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Year: 2011

The B-Team

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Remember my plea to sane republicans a couple of weeks ago? You know, when I begged them to speak up and drown out the crazies that are entering the republican primaries for the presidential election? Well, my sunny optimism has been extinguished.

It happened when Obama announced that Bin Laden was dead. Once that happened, Obama’s chances of not winning reelection dropped to roughly 5%. In my opinion, the only thing that will prevent Obama from getting a second term, is if the economy collapses before the election. Even this current state of painfully slow recovery won’t harm his chances of reelection. Short of a total economic meltdown, he’s going to serve four more years and republicans know it.

No republican operative with half a brain, can possibly assume otherwise. And my guess is that they won’t even bother putting forth a serious candidate because it’s a losing battle. Ronald Reagan failed to secure the republican nomination twice before he finally succeeded in 1980. Times have changed. I don’t believe it’s possible for a two time loser to take a third stab and succeed anymore. Our culture has changed. Once the stink of “loser” is on you, it’s almost impossible to wash it off. I can’t imagine that republican operatives are going to set up a serious candidate to lose.

In fact, I’d be surprised if Mitt Romney actually went through with a run this time around. He’s already lost a primary bid once. One more defeat, and his political career is done.

Sadly, this is going to be a republican primary of freaks from the fringe. They’re too stupid and ideological to realize that Obama is unbeatable. We’re going to be subjected to Michelle Bachman (I’m positive she’s going to run) and Rick Santorum’s batshit craziness for the next year. Yippee for America! It’s going to be 1995 all over again but much crazier since republican primary voters are significantly more radical than they were in 1995. They won’t all be insane, but the nonwhackos are going to be B-list players. Truthfully, I don’t know if the republican party has any A-list players left, but I know that they won’t make much of an effort to find one until 2016.

Newt is DOA. My prediction is that he’s out of the race by July. He shot himself in both feet and both knees when he prematurely attacked Paul Ryan’s plan to shit on the elderly. He should have waited ninety days to do that. But since he’s a complete idiot, his bad timing has him getting punched harder from the right than from the left. Most republicans have turned on Newt, which means that his ability to raise money is gone.

I have to say that Newt and Trump have been the biggest morons in this whole thing. Neither of them ever really expected to be president. They were going for either attention (Trump) or money (Newt). But they both damaged their brands so badly that they won’t be president, and won’t get any more money or attention.

I don’t believe that Sarah Palin is going to get into the presidential clown car. I never did. Not being in office is entirely too lucrative for her. But since Bachman is very likely to go in, we didn’t exactly dodge the “dim witted, hot but crazy” bullet.

My hypothesis won’t take long to prove or disprove. We’ll know if republicans are serious by August. If they don’t have a serious candidate in the race by then, they never will. And all you have to do is follow the money to know how it’s all going to turn out. The corporate campaign donations for the fourth quarter of this year will say it all. If the money is predominantly going to Obama, then it’s done. Don’t get me wrong, I’m positive that corporate America will generously show their love to congressional and senatorial republican candidates. But they’re going to hedge their bets by stuffing Obama’s coffers if they believe he can’t be beaten.

This republican primary season is going to be a clown parade that makes The Jim Rose Circus look like a Disney movie. But the worst part of this isn’t the assault on our dignity and intellect. The worst part is how fucking relaxed Obama is. He knows that he’s untouchable, which is historically the worst kind of president. I like my politicians scared. Scared of the repercussions that come with fucking me. Obama clearly isn’t scared, which is bad for all of us. He’s got the confidence that comes with knowing that the American people have nowhere to go.

If he were the type of president that actually had an agenda that he felt passionate about, now would be the time to flex his muscles. It’s too soon after the Bin Laden killing to tell if he’s going to go in that direction. The optimist in me hopes that he will leverage his political capitol to do some good, but the pragmatic side of me doesn’t see that happening.

I think that we’re going to get more political theater from Obama. I believe that he’s going to continue playing good cop, while perpetually being defeated by the bad cops. This debt ceiling issue is a pretty telling sign of what we can expect. Everyone knows that the debt ceiling will be raised. Republicans can’t block it because their Wall Street benefactors won’t allow it. Republicans are literally impotent to block the raising of the debt ceiling. And yet we’re going to see “concessions” in the form of billions of dollars in budget cuts that hurt the middle class  coming from democrats. It’s all going to be bullshit designed to make you think that democrats are well meaning, but impotent to stop it. Sound familiar? And if you fall for it, you’ll have the gratification of being on the “good team”, but you won’t have anything else.

The republican circus will be fun to watch, there’s no doubt about that. But if you’re a democrat that’s actually paying attention, fun is the only gratification that you’ll get out of it. If you’re like me, the negative ramifications of having a president with no fear of losing the next election will temper any glee that you may feel.

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Something In The Air

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I’ve been reading articles and polls on President Obama’s rating bump since Bin Laden was killed. He’s gotten a ten point increase in his approval rating as a result of the killing, putting him at around a 56% approval. Most of that bump comes from republicans and independents, which isn’t surprising since most democrats have largely stuck with Obama all along.

I thought a ten point bump was oddly low, even though most pundits expected that he would get “as much as a ten point bump in approval”. Why do I find it odd?

Because I looked at Bush’s approval ratings. Prior to 9/11, Bush’s approval was hovering in the low to mid 50s. On September 12, 2001, his approval rating shot up to nearly 90%. In hindsight, this is fairly shocking since Bush was largely absent that day. He was busy flying from Florida, to Louisiana, to fucking Nebraska. This, after dicking around at an elementary school for a full twenty minutes after the initial attack. America needed a daddy that day, and our president wasn’t there. Rudy Guiliani was going to have to fill that role until Bush could get his shit together at 8:35 that night. But Americans were too shocked to notice all of that so when he finally decided to be a fucking leader, we were happy he was there. We were like kids with absent, deadbeat dads; grateful that he showed up, and happy to forgive the abandonment of the years between appearances. And we showed our gratitude with a 90% approval rating.

Fast forward to nearly ten years later to Obama. He finally avenges 9/11 by killing the mastermind behind the events of that day, and we only approve of him to the tune of 56%. What the fuck? Why did the guy that was merely in office at the time do so much better than the guy who did something about it did? It doesn’t make sense. We’re America. We fucking love it when the belief in our God given superiority is on validated. We shot Bin Laden in the head, and gave Pakistan a heartfelt “fuck you” by not telling them that we were going to do it. It really doesn’t get much more badass than that.

So what’s the problem? Is Obama just the shittiest president we’ve ever seen? Hardly! Regular readers of this blog know that I’m no cheerleader for Obama, and I’m definitely not an apologist for him either. I don’t think that this comparatively lackluster approval has much to do with Obama, anymore than I thought the Bush 9/11 bump had to do with Bush. I believe this is all about Americans realizing that our government isn’t working for us anymore.

When Bush took office, we had just come off eight years of relative comfort and prosperity. Granted, it was all built on a house of cards, but we felt prosperous. We felt so prosperous that we had the luxury of talking about a presidential blow job for two years. Americans like to bathe themselves in utterly irrelevant bullshit, only when important things aren’t happening. Bullshit is fun when you don’t really have a care in the world. Trump’s disappearance from the news this week is proof of that. We were inundated with birther and afterbirther bullshit, until Bin Laden was killed. Something important happened, and we stopped caring about the bullshit (for a while, anyway). Bush benefited greatly from the prosperous America that he inherited.

But during the course of Bush’s eight years in office, that illusion of prosperity melted away. In the past ten years, the bottom 60% of workers in America have received a 1% salary increase while the cost of gas, milk, and health insurance have doubled. And that 1% increase is achieved by working longer hours. Being American is just getting fucking harder, and everyone knows it. Americans are getting angrier every day. We saw it in the town halls during the health reform debate. We’re seeing it in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Indiana in regard to collective bargaining rights. We’re again seeing it all across the country in town halls, where Americans are professing their adamance about keeping medicare in tact and instead, insisting that we raise taxes on the rich.

Something palpable is in the air in America. Americans might not exactly know why they’re getting screwed, or exactly how they’re getting screwed, but they’re not confused about the fact that they’re getting screwed.

In my opinion, this is a really good thing. It’s the start of something. The sunny optimist wants to believe that this is the start of taking our government back (sorry to use the teabagger matra, but I have to). The shitty and dysfunctional government that we have didn’t happen to us, it happened because of us. It happened through decades of ignorance and apathy on the part of the American people. When we don’t pay attention to what the government is doing, they get to rob us blind. And they do it with our tacit permission. And when Americans start noticing that things are shitty, our politicians misdirect our anger toward gays, immigrants, the elderly, international terrorist bogeymen, or the other party. They do this successfully, because we’re not paying close attention.

I want to believe that we’re in the early stages of paying attention. If my sunny optimistic vision for America comes to pass, it will require traveling a long long road. We’re at the first step of this road; deeply rooted discontentment.

This blog is largely about the next step in getting where we need to go. We need to disabuse ourselves of the notion that our political party are the good guys, and the other party are the bad guys. As a party loyalist, you are most susceptible to misdirection. You will always be rewarded for your blind loyalty with fewer opportunities to succeed in America. The George W Bushes will not keep you safe, and your loyalty to them will always be rewarded by redistributing your wages to the likes of Haliburton. The Barack Obamas will not give you healthcare at a reasonable cost. They will always divert trillions of your dollars to pharmaceutical and insurance companies by making shady backroom deals. Your blind loyalty will make you cheer them while they do it. You’ll get so swept up in team loyalty, that you will accept the notion that this was the best they could do, despite the fact that your own lying eyes never saw so much as one fiery speech supporting the public option that you really wanted. Your party loyalty is crippling your ability to see the actual solution to America’s problems.

Which brings me to the next step. Our elections shouldn’t be about candidates or parties. Our focus should be on changing the system. We’re never going to get good government if we don’t get the money out of the system. We need to be focusing on getting publicly financed campaigns for every seat in every state in the country. We need to organize to get ballot measures on the books in every state. Most people don’t realize that we have this option in America. Our congressmen aren’t the only people that can pass laws. We have that power too. All we need to do is get organized and collect signatures to put a measure on the ballot in every state. We need to be talking about publicly financed elections all the time. We need to get the word out. Everything else is just a bullshit distraction designed to confuse you about the definition of who “us” against “them” are. It’s not about “us” democrats versus “them” republicans (or vice versa). It’s about “us” earners versus “them” corporations.

We will never get good representation as long as that representation is dependent on money that comes from interests that are contrary to your own. I don’t care which party you identify with because this holds true for both sides. Republicans have held onto their loyalty for thirty years despite the fact that their party has done exactly nothing for them during that period. Democrats are happy for the occasional crumb they’re thrown once every decade or so, pretending like this loyalty won’t land them in the same boat republicans have been cruising in for decades.

Stop kidding yourselves. There’s something in the air in America. As politically active and aware people, don’t waste this opportunity by talking about party bullshit. Talk to your friends and family about what the real issue is; the corporate takeover of our government. We need to spread the word and channel this anger toward meaningful reform of our whole system.

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Oddly Ambivalent

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This describes my feelings (or lack thereof) about the Bin Laden killing on Sunday. On Monday I chalked up my inexplicable numbness to shock, but I find myself at a loss to explain my lack of strong emotions three days later.

I’ve been reading and watching the reactions of Americans across the country for the past three days, and I find myself reacting to the reactions more than I do to the event itself. I suppose this has helped me to discover what I know I don’t feel.

I don’t feel compelled to condemn those who celebrate. I especially don’t feel the need to condemn the celebratory mood of Americans that were directly affected on 9/11. If you lost a family member or worse (in my opinion), have to live with the memory of watching people jump out of the twin towers, I don’t feel the right to deny you the satisfaction or healing that this may give you. Who the fuck am I to judge your pain?

I don’t feel an overwhelming sense of joy either. I don’t feel compelled to celebrate Bin Laden’s death. I also don’t feel a moral superiority over anyone that is celebrating. I don’t feel the need to diminish anyone else’s feelings with a pompous tweet or Facebook update designed to display my moral or humanitarian superiority.

Here’s the really weird one; I don’t feel compelled to use this event as a political tool. I don’t feel like lashing out at W (if someone can explain that one to me, I’d be eternally grateful). He was incompetent and worthless. We already knew that because there’s a mound of evidence proving it. George W Bush is a fucking jackass that ruined everything he ever touched, but I don’t feel like piling this failure on top of a mound that’s already taller than twin towers will accomplish anything new.

Conversely, I do feel angry when I hear anyone giving Bush credit for Bin Laden’s demise. He doesn’t deserve an ounce of credit, and telling me that he does is an assault on reason and logic. And assaulting reason and logic makes me mad. I will concede that it’s inconceivable to assert that nothing that happened during Bush’s tenure, led to the events of Sunday night. That simply doesn’t make sense. Everything that led to Bin Laden’s demise couldn’t possible have started after January 20, 2009. That’s just stupid. And if you believe this to be true, you’re unspeakably stupid. But I do know that any valuable information that was collected during Bush’s tenure, was never leveraged by the Bush administration to get the job done. We’ve seen a long history of the Bush administration’s manipulation, misunderstanding, and misuse of intelligence gathering. Bush didn’t get Bin Laden because he didn’t care to, and because he was incapable of doing it. Period. The facts speak for themselves; Bush didn’t get it done. With all that said, I’m more angry over the assault on my intelligence than I am the actual fake credit being given to Bush.

I do feel angry when people try and diminish or dismiss President Obama’s accomplishment here. It really takes a special kind of asshole to do that. You really have to be a little dead inside to be wound so tightly into a partisan knot. When your “team” mentality supersedes any kind genuine, visceral emotion, you’re just fucked up beyond what I can comprehend. I honestly don’t believe that I would have negated the very same accomplishment if it were Bush that had gotten it done. I judge people on each individual accomplishment or fuck up, independent of past accomplishments and fuck ups. We like to paint with broad brushes and either lionize or demonize across the board because doing so is easier than thinking. George W Bush is as close to a complete and total fucking loser, as any president we’ve ever seen in the history of the world. I still capable of giving him credit for not fucking up the North Korea situation. I can do this because I’m not a simpleton, and I don’t need for situations to all be black or white in order for my world view to work. If you can’t give Obama the credit he’s due, then fuck you.

My feelings all seem to be centered on issues that are ancillary to the actual event, and I’m mildly disturbed by that. So I’m going to go to ground zero tomorrow, in the hope that some of what everyone else is feeling will seep into me by osmosis.

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Moral Clarity

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In my experience, people that have moral clarity when it comes to politics or world affairs are ignorant, insufferable simpletons. I offer that observation in order to explain why I have not yet sorted out my thoughts in the Bin Laden situation.

Don’t get me wrong, I definitely think the world is a better place with one less lunatic extremist. But pragmatically speaking, his death is more of a emotional victory for America than anything else. It makes Americans that crave revenge feel good. It gives friends and family members of 9/11 victims closure. I’m not minimizing the value of these things, since they’re obviously important to Americans.

Personally, I wish we’d gotten him alive. I want to know what he knew.

His death doesn’t change anything in the world. It doesn’t topple the giant, superfucking scary terrorist network known as Al Qaeda because al qaeda was never what it was made out to be. I never bought into the narrative that al qaeda was this huge organization with tentacles all around the world. Not because I didn’t want to, but because common sense told me otherwise. When we learned that 100% of the 9/11 hijackers were from the same country, we should have all recognized that this was a small operation. If they were far reaching and organized, those hijackers would have been from all over the world. Shit, Cirque Du Soleil has longer tentacles than al qaeda!

The foiled terrorism attempt in the UK in 2006 confirmed my belief that al qaeda was a small operation since again, all involved were (or descendants of) from one single country; Pakistan. Again, this would have been more of a multicultural plot if al qaeda were as big as we’re supposed to believe they are.

In addition to confirming how small al qaeda really was, the UK plot told me something else; Bin Laden moved to Pakistan. When you’re a lunatic with a small number of followers, you recruit and radicalize in your own backyard because you don’t have the means to reach people that are physically very far from you. It was reported for years, that Bin Laden was in Waziristan, on the Pakistan/Afghan border. That sounded credible to me, based on the fact that the UK plotters all had ties to Pakistan. He definitely wasn’t going to hang out in Afghanistan after we went in, no matter how incompetent the Bush administration was.

So in 2007, when candidate Obama declared that he wouldn’t hesitate to go into Pakistan if he felt it was necessary, I was the only liberal on the planet that wasn’t outraged. OF COURSE we had to go into Pakistan. Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan’s dictator at the time, wasn’t doing a fucking thing to help us get Bin Laden. I wasn’t thrilled when Obama ultimately took the drone route into Pakistan. Nothing turns people against you more effectively than if you kill one of their family members, who was just out on a slurpee run to 7-eleven, with an unarmed drone. I would have preferred he taken a more “intelligence” and policing route, you know, the way we catch serial killers and pedophiles. But this isn’t the first time this president has done something I wanted him to do in a way that I completely disagree with. I’m fairly certain it won’t be the last.

Both parties built up al qaedamania so that they could dole billions of dollars in government contracts out to their donors, in a vomitous display of exploitation. Bush was the worst of the worst, since he used this fear to do everything from invading Iraq, to stripping us of our rights to privacy, to taking away the fundamental right to habeas corpus, to a whole host of other bullshit that you’re all familiar with by now.

The one thing about Bin Laden’s death that I do have clarity about is that the GOP won’t give Obama an ounce of credit for effectively executing it. They lorded his death over our heads for eight long years in an effort to scare us into voting for them. And now that it’s finally happened, they are utterly classless. They’ve spent all morning crediting the troops that they fuck over every chance they get and the intelligence community they spent 8 years marginalizing for Bin Laden’s assassination, with no mention of Obama at all. Their minions in the right wing press are coming up with batshit crazy ways to demonstrate that Obama doesn’t deserve credit. Assertions that Bush’s wars have toughened him up, since he obviously wouldn’t have had the stomach for this type of assassination two years ago. Fantasies about how “harsh interrogation techniques helped nail Bin Laden”. Please spare me this assault on logic and reason.

Your party couldn’t get the job done. In fact, I can’t remember the last time your party got anything done for Americans. So if you show some class, then just shut the fuck up. Really, I’m sick of your bullshit.

Readers of this blog know that I hate democrats. But at least once every decade, they throw me a crumb like giving me COBRA, or repealing hateful practices like “don’t ask don’t tell”. This republican party on the other hand, does nothing but debase my country, pick my pocket to enrich their self entitled asshat donors, and crap on days like this when most Americans are proud.

Fuck you, and your “moral clarity”.


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Clorox Won’t Be Stinking Up My House Anymore

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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

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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

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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

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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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Being America Costs More

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Did anyone watch 60 Minutes on Sunday? If you missed it, you can watch the clip that supercharged my bitchiness here. I thought I was going to watch a clip on how US corporations use overseas tax havens to get out of paying their fair share of taxes. What I instead saw, was a propaganda piece about how the US should lower corporate taxes in order to keep jobs in America.

Oh where to start expressing my rage?

First of all, jobs will continue to leave the US as long as we have higher human rights standards. As long as we insist on safe, fair working conditions, labor will be cheaper in other places. So if you want to keep jobs in America you would have to turn employees into wage slaves, desperate to earn money in any condition. That’s what the union busting epidemic is about, but that’s another topic. As long as we have laws that protect the worker, we’re going to have higher labor rates. Period, end of story. If you want to keep jobs here, you’re going to have to be prepared to work side by side with your ten year old child for twelve hours a day.

Now that we have one implausible, bullshit argument down, let’s move to the other inane point made in this piece.

For this piece, 60 Minutes interviewed the CEO of Cisco. I give him credit for doing the interview, but everything he said was fucking ridiculous. He was talking about businesses moving to Ireland and Switzerland because they have more “reasonable” corporate tax rates. And he went onto caution the US government that it was driving businesses away by having high tax rates. Honestly, I can’t believe this douchecanoe runs a company. I would expect that a person who runs a company would have more business savvy that this. Okay, that’s not true. I actually have come to expect that people that run companies are know-nothing asshats that inherited their lot in life through luck of birth. But I didn’t always have such bitchy, low expectations of CEOs. They drove me to my low opinion of them by saying stupid shit like, “The US better lower its tax rate, or we’re going to leave.”

Here’s the deal, Switzerland and Ireland can have lower tax rates because the US is taking care of their high ticket item in terms of their countries’ budget. We essentially provide defense for all of Europe. They don’t have to spend as much on defense because we do. Does anyone honestly think that Ireland is prepared to defend themselves in a war with another country? No, of course not! Because if Ireland ever gets attacked, the US will jump right in to defend them. Why do you think the Italians or the French aren’t really leading the Libyan mission? Because the lack the tactical and operational capabilities that the US has. Like it or not, we have the strongest military in the world because we spend exponentially more of our GDP on defense than anyone else does.

Am I in love with this situation? No, but that’s how it is. We are the world’s military. And as long as that’s the case, being America just fucking costs more. Deal with it.

These asshat American CEOs who are oblivious to that fact need to bitch slapped repeatedly until they’re cured of their stupid. In their childish fantasy world, they get to drive around in a Ferrari that they paid Hyundai prices for. Idiots! Honestly, just when I’m thinking that politicians are the dumbest people in America, a CEO pipes up to disprove me.

We essentially have two options for keeping jobs in America, according to our CEOs. We can either go back to the days of treating our workers like shit in order to maximize profits, or we can seriously reduce our biggest expenditures; defense, medicare, and medicaid. The latter two go back to treating our citizens like garbage. All three would put us on a fast (er) track to giving up our position as leaders of the free world.

Is that what these idiot CEOs want? For America to become devolve? No, I don’t believe they do. I just believe that they’re incapable of seeing past the next dollar in earnings.

Being the leader of the free world isn’t cheap. And we’ve spent the last thirty years dropping corporate taxes, and taxes on the super fucking rich enough to have a pretty good idea of where the threshold is for revenue that we need to generate in order to maintain our position in the world.

The smartest thing that Obama can do right now, is to lower corporate taxes. Yes, you heard that right. He needs to lower corporate taxes, but he also needs to make the new rate a flat tax. If he took the corporate tax rate down to a flat 28% and eliminated all right offs, we would bring in more revenue. And it would be a win, because republicans wouldn’t have an argument to make against lower taxes. Right now, US corporations pay around 6.6% of total revenues. That’s just not enough to keep America, America.

Being America just fucking costs more than being anyone else.


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The Nuclear Option

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So we’re all biting our nails, waiting to see what’s going to happen with the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan. And as we’re watching the devastation we can see, and anticipating the potential devastation that lies ahead, we’re justifiably discussing the merits and pitfalls of nuclear energy.

Here are some facts about nuclear energy that you may or may not know.

Banks won’t finance the nuclear power plants in America, unless the federal government guarantees the loan. Banks aren’t willing to take the risk. They don’t want to risk the massive cost overruns that are inevitable in constructing nuclear power plants. They also don’t want the litigation risks.

You know how Wall Street was happy, willing, and able to trade crap ass mortgages for ten years? Yeah, well they won’t touch nuclear power plants. What does that tell you?

So in order to build a nuclear power plant in this country, your taxpayer dollars have to back the project because financial industry analysts don’t believe they can make money on them. They don’t believe that the ratio of risk to reward is worth the trouble. Speaking of risk to reward, you must be asking yourself, “What do I get for guaranteeing the loan?”. Good question! The answer is that you don’t get jack shit because even though the federal government is guaranteeing the loan, they still award contracts to companies to build the power plants. So the company gets the contract and collects the profits without taking on a single dime of liability.

Sounds like an awesome racket to get into, right? It gets better. A nuclear power plant costs between $5B and $8B to build. Now once it’s built, do you think there’s an insurance company on the planet that’s willing to insure the fucking thing? NO! That would be batshit crazy! We know that banks and insurance companies are greedy, reckless, and morally bankrupt, but they’re not batshit crazy. So guess who takes on all of the liability when something goes wrong? If you guessed ‘you’ you’d be right! You’re poor, from being repeatedly robbed, but right! And since we the taxpayers cover any liability that may arise from an accident at the nuclear power plant, if you ever needed to sue for medical costs, you would essentially be suing yourself.

So if a bank isn’t willing to touch a nuclear power plant, and Wall Street isn’t willing to touch a nuclear power plant, and insurance companies like AIG (who will historically insure God damned anything) aren’t willing to touch it, wouldn’t one think that perhaps nuclear power is a bad idea?

Yes this is clearly a dumbass idea, which means that our government will naturally pursue it to the tune of $36B. Actually, it’s $54.5B if you add the $36B that Obama wants to add to the $18.5B that wasn’t spent out of the last budget.

Does any of this sound good to anyone? Forget what’s happening in Japan for a moment. Does using tax payer money to fund and guarantee a venture that is too dangerous for even Wall Street to gamble on sound reasonable to anyone?

Even people who purport to be pro-nuclear energy, back way the fuck off when the conversation turns to building one in their back yard.

Now I’m ready to bring the Japanese crisis into this post. Those socialist, statist, Marxist motherfuckers have building codes that are far stricter than anything we have here in America. It took an 8.9 magnitude earthquake to trigger a nuclear meltdown. We have two nuclear power plants in southern California, sitting on a fucking fault line! Those two plants can allegedly withstand earthquakes up to a 7.4 magnitude. Just so you’re clear, a 7.4 magnitude earthquake is roughly 1/15th as strong as an 8.9. Does that sound good to anyone?

Another issue is nuclear waste. We still don’t know what to do with it. Yes, we’ve figured out a way to reuse some of it but there’s still waste. France encases it in concrete and buries it. But the problem with that is that concrete eventually breaks down, even if it’s not covering uranium. Have you ever seen an industrial building that has been abandoned for a few years? Concrete needs to be maintained in order to hold its integrity so the French are going to be digging up and reburying nuclear waste in perpetuity.

I say that we spend that $54.5B on subsidizing green energy startups to develop things like the Bloom Box or more efficient solar and wind solutions. We need to stop spending our resources on energy supplies that are killing us. Whether it’s the slow death that comes with carbon emissions, or widespread death that would result from a nuclear meltdown.

There will be nuclear meltdowns. That’s an absolute certainty. So we should ask ourselves how many meltdowns make nuclear power worth it. Is one meltdown every hundred years acceptable? We know that the radiation lingers for a couple of decades, so we’re talking about elevated cancer rates for two generations of families within a couple of hundred miles. Is one every two hundred years acceptable? I’ve already seen two in my lifetime, so I find it pretty unlikely that two hundred meltdown-free years is possible. If it were, it would require a shitload of regulation and maintenance. Do you trust our government to regulate the shit out of the energy industry? Or do you trust the company running the plant to voluntarily make costly maintenance investments? Pro-nuclear republicans suddenly have so much new found faith in the government they hate, that they trust it to keep nuclear power plants safe?

Remember, Three Mile Island happened because of user error. Chernobyl happened because there weren’t enough containment measures in place. Are you so confident that it won’t happen here?

Nothing about nuclear power makes sense to me. The first nuclear power plant went live in 1954. It’s time to move past 1950s solutions. The advances we’ve made since then are staggering. Proponents of nuclear power operate under the assumption that we can’t come up with something more efficient. And they’re using their iPhones to say so, in their Facebook status updates.

I say, bullshit!  We can innovate if we decide that we’re going to. Look, we got computers in our homes in the 90s as a direct result of all the money that Reagan dumped into defense in the 80s. Those billions of dollars spend in R & D shrank the microchip down to a workable size.

If we get serious and we throw serious money at the problem, we can solve it once and for all. We always have.

 

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