out that she is unelectable. Here it is, in case you missed it:

I especially love the part fifty seconds in, where Rove takes exception to O’Donnell baselessly lying about her opponents’ sexuality. Really Karl, you’re opposed to pulling any shit you can out of your ass in order to win? Since when?

But did you watch him bow his head to the very nutbags he created, after he got spanked by Michelle Malkin, Rush Limbaugh, and Sean Hannity?

Here’s Michelle “anchor baby” Malkin putting Rove on the sidewalk like yesterday’s trash:

Oh and here’s dumb little Sarah Barracuda pointing out that Karl Rove is an irrelevant relic. Just another part of the “machine” that she and her “real patriots” are fighting:

I like how she’s basically patting him on the head like a child, while telling him to go outside and play.

And here’s the nubbag herself, laughing at the mention of Karl Rove’s name:

How does it feel Karl, to be dressed down by an illiterate whack job? She thinks that un-factual is a word Karl. She used hillbilly English to mock you. Do you feel like an asshole yet?

An illiterate whack job that you empowered. Your brilliant “strategy” for creating a (HA!) permanent republican majority has brought you to this place where you’re being marginalized by the dumbest among us. You’re being Roved by the people that you assumed were puppets in your “brilliant” strategy to harness the wingnuts because you couldn’t win any other way.

Now watch him grab his ankles, after having been spanked:

They’re laughing at you, Karl. You coaxed them out of the shadows, and now they’re mocking you. Karma is a bitch, and you were an idiot if you didn’t see this happening.

Your legacy isn’t going to be one of a brilliant strategist. You were a one trick pony, whose only tactic was to anger, and then harness the anger of the least informed among us.

Few things make me as happy as watching you get what you deserve. Seriously, I’m almost orgasmic with joy when I watch you being mocked by the Frankensteins you created. And thank god for that, because when Christine O’Donnell outlaws masturbation, I will still have an alternate means with which to achieve my goal.

We Suck Less!

September 16, 2010 by Bitchy

In two short years, “Yes we can!” has devolved into “We suck less!”. The democratic party and liberal pundits seem to be overjoyed by this sorry state of affairs.

In case you hadn’t noticed, a whole slew of nutjob teabaggers won primaries on Tuesday, which means that everybody lost. Republicans lost because teabaggers can’t win general elections. Democrats lost because their only shot at avoiding an avalanche of lost congressional and senatorial seats, was to run against future occupants of Belleview. Americans lost because our options are between sucky and crazy. And most of all, Sharon Angle lost because she is no longer the biggest whackadoo running in the general election.

Everybody is talking about the Christine O’Donnell win in Delaware. In case you’re not up to speed on Christine O’Donnell, she’s running on an anti-masturbation platform. Yes, she believes that self-love is a sin of lust. And the most effective way for Christine O’Donnell to stop masturbation all across the country, is to make sure that we’re all within earshot of her voice at all times. Who can possibly feel lust through that kind of experience? Just to summarize; O’Donnell vehemently supports your right to pump a few rounds into someone for trying to steal your jacket, but pumping a load into a sock is crossing the line into immorality.

Democrats are beside themselves with joy over this “victory”. Victory? Really? This is a seat that Joe Biden held for thirty years, and the only thing that ensures that democrats won’t lose it, is running against a woman who is obsessed with America’s masturbatory habits? Wow, that is something to celebrate!

Personally, I would put down the champagne and begin an assessment of how this happened because not doing so has proven to be very dangerous in the past.

This is the road that republicans took. When you keep setting the bar lower and lower, you eventually find yourself defending your village idiot of a president as he’s taking your fundamental rights by seizing the power to warrantlessly wiretap anyone he wants. It doesn’t start off that grand. It starts slowly, by rejoicing a presidential victory while pretending that you didn’t just put a complete moron in the position of vice president. Then, your fervor for your party, combined with your plummeting expectations move you to elect a bigger idiot to the top job, despite the fact that he’s incapable of naming any world leaders. Never mind the fact that he’d failed at every business venture he ever engaged in. He’s leading your party, and you have low standards! By this point, you’ve supported two dumbfucks, given up your rights to privacy, support rendition of American citizens, revoked the fundamental right of habeas corpus, and are geared up to take away miranda rights. But you’re somehow still a believer in small government. The pump is now primed for you to vote for a 72 year old man with a history of cancer, whose running mate isn’t a fluent English speaker, despite the fact that she’d never set foot outside of the United States.

Oh yes, settling for something that merely sucks less has already proven to be a very bad choice. But it’s one that despite historical outcome, registered democrats are now happy to make. Keep celebrating that Harry Reid sucks less than Sharon Angle, and that whoever the fucking democratic senatorial candidate in Delaware is, he sucks less than Christine O’Donnell. See where that gets you. By the next election, democrats will only have a shot at winning if they’re running against anti-prenatal care candidates.

I’m going to hold my nose and vote in November, and I can explain why in two words:

Speaker Boehner.

Yes democrats, you suck less. Congrats on this honorable achievement.

The Power Of Obtuse

September 15, 2010 by Bitchy

I’m watching one tea party nutbag after another, kick the GOPs asses in primary races across the country, and I can’t help but wonder what’s wrong with my progressive brethren? How is it possible that the most obtuse members of our society are having an impact on our elections, when no one else is?

It’s true that these teabag candidates are very likely to get crushed in the general elections, but they’re moving the republican party to dizzying heights of nutbaggery in the process. They’re forcing republican candidates to traverse into a landscape of crazy that they would never otherwise foray into. Look at what John McCain turned into as a result of having to run against JD Hayworth. He went from co-sponsoring a fairly rational immigration reform bill, to “build the dang fence”! The teabaggers are fracturing republicans, but moving them crazy right in the process.

Teabaggers have probably broken the republican party irrepably. Democrats will likely take every seat in which they’re running against a teabagger. But is that any reason to rejoice? YAY, we’re getting another worthless corporatist democrat instead of a batchit crazy teabagger that wants to change the fourteenth amendment! Bust out the champagne!

Why isn’t there a progressive movement fracturing the democratic party? Is it that progressives don’t think that the democratic party needs fracturing? That can’t be the case. If it were, there would be more voter enthusiasm by registered democrats this year.

No, we’re not happy with the party. We’re not happy with the anemic health insurance reform, the anemic financial reform, and the never ending Afghanistan situation so we’re just not bothering to show up to vote. But it didn’t have to be this way.

If only we would take a page from the teabagger’s book, we’d have some candidates on the ballot to get excited about. Sure, we came close to primarying out Blanche Lincoln in Arkansas, but we failed. And, that was the only one! Where is the widespread movement? Where is the Dennis Kucinich faction of the democratic party? Why aren’t we pushing democrats back to the left, or even left of center?

Why is it that progressives can’t accomplish what the abject morons in the tea party are accomplishing? Let’s be honest here – we’ve all seen the signs and the videos from tea party rallies. These people are fucking idiots! They don’t know shit about shit. If you put a gun to any of their heads, they wouldn’t be able to tell you how many articles there are in the constitution. I’m certain of this, because they seem to be under the impression that the constitution is a document that empowers the people. It’s not. There are seven articles in the constitution, and each article enumerates powers for different factions of the government. The peoples’ rights aren’t addressed until the amendments. There are twenty-seven of those, in case you were wondering teabaggers! They are the most obtuse among us and yet, I have to give them some props for getting shit done.

I will admit that mocking the “youth in Asia will kill your grandmother” and “don’t take my rights, I’m still useing them” signs is all sorts of fun. It’s fun until you realize that the embarrassment doesn’t lie with the dumbfuck holding the sign, it lies with us. That dumbfuck is doing more to shape politics in America than the rest of us are (well, not me – I’m trying to shame you into action with this blog!), and that should embarrass you. It embarrasses me.

We need to stop underestimating the power that a group of the most obtuse Americans have garnered, and learn from them. Yes, you read that right. I said learn from the dumbfucks.

Don’t write off the obtuse. They’re proving to be a powerful force in America.