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Year: 2011

Nine Most Terrifying Words

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I’ve always been perplexed with politically active people that don’t believe that good government is possible. If you don’t believe that government is good, why bother to get involved?

I completely get the motivations of politicians that hate government. They want the power that comes with being in the government. It’s a great way to get really fucking rich without creating anything, or employing anyone. But the people that believe them? I find them inexplicable.

Who the fuck hears a candidate say, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help'”, and thinks “that’s who I’m voting for!“? How does that make any fucking sense? He just told you that he’s not going to help you if you elect him!

What kind of person perpetually votes for a party whose mantra is the promise of shrinking the government, despite the fact that no president in the history of that party, has ever made the government even a little bit smaller? Are these people fucking idiots?

The short answer is, yes. The longer answer lies in the inherent pessimism that fuels the belief that government’s only purpose is to fuck you.

See, republicans generally come into power and make things worse than they were before they got in. And once they’ve made things worse, they take the opportunity to leverage that crisis to make themselves (i.e the government) bigger and more powerful.

Bush ignored mounds of evidence (not to mention the emphatic warnings from his predecessor) , outlining the threat that Bin Laden poses to America. The US gets attacked, and the administration used that crisis to pursue the neocon agenda of world domination through invasion and occupation.

Ronald Reagan revived fears of a Soviet takeover of the world, at a time when no one was thinking about the Soviet Union. Iran was holding fifty-two Americans hostage, and we had an oil shortage that created long gas lines. The last thing on any American’s mind was the cold war. But Reagan gave those old fears some CPR and brought them back to life. He then leveraged the fear he resurrected, to get the American people to go along with his wild defense spending that blew up our deficit. He massively cut taxes for top income earners when he first came into office, and then had to raise taxes eleven times to offset the the shortfall that he created. In classic republican tradition, those tax hikes shifted the tax burden on the middle class.

Scott Walker turned a surplus into a deficit ten minutes after being sworn in, by cutting taxes at the top and doling out government contracts to his cronies. A minute after that, he leveraged the budget “crisis” he created to decimate collective bargaining rights for public employees.

I can give dozens of examples, but you get the idea. This is an age old tactic of the republican party. Why does it work on some people? Because if you are pessimistic enough to believe that government can never work for you, fucked up government validates your world view. It makes you right! Never mind the fact that you voted for the government. You were right, and that’s all that matters. Buying into the “nine most terrifying words” theory is purely emotional.

No rational, thinking, logical person would ever accept the idea that a human (any human) will ever relinquish power that they’ve obtained. That’s never happened in recorded history. So buying into the bullshit narrative that someone is trying to get into government so that they can turn around and give up the power that comes with the office. That’s just batshit crazy. So if you’re buying into this bullshit, you’re not doing it with your mind. You’re doing it emotionally.

That goes for you too, democrats. If you believe that a democrat will give up power that his/her predecessor secured for that office, you’re not being rational. I never, not for one second, thought that Obama was going to give up any of the expanded powers that Bush snatched up. To do so would be crazy and stupid, and I was definitely not voting for someone I thought was crazy and stupid. That’s just not how I roll. I will admit that I never saw the Bradley  Manning abuse coming under this president’s watch. I knew that Obama wasn’t going to give up the power to do anything, I just didn’t think that he would use this particular power. Don’t kid yourselves, Obama is completely aware of what’s happening with Manning. In my defense, I’m no less disgusted with Obama when he does it, than I was with Bush when he did it.

Die hards on both sides vote irrationally, but the whole foundation of republicanism is based on irrational voting and perpetuating a pessimistic world view.

We have a republican congress now, whose sole mission is to make things shittier so that they can point to Obama and tell you that government sucks. And Obama is playing into their hands by not standing up to make sure that shitty things don’t get passed.

It’s a vicious cycle, and to some degree, we’re all playing our part.

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Expensive And Ineffective

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That’s republicanism in a nutshell. Expensive and ineffective describes every aspect of the republican party, but I want to focus on one specific area for this post. Union busting.

Everyone is hip to the fact that the union busting efforts by republican governors all across the country aren’t about balancing state budgets. They’re about eviscerating the democratic party. Everyone knows that with a few exceptions, the lion’s share of corporate political contributions are made to republicans, and the lion’s share of union contributions go to democrats.

A little bit of simple math, coupled with some common sense (there I go with my sunny optimism again) will tell you that the corporate contributions are significantly larger than the union contributions. Union membership in America is 12.3%. That’s if you add up all of the private sector and public sector union members. Unions ostensibly raise their political contribution money from a percentage of dues paid by that 12.3% of workers. Workers that, by the way, earn an average of 59k a year. Corporate contributions come from diverting profits to political contributions. US corporations are at this moment, sitting on two trillion dollars in cash reserves. It’s obvious where the bigger trough of money lies.

These union busting efforts are aimed at drying up the union money to political contributions. You know what that tells me? It tells me that it costs a fucking fortune to get people to buy republican. And for all of the money that’s being spent on selling republicanism, it’s still not working.

In yesterday’s post, I shared a poll that shows that most Americans would take a much more “liberal” approach to balancing our budget than our government will actually take. We see that while republican governors across the country are cutting money for education, Americans would increase the education budget. We see that Americans are willing to raise taxes on both themselves and the filthy rich.

Poll after poll shows that most Americans have “liberal” opinions on domestic issues from abortion, to gun purchasing requirements, to education and gay marriage (that poll moves more and more liberal every year). The only domestic issue where Americans skew “right”, is on the death penalty. We still have a blood lust for revenge, apparently. Most Americans aren’t interested in invading or occupying other countries. The Bush administration had to employ a major shock doctrine offense in order to get Americans on board with Iraq, and even that didn’t last more than five years. The majority of us are not interested in the neocon porn fantasy of world domination.

We are liberal on most issues, despite the shit load of cash that is being spent on selling republicanism, and making “liberal” a dirty word.

On top of the corporate contributions, there’s billions of dollars invested in a giant right wing propaganda machine. There’s Fox News, where Rupert Murdoch was happy to lose money for six years before he ever saw a dime of profit. There’s Rasmussen, a right wing polling outfit that exists so that right wing radio and Fox News can quote “data”. There’s the right wing think tanks like Cato and Heritage whose only purpose is to again, feed right wing media with lies that they can cite, thereby validating each other.

I’ve driven through cities where, when flipping through the AM dial, I’ve come across Rush Limbaugh on three different stations. Three stations carrying the same program? Why would any radio station in America carry the same programming as a competing station in the same market? Because the right wing think tanks are buying up all of the advertising on those programs, in order to ensure that those programs are all that Americans have access to. That system is finally starting to fall apart. Right wing talkers are being pulled from radio stations all across the country, finally. Nobody is fucking listening anymore.

We have a really fucking big, really fucking expensive machine trying to crank out republicans in America. But that machine is failing to accomplish it’s task. You can’t throw enough money at Americans to convince them to want to legislate’s a woman’s uterus. You can’t throw enough money at Americans to convince them to hate people for being gay (anymore). You can’t throw enough money at Americans to convince them that workers should give up their right to organize.

And you know what? The right wing corporate interests know they’re losing. That’s why they’re making a concerted effort to bust the unions. They need to make sure that no money goes to liberal voices, so that they can buy themselves a little bit more time. You think that all of these republican governors suddenly all, independently decided to launch an attack against the unions in their state? No, it’s obviously a coordinated effort. Republicanism is going to collapse. It’s just a matter of time.

Let me be clear, when I say that republicanism is going to collapse, I’m not referring to conservatism. Republicans went horribly wrong when they walked away from every single tenet of conservatism. Republicanism isn’t about smaller government. It’s about big giant government, picking your pocket at every turn.

The tea party emerged as a backlash to republicanism. It had the right idea when it started, but it went horribly wrong when the movement was taken over by Dick Armey and the Koch brothers. But I believe that true conservatives will eventually take the tea party back. Yes, I realize that I just gave the tea party some credit but I am a sunny optimist! Oh, and I look at polls.

Americans don’t want what the oligarchs want and it’s just a matter of time before they can’t fool us anymore.

Americans are not prospering the way they were in the past. And even the most politically disengaged American knows that something is horribly wrong. I think that what we’re seeing in Wisconsin is just the beginning. And I believe that defeating Scott Walker will serve as inspiration to make us realize that we do have all of the power. We just need to use it.

There is not enough money in the world to keep the robber barons in our good graces for much longer. They’re going to have to keep throwing more and more money at the problem, just to buy themselves another month, year, maybe five. But it’s all going to fall apart eventually.

And this isn’t about political parties. Obama’s approval ratings have stayed unimpressive because Americans aren’t seeing the sweeping change they were hoping for.

It doesn’t matter if you’re a democrat or a republican. Americans are going to turn on any politician that supports republicanism. The machine overplayed its hand in Wisconsin. I believe that we’re watching the beginning of the end of republicanism.

I say good riddance. I want to go back to the days of debating conservative and liberal ideas. This oligarch diversion has been bad for all of us. It’s time to move on.

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A Country Of Flaming Liberals

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No, I’m not referring to France. I’m talking about The United States. Yup, I’m just as shocked as you are, but it turns out that we’re all just a bunch of granola eating, dirty hippie liberals.

We just needed Scott Walker to help us see ourselves for what we really are. LIBERAL (peh!). Many, many polls have been taken in the past couple of weeks to assess how America feels about commandant Walker’s actions in Wisconsin. Turns out that Americans aren’t for taking away collective bargaining rights from people, to the tune of 2 to 1. Two thirds of us have a sense of decency, not to mention forethought.

Oh, but we’ve only touched the tip of the Birkenstock with that little factoid. NBC News and the Wall Street Journal commissioned a poll to figure out how Americans would balance the budget if it were up to them. Let’s start with what the pollsters presented to the sample group. They used the actual budget of the United States, more or less (you can download the actual report here if you want more detail). They broke the budget down to discretionary and non-discretionary line items and gave the respondents options for generating revenue, as well as the option to cut spending. Here’s what the respondents did:

76% of respondents cut spending by an average of $145.7 billion. They cut;

$109B out of defense
$13.1B from intelligence
$12.8B from Iraq and Afghanistan
$6.7B from veteran’s benefits
$4.6B from federal highways
$3.2B from the space program
$2.6B from medical research
$2.5B from homeland security
$2.3 from farm subsidies
$2.3B from air travel and roads
$1.8B from development assistance
$1.8B from military aid
$1.6B from the State Department
$1B from land management
$.4B from nuclear weapons
$.2B from federal law enforcement
$.2B from global health
$.1B from mass transit

But is wasn’t all cuts. They also made increases in certain areas (brace yourselves for a big whiff of patchouli);

  • $5.2B increase in job training
  • $4.6B increase in higher education
  • $3.3B increase in energy conservation/renewable energy
  • $2.7B increase in elementary/second education
  • $2B increase in subsidies to small farms
  • $1.5B increase in pollution control
  • $1.4B increase to special education
  • $1.1B increase to humanitarian aid
  • $.9 increase in science
  • $.2B increase in housing programs
  • $.1B increase to federal prisons

Fascinating, right? But it really gets interesting when you break the respondents down by political affiliation. The biggest spending cuts were made by independents who cut $195.5B out of the budget. The next biggest spending cutters were democrats, who cut $157.3B out of the budget. The “fiscally conservative” republicans were only able to cut $100.7B out of the budget. Any guesses who landed at the bottom of the budget cutting list? I’ll give you a hint – they can’t fucking balance a budget any better than they can spell protest signs. Yep, teabaggers could only bring themselves to cut $100B out of the budget.

I realize that this is getting super fucking wonky with all of the numbers, but I found this report endlessly fascinating so I’m going to continue.

Democrats were the biggest raisers of spending, but not in any meaningful (in terms of adversely affecting the overall budget) way. In fact, when it came to job training, democrats wanted to raise spending from $4B to $9.2B. Independents wanted to go higher than democrats, to $14.4B.

Every group wants to cut defense, so we’ll never see that happen in actuality. Independents cut defense more than any other group, coming in at a cut of $154.1B. Democrats cut defense by $131B. Republicans only cut defense by $56B, but they cut it!

Here are some interesting areas where all groups agreed and differed:


Ready for another dose of American granola? You know how you constantly hear that Americans prefer cutting spending to increasing taxes? Well, that turns out to be true only if they’re not looking at real numbers. 91% of respondents in this poll increased taxes by an average of $291.6B. The amount of tax increases by group looks about how you would expect;

  • Teabaggers – $188.2B
  • Republicans – $229.9B
  • Independents – $305.5B
  • Democrats – $338.5B

All of the groups favored a progressive tax rate (meaning that the more you make, the higher the percentage you pay), but republicans and teabaggers were much more forgiving to the higher tax brackets than independents were. Predictably, democrats really stuck it to the rich.

On every single issue of taxation (estate, corporate, personal, etc) each group raised taxes. Yup, even teabaggers. Only 17% of republicans favored the estate tax breaks that Bush enacted and Obama extended. Let me repeat that so that it really sinks in; only 17% of republicans support the current estate tax levels.

On the issue of capital gains, both independents and democrats want to either raise the percentage of taxation or treat capital gains as income, thereby raising the percentage of taxation! Only teabaggers (68% of them), had a decisive majority that don’t want to raise capital gains. Republicans were divided with 49% against raising taxes, 46% for raising taxes.

Every group agreed that oil companies don’t need the tax breaks they’re currently enjoying, and they would all repeal them.

Every group overwhelmingly agreed that they wanted to fix the social security shortfall by increasing they payroll tax limit from the current level of $106,000 to at least $156,000. 38% of respondents went further and removed the cap entirely and chose to take social security contributions on all money earned. There wasn’t much deviation on this among the different party affiliations. Every group overwhelmingly chose to raise the retirement age, but only to 68. Only 1/3 were willing to go up to 70.

I can keep going, but I won’t. You should definitely download the report from the link above if you want to see more.

Let me summarize what I got from this report, other than the fact that America is made up of liberals (as defined by Fox News).

First and foremost, I see that a strong political ideology creates blinders that make it harder to get things done. That applies to both the left and the right. That being said, left wing ideology doesn’t seem to be as debilitating as right wing ideology does. Over and over again in this report, independents were much closer to democrats than to republicans. Teabaggers were consistently way out there.

When it comes to coming up with solutions to problems, nothing should be off the table, unless you have historical precedent that demonstrates failure. You shouldn’t let your ideology create your facts. It should be the other way around.

It’s clear that one side does love their unicorns more than the other does. Republicans are emotionally attached to the “trickle down” theory that is demonstrably false. But, they’re not as attached to it as our government is. When they were presented with the budget in detail, they all deviated from that ideology to a greater extent than any administration in the past thirty one years has.

But the thing that most struck me about this poll is that our government isn’t representing us. Not any of us. If you had to put a direction on it, you could make a case that our government is to the right of all of us. “Right” as defined by a greater deference to corporations and corporate interests. But that isn’t really an accurate description of what’s happening here. It wouldn’t be hyperbolic to say that what we’re experiencing here is an oligarchy.

Oligarchy

[ol-i-gahr-kee]
–noun, plural -chies.
1. a form of government in which all power is vested in a few persons or in a dominant class or clique; government by the few.
2. a state or organization so ruled.
3. the persons or class so ruling.

We have a government that serves only the interest of its donors. And last year, when the Citizens United decision came down from the supreme court, the system insured that it’s donors will never be the people. The supreme court gamed the system and completely locked the citizenry out of it. In 2008 when Obama ran, he kept repeating that 90% of his contributors were ordinary citizens making small contributions. While those statements were completely accurate, they didn’t tell the whole story. The contributions made by 90% of his donors represented 50% of the total amount that he raised. The other 50% came from corporate interests. Believe it or not, a 50-50 ratio is astonishing. Corporate contributions typically eclipse private contributions so what Obama accomplished was amazing.

But it will never, ever happen again. The supreme court made sure of that. If we don’t all work to pass laws that make the public financing of campaigns mandatory, we well never be represented by our government. None of us, conservative or liberal, will get the opportunity to be heard or represented.

If we don’t change the system, we’re fucked. We need to stop focusing on the democrat or the republican in the race. Party affiliation is irrelevant because both sides can only get their campaigns financed by entities that don’t give a shit about you or me.

The ideological lines between right and left are drawn between having faith in corporations versus having faith in the government. Both sides are wrong. The growing wealth disparity on the country has proven that corporations aren’t going to do right by the workers. And Citizens United has insured that good government isn’t possible.

So if you’re having a political debate with someone from a different political persuasion, and you’re taking the pro-corporate or the pro-government side, your point sounds like nonsense to the person you’re talking to because it is nonsensical. You’re having the wrong debate, and you have to realize that the team you’re on isn’t on your side.

Obama is not a great president because the system won’t allow him to be. He has to fellate Wall Street if he wants to have a single democratic congressman or senator elected during his term. Democrats idealize Obama’s presidency at their own peril. Look at what happened to republicans when they idealized Bush’s eight year fucking nightmare. That didn’t turn out to well for republicans, not to mention America and the world.

It’s time to play for your own team. Fuck the politician you’re spending your time or money on. Use that energy to change the system. We need to get public financing of campaigns on ballot measures in every state across the country. We need to stop having stupid fights amongst ourselves and unite around our own self interest. America will never embrace its inner hippie (again, as defined by Fox News) until we do.


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The Remedy To The Walker Dictatorship

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Here’s the deal – Walker is going to win in Wisconsin if he doesn’t blink. I hate that is it so, but it is. The only way that he won’t successfully take away collective bargaining rights for public employees, is if he backs down. I’m not saying that it’s not possible that may back down, but if he doesn’t he will get his way.

Honestly, if I were him I wouldn’t back down at this point. He’s already ensured that he’s going to be a one term governor. He’s also already ensured that he’s going to get a very high paying lobbying job when his one term is over. There’s no reason for him to back down so going after him is the wrong strategy.

But don’t worry, it’s not hopeless. There is a a winning strategy to ensure that this doesn’t happen all across the country. Wisconsinites must swiftly move to recall every member of the state house and senate that voted to strip public workers of their bargaining rights. They need to take a page out of Darrell Issa’s (he orchestrated the recall of Grey Davis in California) book and start collecting signatures to recall everyone that is eligible for recall right at this moment. I know that Wisconsin has a provision that says that a legislator must fuck up for a full year before they can be recalled, but there are plenty of people supporting Walker that have served for a year. Walker’s bill has passed the house, so there’s already a list of names to start with. If Wisconsin can get enough names to instigate a recall of even one or two state house members, there’s some chance that they can peel off a few republican votes in the senate.

Let’s be honest about the current situation – averting this vote, means having faith that democrats can hold out. When was the last time a democrat held out and stood on principal? Oh yeah, that would be Russ Feingold, who Wisconsin voted out of office last November! But aside from Feingold and a handful of others, the odds of democrats holding their ground are historically slim. No, banking on democrats to have balls is not going to turn out well for us.

Other republican governors that were talking about union busting are already losing their stomach for proceeding down that road, so public pressure has done a lot of good. A swift move to remove Wisconsin legislators that helped to make this happen will put the fear of god in every pro-union busting piece of shit all across the country. Here’s the thing – although Walker is assured a big fat Koch brothers paycheck at the end of all of this, the legislators that supported him aren’t. They key here is to go after the low hanging fruit. No politician in their right mind is going to sacrifice themselves so that some other asshole can get rich. No, they’re far more interested in amassing wealth and power for themselves. Making it clear that we won’t give them the opportunity to get rich if they go against the will of the people should remedy this situation.

You’ll never get to be a Koch whore if you’ve only served for a year in government because a year isn’t long enough to make you worth anything to them.

Trust me on this one, going after Walker is futile. Counting on democrats to stand firm is foolish. The only way to win this is by recall, recall, RECALL.

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Low Self Esteem

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I’ve given a lot of thought to why the hell anyone that depends on a paycheck to survive, would possibly support the busting of a union. The only explanation that I can come up with, is that they have low self esteem. This explanation actually works to explain several otherwise perplexing opinions.

On any given day, Rush Limbaugh spends three hours riling up his listeners by telling them that they should hate people that have more than they do. “Fuck the people with pensions! You don’t have one, so fuck em!”. That’s his mantra, day after day. Fox news is a little more subtle, but the message is basically the same; the problem always lies with the people that have what you don’t, unless of course, we’re talking about the richest 2% among us. In the case of the mega rich, you need to fellate them, until they generously trickle their wealth down to you.

I get why the commentators that take this stance. They’re being generously paid to do the bidding of corporate America. But the working class people that buy into this? They obviously suffer from low self esteem issues.

Let me explain. Every single one of us knew a bully in our school days. And every single one of us remembers that when confronted, the bully crumbled like a republican economy. On the day that someone finally confronted the bully, we all realized that he/she was the most insecure person on campus. A bully chooses bullying because it’s easier and less thoughtful than self-improvement. Why put the time and effort into becoming someone that you can feel good about, when shitting on someone else offers so much instant gratification?

Fighting to get a pension for yourself takes a lot of work and organizing. Hating people that have pensions is much easier! You don’t have to organize. You don’t have to educate yourself. And you don’t have to confront your employer, which requires self esteem. The instant gratification of hating someone that has something that you don’t, simply requires having a small mind and a bitter attitude. It’s easy. And voila! You get a little boost in your mood without having to do any work.

And the reason why you don’t want to do the hard work required to get what the people that you hate have? Say it with me, it’s low self esteem.

This also explains that Sarah Palin phenomena. Think about, the thing that you hear most often from her supporters is that “she’s just like me”. And they’re right. She’s ignorant, and too lazy to remedy that ignorance by learning things. Her supporters know that they’re in no way qualified to occupy an office in the white house, but having someone like them some so close makes them feel better about themselves. The “reasoning” is this; she doesn’t know anything, just like me. And if she can make it into the white house, I have a shot.

What those people failed to consider, is that her ignorance isn’t what got her so close (although it didn’t hurt). Her fuckability is. Poll after poll shows that the majority of her supporters are men. Here’s a newsflash for Sarah Palin’s ignorant supporters; if you’re ignorant and you weigh 300 pounds, Bill Kristol’s penis is never going to pick you to be a vice presidential candidate. But don’t let that deter you. I understand that supporting her helps you feel better about your low self esteem issues.

Low self esteem is what makes people believe the unbelievable. Like the inexplicable belief that government workers are taking us all to the cleaners, with their above market compensation packages. Seriously, how can you believe that? If that were true, everyone would be clamoring to work for the state of Nevada, instead of Google. Why are technology professionals fighting over low paying Google jobs, when they can get rich on a government salary? You have to be an idiot to actually believe that. Trust me, I battle the behemoth that is Google to hire talent every single day. The fact of the matter, is that Wisconsin state workers’ total compensation is 5% below that of their private sector counterparts. That’s right, their total compensation (including health benefits and pensions) is 5% under what the market dictates.

I’m not even going to bother posting all of the statistical data that shows that government jobs pay less than private sector jobs. You can find that for yourself, and it defies common sense anyway so it’s not worth my time. So I’m going to go the other way, and ask you to suspend your self esteem for a moment. Let’s all hate government and union workers together, by accepting the premise that they’re all getting fat on our backs. If you add up all of the state and federal employees, government would by far, be the biggest employer in America. If all of those government entities were grossly overpaying their employees, wouldn’t that drive up your wage in the private sector? Wouldn’t your company be forced to compete with the government and it’s bloated compensation structure in order to get anyone to work for them?

Okay, I can’t keep this up. My self esteem isn’t low enough to accept this bullshit premise. I’m worried if I keep it up, my IQ will go down and that I will become angry and insecure.

I would like to say to working class people that support Scott Walker – please work on your self esteem. I know it will be hard at first but in the end, you and your family will benefit from the strong belief that you deserve better.

I would like to say to Fox news – you should encourage your viewers to fight for more, because this will help your rich benefactors in the long term. When people make more money, they have more to spend on your rich friends’ products.

And lastly, I would like to say to Rush Limbaugh – you need to find a way to be happy. I know that your viagra fueled limp dick and your giant ass are bummers. But you’re filthy fucking rich! You can afford to pay people to get you viagra, and you can afford to pay women to fuck you! See the glass as half full, Rush. You’re not doing your listeners much good when you’re this angry.

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Parity

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I’ve always loved that word. I love the way it sounds, and I love what it means.

[par-i-tee] – equality, as in amount, status, or character; equivalence; correspondence; similarity; analogy

Parity is the single most important ingredient in what made America great back in the day. We didn’t start this country off with parity. Contrary to what Michele Bachmann will have you believe, our founding fathers did not fight to free the slaves that they owned (holy shit, that woman is an idiot!). Nor did they advocate for their wives’ right to vote and right to work. No, parity was more abstract back then. It was an ideal, espoused in our founding documents. The actuality of parity is something that was fought for, and earned throughout the evolution of our nation. I believe that those ideals of parity that were fundamental in our founding documents, were the motivational tools that kept Americans fighting for equality over the course of our evolution. We are now in an era where parity is being systematically dismantled in our country. I fundamentally believe that in any given situation, the best possible result is achieved when two opposing forces with parity are forced to compromise in order to get to the end result. The greatest era in American history was one in which the government butted heads with corporations, and achieved compromise that resulted in the greatest expansion of our economy that we’ve ever seen. Thank you, FDR for showing us how to get it right. We no longer have that parity between corporations and government. We now have a situation where both entities are on the same side, leaving Americans with no one to fight for us. The situation in Wisconsin is the perfect illustration of the further breakdown of parity. Make no mistake, what Scott Walker is trying to do in Wisconsin has nothing to do with balancing a budget. It’s about creating more disparity. Just to recap, Scott Walker was sworn in as governor of Wisconsin a month ago. At the time of his swearing in, his state had a budget surplus thanks to his his democratic predecessor. Here’s where the story starts to sound really fucking familiar. This asshat, Scott Walker took that surplus and spent $140 million dollars in a month. He gave the wealthiest Wisconsinites $67 million in tax breaks and spent the rest on kickbacks to cronies, thereby creating a budget crisis. A crisis that he wants to remedy by (say it with me) crapping on working people. This situation would be pretty fucked up if it were just about a reverse Robin Hood menacing working people in Wisconsin, but that’s not what he’s doing here. He’s not asking Wisconsin state employees to make sacrifices in order to balance the budget that he fucked up this year. He’s asking them to forever relinquish any bargaining power they have. This is about the age old GOP tradition of busting unions. Unions that by the way, were formed in order to remedy the disparity between American workers and corporations that existed early on in our country’s history. Before unions, the average worker faced 12 hour work days, 7 days a week. But that isn’t as bad as it sounds because they got to work right next to their kids. It really was a golden age of quality time with the family. You see, because there was no parity between workers and companies, people got fucked. Corporations have no feelings or compassion because they’re not people. Corporations are motivated purely by profit, which doesn’t leave much room for human rights’ issues to prevail unless people organize and created a modicum of parity. Regardless of what you do for a living, you have benefited from the existence of unions. You wouldn’t have a weekend if it weren’t for unions. You wouldn’t have vacation time were it not for unions. You wouldn’t have dozens of other rights that you take for granted if it weren’t for unions. I’m not saying that unions are perfect. Far from it. Unions definitely have their fair share of corruption and embezzlement. But they create a level of parity. Without unions, labor’s power is eviscerated. And when one side is eviscerated in any negotiation, we all lose. How you personally feel about unions is irrelevant. I would hope that you would have the common sense to understand eviscerating workers is a bad idea, just as eviscerating corporations would be a bad idea. We need parity. I am utterly flummoxed and disgusted by anyone that doesn’t understand this. Listening to right wing media this week has been a particularly vomitous  experience. The constant barrage of insults against working people that just want parity is not something that is comprehensible to me. You wanna know who has the right to negotiate their working conditions, benefits, and termination packages? Every single fucking asshat on Fox news that is telling you that unions blow, that’s who. You wanna know who else has a shit ton of bargaining power? Really fucking rich people, regardless of their level of competence. That’s right, Crazy Carly Fiorina negotiated the $40 million dollars that she ultimately got paid to leave HP, because she sucked. Can you, in your wildest dreams, imagine sitting on one side of a negotiating able saying, "And if you need to fire me, I will need $40 million before I leave"? I can assure you that every single Fox News "personality" has negotiated generous exit packages for themselves, in the event that they get fired. The fact that they have disdain for people who want what they have is appalling, but it’s also the very foundation of Fox news. You shouldn’t listen to people that tell you that you don’t deserve what they have. That makes you a fucking idiot and a tool for a machine that places no value on you. You also shouldn’t listen to anybody that wants to eviscerate one side in any power struggle. That person is a tunnel visioned ideologue that can’t understand the value of parity.

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Suck It, NeoCons!

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18 days
0 RPGs
0 IEDs
0 Drones
0 Tanks
0 Patriot missiles
0 Guns

And a democracy was born.

Were you paying attention, Bill Kristol? How about you, Dick Cheney? Hello, Wolfowitz? Does anyone believe that any of the signatories to the mission statement for PNAC (project for the new American century) aka the neocons paid any attention to what happened in Egypt today?

I hope so, but I doubt it. We watched a democracy develop over the course of two and a half weeks, in a place that hasn’t seen democracy in over thirty years! This was amazing, and I’m overjoyed to have been around to watch it happen.

This one happened without an armed opposition. Democracies aren’t always born peacefully, but they’re always born when the people are ready to fight for it.

Democracy isn’t something that can be foisted on people. It’s something that they must seek out and fight for when they’re ready for it. It’s earned, it’s not imposed. No amount of weapons can make democracy happen where it’s not ready to.

We have now reached the $750,000,000,000 mark in Iraq. How’s that democracy working out over there? We’re about to “celebrate” the eighth anniversary of the beginning of that war.

Eight fucking years, and 3/4 of a trillion dollars! Compare that to 18 days and $0. And who got the better result? Who got the job done in a more dignified way? Did you notice that we didn’t see see Hosni Mubarak’s sons’ dead bodies displayed, in a show of testosterone? Did you notice that there were no cell phone videos of Mubarak being barbarically hanged? Did you notice the dignity with which this all happened?

Yeah, democracy only works when people want it. You can’t shove it down peoples’ throats when they’re not prepared for it. I’ve said this before in other posts, but it bears repeating; I believe that people are the same all over the world. We all fundamentally want the same things. We want to live freely and comfortably. We want the opportunity to be able to feed our families and live in peace. I believe that there isn’t a country in the world that won’t eventually move toward democracy. But they have to move in that direction in their own time, unmolested by outside forces.

This notion that we can “spread” democracy is asinine! Democracy is a system of governance, not an STD.

When people want it, they always get it. We just need to learn to stay the fuck out of the way and let it happen naturally. We need to refocus our resources here, on our own citizens and trust that everyone will come around to our way of life because we’ve demonstrated it’s better.


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Afraid Of The American Way

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I have SO many things to say on the topic of the Egyptian protests, none of which includes speculation on what the Egyptians should do. I have no business telling Egypt what to do. I’m not Egyptian, and I don’t live in Egypt. I’m not arrogant enough to presume that I know what’s best for people in a country I’ve never been to.

If I were that arrogant, my opinion on how Egypt should handle their current situation would most likely be rooted in my experiences as an American and my belief in freedom and democracy. If I were a freedom loving, patriotic republican who believes in the power of the people over the power of government, I would most definitely have an opinion rooted in American exceptionalism, wouldn’t I?

Shockingly (or not), this isn’t what’s happening on the right. Right wing commentators on both radio and Fox have united in the support of the dictator! What the fuck?

Here’s Limbaugh hating and distrusting democracy:


Think I’m just singling out one republican whacko? Here’s Mark Levin. You may know him because occasionally, when the camera angle hits Sean Hannity’s desk just right, you can see Mark Levin’s hand up Hannity’s ass, making him talk.Watch Levin’s hatred of democracy:



Want more? Here’s Dick Morris (most famously known for his love of sucking prostitutes’ toes) crapping on democracy:



But I’m just getting warmed up. Let’s delve into why these idiots hate democracy so much, shall we?

Let’s start with the grandaddy of all honey toasted nutbars:

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WOW! He’s an idiot and a chicken shit. But he’s not the only pussy crapping his pants at Fox News. Watch Hannity piss his pants with fear:

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Honestly, could there be a bigger bunch of scared little girls on a single network? These chicken-shits are afraid of democracy because it might lead to Shariah law taking over the universe? Are you fucking kidding me?

I’m at a loss as to where to start here. Let’s start with democracy. Either you believe in it, or you don’t. And if you believe in it, you believe in it for everyone. These asshats are basically saying that they Egyptian people shouldn’t have democracy because they can’t be trusted with it. They won’t make the right decision, and therefore shouldn’t have democracy.

If that’s how we’re going to administer democracy, then let’s fully commit to this new system. Let’s collectively determine whether a people are trustworthy enough to have earned the right to a representative government. Let’s start here in the good old U.S. of A. Anyone that voted for George W Bush, even once is not worthy of having democracy. Their right to vote should be revoked because they’ve already demonstrated incredibly poor judgment. Sorry, you’re shit out of luck. You can’t be trusted with democracy.

Another litmus test for whether people should have democracy or hot, is apparently whether we believe they will do what we want them to or not. If they won’t do what the US wants, then fuck them and fuck democracy. If Egypt isn’t planning on picking a pro-American, pro-Israel leader, then they’re unworthy of democracy, and must continue to live in their own filth, under a dictatorship of our choosing.

First of all, that’s a dickhead point of view. People have a right to choose their own government. If Egypt is made up of 20% Muslim Brotherhood members, then the Muslim Brotherhood should have 20% representation at the table, whether we like it or not (for the record, I don’t). That’s the makeup of the country. The government should reflect the people it represents. If we’re not down with that simple concept, then I say we eradicate all republicans from our government. Fuck conservatives. They’re dangerous, frequently run our country into the ground, and they shouldn’t have a seat at the table even though half of all Americans fall for their bullshit over and over again. They’re ignorant, and therefore unworthy of representation.

Secondly, I find it rather inconceivable that a nation is rising up against the oppression of a dictator, only to then choose the oppression of religious extremists. Call me naive, but I just don’t see that as being the likely outcome here. How chicken shit do you have to believe that it will turn out that way? I swear, these fucking people are afraid of their own shadows.

Thirdly, so what if it did turn out that way? What if the Muslim Brotherhood, which represents 20% of the people, managed to take control of 100% of the government because they’re fucking powerful and brilliant enough to pull that off? At this point, we must remove our spines and lobotomise ourselves in order to accept the premise of this paragraph. Let’s assume that the protesters in Egypt successfully fight this fight for freedom, only to hand the country over to those that will oppress them in the name of religious purity (because Egyptians are stupid and easily duped!). So what? Is it conceivable that this new radical regime will leave 1.5 billion dollars of American aid on the table so that they can impose Shariah law on a country that isn’t down with that practice? Does that make any fucking sense to anyone? And if they do, how long will that last? How incredibly chicken shit do you have to be to fear this scenario?

We have never, in modern history watched a country fall into Shariah law. We are only seeing countries that have not yet moved beyond Shariah law. Contrary to what Fox tells you, Iran is not a country ruled by Shariah law. It’s a country ruled by the military. The ayatollahs lost control of the country a long time ago. The lapse int Shariah was a temporary, reactionary protest against the intervention of the west. The uprising we saw last year are not over. They were just the beginning.

And to the AIPACian Israelis, let me say this; grow the fuck up and learn to negotiate with the enemy. You have no right or ability to control how other countries choose to govern themselves. Get over it! If you don’t learn to negotiate peace with your enemies, you have no chance for survival over the long term. Dominance over other countries has never worked for anyone else, in the history of humankind. You’re all fucking children if you think it will work for you. And you should feel deeply ashamed of yourselves for supporting the oppression of other people in the name of your own survival.

I firmly believe two things;

  • I believe in the American way of life
  • I believe that humans are fundamentally the same all over the world

I know that the principles of freedom and free will are the best way to live and to govern. I believe that humans all want the same things; to be able live our lives and to raise a family in comfort and peace. I do not believe that in the modern world, anyone will ultimately choose oppression in any name. I believe that, with the exception of a few whackos, people will ultimately choose owning an iPhone over being stoned to death for committing adultery. I believe in democracy. I believe that people will always choose self governance over anything else. I believe this will all my mind.

If you don’t believe this, then you don’t really believe in the righteousness of the principles that gave birth to America. You’re afraid of the American way, and you should shut the fuck up, because listening to your irrational, whiny ass fear mongering is making me excessively bitchy.

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Obamacare Couldn’t BE More Constitutional

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Partisan, right wing, hack judges all across the country are ruling health reform unconstitutional. Specifically, they’re targeting the part of the bill that mandates that every American obtain health insurance. These rulings are comical, but I’ll get to that soon enough. I first want to start with my prediction on what will happen with health reform. Republicans have passed repeal in the house. This is meaningless and purely a ceremonial gesture to appease their base. They know it won’t pass the senate and they don’t want it to. Let me explain. We all know that the health insurance industry has spent a lot of money on political contributions to ensure that politicians (both democratic and republican) protect their interests. The provisions of the bill that have already been enacted have increased the number of subscribers of health insurance. Small businesses are taking advantage of the federal subsidies that are now available to them, and offering their employees insurance for the first time. Parents of twenty-something kids are adding their children to their policies because they now can. Insurance companies are seeing double digit spikes in new enrollments. Do you think that the insurance company overlords are going to let their republican subjugates take away all that new business? Fuck no! The part of the bill that sounds most egregious (mandates) is the part that insurance companies won’t ever, ever allow to be repealed. They’ll never, ever repeal the small business subsidies or mandates because they’re bringing in the cash, and at the end of the day, that’s all the insurance companies care about. My guess is that they’re going to have to subversively chip away at the parts of the bill that cost insurance companies money. You know, the parts that all Americans agree we want like disallowing rescission, or denial of coverage based on pre-existing conditions. The republicans won’t be allowed to repeal the parts of the bill that they rail against. So if you’re worried about full repeal, don’t be. It will never happen. Now onto the idiot judges, dipshit state attorneys general, and any asshat that claims unconstitutionality in an effort to repeal the bill. Thanks to Tom Hartman for bringing this little gem to my attention. Turns out that the 5th congress of the United States passed a bill titled, "An Act For The Relief Of Sick And Disabled Seamen". This law required that privately employed sailors obtain health insurance. Here’s a little background. Even early on in our country’s history, it was obvious that trade with other countries was going to be instrumental in creating a strong economy. In those days, our ability to trade relied solely on private merchant ships. Since working on a merchant ship was dangerous work, seamen were getting hurt in such numbers, and with such frequency, that it was leaving shipping companies with a serious shortage of manpower. Enter; the federal government. In 1798, they passed "An Act For The Relief Of Sick And Disabled Seamen". This law did a couple of things;

  • It created The Maritime Hospital Service, which was a series of hospitals that were built and run by the federal government for the purpose of treating injured private seamen.
  • It mandated that maritime sailors pay 1% in taxes to pay for these hospitals. Those taxes were withheld by the ship’s owner and paid directly to the federal government.

Can you smell the socialism in the air? Oh, but it gets better. Members of the 5th congress that passed this law included:

  • John Langdon
  • Jonathan Dayton
  • William Blount
  • Richard Dobbs Spaight
  • John Rutledge
  • Abraham Baldwin

Why are these names relevant? Because they fucking signed the United States Constitution. The Vice President at the time, who served as President Of The Senate was Thomas Jefferson. Wanna know who the President that signed the bill into law was? That would be John Adams. What do John Adams and Thomas Jefferson have in common? They helped to write the freakin Declaration Of Independence. I think that they had a really fucking clear idea of what the founders intended. Let’s add another historically deficient asshat to this group, shall we? A couple of weeks ago, a North Dakota state representative (and asshat) Hal Wick proposed legislation that would mandate that every citizen of North Dakota purchase a gun, upon reaching twenty one years of age. He thought that he was getting cute by pointing out that mandating people to buy anything is unconstitutional. Wick maintains that he knows that his proposed legislation is unconstitutional, and that he’s just trying to make a statement about mandates. Wrong again, Bob. George Washington signed a bill entitled, "The Militia Act Of 1792". Wanna guess what provisions were in this bill? Read for yourself;

That each and every free able-bodied white male citizen of the respective States, resident therein, who is or shall be of age of eighteen years, and under the age of forty-five years (except as is herein after excepted) shall severally and respectively be enrolled in the militia, by the Captain or Commanding Officer of the company, within whose bounds such citizen shall reside, and that within twelve months after the passing of this Act.

That every citizen, so enrolled and notified, shall, within six months thereafter, provide himself with a good musket or firelock, a sufficient bayonet and belt, two spare flints, and a knapsack, a pouch, with a box therein, to contain not less than twenty four cartridges, suited to the bore of his musket or firelock, each cartridge to contain a proper quantity of powder and ball; or with a good rifle, knapsack, shot-pouch, and powder-horn, twenty balls suited to the bore of his rifle, and a quarter of a pound of powder;

Ignorant and unoriginal Hal. Way to go!
 
This health reform issue will ultimately end up with the supreme court. That’s where it will get fun. What do you think the odds are that Scalia will advocate for his strict constructionist views on this one? They’re actually pretty good. Not because Scalia is actually a strict constructionist, meaning that he doesn’t believe that the constitution is a living, breathing document that was intended to be amended over time. He clearly isn’t, despite what he says. If he were a strict constructionist, he would never have argued for corporate personhood in the Citizen’s United ruling, since corporate personhood doesn’t appear anywhere in the constitution. No, he will whip out the strict constructionist routine because it enables him to serve his corporate masters. Remember, the insurance companies don’t want the revenue generating mandate removed from the health reform bill.
 
So if you’re worried about health reform being repealed, don’t be. But beware of your legislators quietly trying to strip away the really good stuff that we all want.

In the meantime, feel free to rub the founders’ real intent in the noses of any asshat that tries to tell you that Obamacare is unconstitutional.

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Does Fox News Make You Stupid?

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You’re going to be surprised by my answer; NO.

I recently engaged into the latest of hundreds of political debates on Facebook with a republican friend of a friend. I actually learned something this time around! The learning didn’t come from anything the republican said because he, like 100% of his brethren, didn’t have anything to offer other than cute (and baseless) theories.

What I learned is that there are no smart republicans left. I don’t mean that as a partisan attack. This is an observation that each debate I engage in reinforces. Republicans didn’t used to be disinterested, or even devoid of facts to support their points of view thirty years ago. Something very bad has happened to them over the past three decades. I’m serious. And anyone that has attempted to have a discussion with a republican has most definitely experienced this.

Here’s how it always goes; the republican will make a comment to a political post. Said comment will contain no demonstrable, fact based sources to support the comment. I will present several, non-partisan links containing tangible data to counter republican’s point. Republican will ignore the data, and respond with another baseless talking point. At this point other people may jump in with their personal observations based on the fact that the topic at hand happens to be in an area of their professional expertise. The republican will again ignore these observations and offer yet another baseless opinion. I’m a bitch that loves data and provable facts, so I will post yet more links to disprove the torrent of baseless theories. You know what’s coming next from the republican, don’t you? If you guessed that the republican ignores the latest round of data, only to offer another fanciful opinion, you win a cookie!

Time and time again, this is how these discussions go. We’ve all, liberals and independents alike, had this experience. Can we attribute this disinterest in facts to Fox news? I hypothesize that we can’t. Not entirely, anyway. My theory is based on the observation that the republican in a debate almost never attempts to cite a source to back up their point. They don’t even bother to cite a blatantly partisan source like the Cato Institute or a Rasmussen poll, even though Fox refers to them in perpetuity. They just can’t be bothered with facts, manufactured or otherwise.

Now granted, thirty years ago, conservative ideology was easier to support because it hadn’t been disproved as thoroughly as it is today. We’ve had thirty years of republican and democratic presidents alike, implementing conservative practices. We’ve systematically peeled back financial regulations that kept our economy stable for over forty years. We’ve lifted regulations on business, agriculture, guns, and oil drilling. And time and again, we’ve seen this deregulation lead to disaster. We have outbreaks of contaminated food with more regularity than we’ve ever seen. We’ve seen oil spill disasters escalate in both frequency and scope. We’ve come to expect that our job market to collapse at least once every decade, even though these severe downturns didn’t happen between the early 40s and the 80s. And we’re forced to accept incident after incident where a person of questionable mental health kills dozens of innocent people with weapons that serve no purpose other than to kill a lot or people quickly. These “free market” theories were more viable thirty years ago, before (literally) every single one blew up in our faces.

Is that decreasing viability of conservative principles the reason why republicans sound more stupid today than they did thirty years ago? YES! Fox isn’t responsible for creating uninformed automatons, it’s just given them a home. Fox news viewers wouldn’t be more susceptible to facts of Fox didn’t exist. They can’t even be bothered to cite the bullshit facts that Fox so generously provides them with.

I think that blaming Fox for the epidemic of dumbass republicans is too easy, and not supported by facts. I’m not dismissing the force that Fox has proven to be in America. I’m just saying that blaming them for the segment of the population that doesn’t have any use for facts doesn’t make sense.

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