2012 | The Bitchy Pundit - Part 3

Pro Life, Really

March 8, 2012March 7, 2012 by Bitchy

I’ve spent the last few weeks listening to the right wing blather on about their so called pro choice views. I’ve watched as they have passed (or tried to) anti-choice legislation all across the country. Something just occurred to me; they need to put up or shut up. Being pro life doesn’t begin and end at opposing abortion. No, there’s much more to it than that.

If being anti abortion is the totality of your advocacy for life, then we need to start referring to that opinion as “pro breathing”. Being pro life should be about advocating for a life. When people talk about their lives, they’re not referring to their ability to breathe. They’re usually talking about their emotional entanglements, professional situation, financial standing, family, and about a million other things. As a legislator, if you’re not working to increase the stability in these areas for your constituents, and your “pro life” advocacy begins and ends at preventing abortions, then you’re not pro life. You’re a simpleton and an asshat.

Let me give you some examples. You can’t be anti-union and pro life. If your legislative agenda is to neuter unions, then your goal is to lower wages for workers. Lower wages equals a shittier life, which is the whole second half of your “pro life” slogan. Lower wages increase the necessity for two wage earners in a household. Two wage earners means that there’s nobody at home to raise and create a meaningful life for your kids. We used to be able to raise kids on the wages of one parent. We can’t do that anymore because wages are either flat (if you’re lucky enough to be highly skilled) or going down. I don’t know if you’ve noticed this or not, but we’ve got a generation of assholes on our hands now. That’s right, America is raising a generation of self entitled, spoiled, rude, fucking assholes. I’m of course, not referring to your kids. Your kids are fabulous. It’s everyone else’s kids that are assholes. They’re assholes because no one has the time or the energy to raise them properly. Kids need attention and guidance. They don’t receive the attention required to turn them into thoughtful human beings when both parents have to work, just to feed them. Here’s a quote from Rick Santorum, circa 1994,

“What we have is moms raising children in single-parent households simply breeding more criminals,” he said. When Santorum wasn’t comparing single mothers to animals, he still pressed the issue of out-of-wedlock births and crime. He told the Philadelphia Inquirer in 1994 that “we will never solve the crime problem unless we solve the welfare problem. They are deeply intertwined.” […]

That’s a pretty fucked up thing for Rick Santorum to say. Why the emphasis on Rick Santorum in that sentence? Because I would find that statement significantly less offensive if it came from a legislator who spends their career working on ways to improve people’s lives, thereby creating more stability and decreasing the number of “broken” homes. Financial woes are a big factor in driving divorce rates up.

You can’t be “pro life” if you’re pro cutting taxes for the wealthiest among us, while raising “fees” for everyone else in order to make up for that revenue loss. That’s how republicans like to do it. The fee for me to get my first driver’s license was $15. The fee to renew my driver’s license this year will be $160. They love fees, but “hate” taxes. Sixty years ago, US corporations paid 40% of the total tax revenue collected in America. Today, they pay 9%. You wanna guess who pays 42% of the revenue collected?

This didn’t happen accidentally. That happened because of actions taken by our legislators. If you’re a legislator that espouses pro life views while enabling this to happen, then you’re a lying sack of shit, and you’re anti-life.

If you’re anti-contraception and anti-choice, your goal is clearly to punish women for having sex, and you’re definitely not pro-life. But you’re definitely a fucking moron since, in your quest to punish women, you forget that you’re also pummeling men. Nothing erodes the self esteem of a man as effectively as feeling inadequate. And nothing makes a man feel more inadequate than not being able to support his family. Let’s not forget that the GOP isn’t taking a stand against giving single women access to contraception. They’re taking a stand against denying any woman access to contraception, which diminishes the notion of family planning. Sorry couples, you must accept that every time you have sex, you may end up with a child, whether you’re in a position to have one or not. So men, you’d better get to working harder and earning more if you want to hang onto your dignity and masculinity. And if you’re a man whose wife suffers from endometriosis, you’re going to have to work extra hard to pay for your wife’s birth control pills because if you don’t, those ovarian tumors might make it impossible for her to ever have your kids.

I am totally fucking fed up with anti-life advocates calling themselves pro-life, simply because they work toward making abortion a nearly impossible procedure to have. People don’t choose to have abortions because they’re fun. They choose to have abortions because circumstances make it too difficult to actually have that child. These so called pro-lifers need to stop pretending that women have abortions on a whim, or simply because they’re assholes that enjoy having their uteri vacuumed out for kicks. That is a bullshit position taken by people that are too fucking lazy to think beyond their self-loathing fueled beliefs.

If you’re not working toward making people’s lives better so that they don’t have to choose abortion out of necessity, you can go fuck yourself. I’m sick of listening to your hypocritical bullshit. And I’m not letting you get away with referring to yourself as “pro-life” just because you’re anti-abortion. If you’re a voter who is genuinely appalled by abortion, you should be demanding the same thing I’m demanding. And if you’re not, you can go fuck yourself too.

The Absence Of Faith

February 9, 2012 by Bitchy

Someone needs to help me out with this birth control controversy because I’m completely fucking flummoxed by it.

Here’s how I understand the situation; HHS (health and human services) passed a law mandating that insurance companies must cover birth control pills at 100% (meaning there are no copays involved). So far, so good. HHS has exempted churches from this requirement (they lost me on this part, but I’ll get to that later), but did not exempt religious organizations that employ people. So the Catholic church does not need to have the type of insurance that covers the pill, but Catholic Charities does. That last part is where the controversy that eludes me lies.

I worked for Catholic Charities at one point in my career. I’m Jewish, so I have no interest in living my life according to the tenets of the Catholic Church. Their belief that the use of contraception (yes, it was condoms back then too) is wrong had nothing to do with me, just like my abhorrence of pedophilia and the covering up of pedophilia apparently has nothing to do with the Catholic church. There’s no fucking reason on the planet why my insurance coverage should cover less than anyone else’s, just because I work for Catholic charities. If I can put my disgust with your covering up a world wide epidemic of child rape in your church, you can put up with my desire not to get pregnant.

But clashing beliefs aside, what’s the big deal? Why can’t the nuns themselves have access to free birth control pills? Aren’t they Catholics? I thought they didn’t believe in birth control? Does the church really believe that the $10 a month copay is the only thing keeping the nuns faithful? Seriously, what the fuck? Is the church so fragile that their beliefs can’t stand up to free birth control? How fucking insecure about your faith are you? This isn’t about practicing your faith. This is about limiting people’s options in an effort to make them bend to your will.

And let me mention that the most effective way to minimize abortion is through birth control. That’s a demonstrable fact so don’t give me any of the bullshit abstinence crap. So if you’re against abortion, you must be for birth control. If you’re opposed to both birth control and abortion, then your goal is clearly to punish women for having sex. I would tell those people to to go fuck themselves, but I’m pretty sure that their hatred of women stems from the fact that they can’t get any to fuck them, so they’re fucking themselves plenty.

But anyway, I digress. I don’t understand the controversy. If you don’t believe in the pill, don’t use it. And if you believe in your faith, then have some fucking faith in it. Free birth control will not bring your religion crashing down on you because it will not tempt believers away from you.

And right wing media – please, for the love of god, stop with the nontroversies. They’re becoming tiresome, and you’re shrinking your base with each and every one.

Rooting For Newt

January 30, 2012 by Bitchy

Not because I believe that Obama will have an easier time crushing him in the general election. In my opinion both he and Romney are terrible candidates that, unless a major event (like a total economic collapse) happens, Obama is virtually assured a second term.

I want Newt to win because of Citizen’s United. If you’ve been paying attention to right wing media (don’t worry, I have been so that you don’t have to!), you know that the republican establishment does not want Newt to win. They’re doing everything they can to crush him not because they think he’s a danger to the republic (to quote Cenk Uygur) as liberals do, but because they know he’s a danger to republicans. Virtually every republican that served in the house during Gingrich’s tenure as speaker has come out to eviscerate him. Fox News, Drudge, The Weekly Standard, and every other right wing media outlet is on a jihad to make sure that Newt doesn’t win. Four years ago, Newt would have been forced out of the race by now because he’d be broke.

But now, thanks to Citizen’s United, he’s still humming along (no that wasn’t a mistress/ blow job dig, but enjoy). He’s still in the race because one single, solitary billionaire wants him to win. Sheldon Adelson is Newt’s fairy godfather. He’s (so far) thrown $10 million at the problem if Newt being unelectable and generally unlikeable. Just so you know, Sheldon Adelson is worth $21 billion dollars. He can give Newt twice as much money as was spent by both candidates in the 2008 campaign combined, and not even feel the loss of that money. The party elders are PISSED!

We don’t create millionaires in this country anymore. We now turn billionaires into multi-billionaires. This isn’t an accident. This situation was finely crafted by republican politicians and their cronies for the past forty years. It’s escalated to an untenable situation since the majority of democrats agreed to jump on the bandwagon.

If Newt and Adelson manage to hijack the nomination, it will make the powers that be realize that it’s no longer the 99%. It’s now the 99.7%. And that additional .7% is them. Maybe if one multi-billionaire goes rogue, and destroys all of the plotting and planning that republicans have done over the past three years, they will realize that the system they helped to create can crush anyone.

Even them. So I say, “GO NEWT GO!” And if Newt doesn’t pull it off this time, I hope that Sheldon Adelon finds an even more loathsome candidate to back next time.

The UnAmerican President.

January 25, 2012 by Bitchy

If Mitt Romney ever managed to become president, any movie made about him should be called “The UnAmerican President”. I’m not being hyperbolic. I find Mitt Romney to be a deeply unpatriotic piece of crap that, as far as I can tell, has only ever leeched off of this country without giving back a god damned thing.

Let me start with his tax returns. I know that everyone is focused in on the 13.9% he paid in federal taxes, as well as the Cayman and Swiss bank accounts. These things are bad, but they’re not what stood out to me when I read the details about the returns. The 13.9% isn’t necessarily something that I’m upset with Mitt over. We have a fucked up tax code that rewards not working, and punishes working. When you have a tax structure in which capital gains are taxed at a lower rate than earned income, you have a society that says it doesn’t value hard work. In my opinion, nothing should be taxed at a lower rate than your paycheck. Not a god damned thing. Taxes on earned income should be the floor of taxation. Everything else should go up from there.

The Cayman Islands and Swiss bank accounts are things that I hold Mitt accountable for. It is not legal to put your money in an offshore bank account for the purpose of avoiding taxes that you owe on that money. That’s a scummy and unpatriotic thing to do and in Mitt’s case, it’s gratuitously greedy. Paying those taxes would have absolutely no impact on his quality of life. When you’re worth over $200 million dollars, losing even $10 million a year has zero impact on your life. It’s unnecessary greed. In Mitt’s case, it’s unnecessary greed on steroids. He’s been running for president for the past 5 years. He knows, from the 2008 campaign, that the perception of him as a self entitled rich fucker is his biggest liability. He had to assume that he wasn’t going to be able to avoid releasing tax returns forever. And yet this guy is so fucking greedy that he can’t suck it up and pay an extra 5% – 10% in taxes for a mere 5 years, in order to diffuse that perception. It’s irrational greed. You’re jeopardizing your chances of becoming leader of the free world over $20 – $30 million dollars that you won’t miss, don’t need, and probably aren’t even aware are there? What a fucking moron.

I agree that the absurdly low tax rate and the offshore bank accounts are newsworthy, but they’re not the most telling or relevant pieces of information that the tax returns revealed. The first thing that jumped out at me is that Mitt Romney gave more money to the LDS Church than he paid in federal income tax. He’s obviously got the money to give, and he’s willing to give it, but not to his country. Not to help pay for 2 wars that he supported. No, he’s happy to give it in order to propagate his religious beliefs. This isn’t the first time he put church before country. Remember that he never served in Vietnam because he was on his mission in France at the time.

Let me take a moment to rant about that. Why the fuck do we allow people to get out of mandatory service, so that they can instead prosthelytize their religion? What the fuck is that? Seriously, it’s bullshit. They’re not doing missionary work to help the poor or needy. They’re not out there helping widows or other people that are collateral damage in the war effort. No, they’re out there serving their own self interest by trying to convert others to their way of thinking. I think that’s a bullshit reason not to serve, and we shouldn’t allow it for any religion. Go preach on your own time. We’re fighting a fucking war.

Speaking of the Vietnam war, here’s a lovely picture of Mittens advocating for a war that he wasn’t willing to fight. Charming, no? Honestly, can this man be a bigger piece of shit?

I honestly feel like Mitt has nothing but take advantage of everything this country has to offer, while giving the bare minimum back to it.

And the sad thing is that he’s still not the most loathsome person running for president.

Obama Is The Luckiest Man In The World

January 22, 2012 by Bitchy

He’s got an uncomfortably low approval rating, decreasing support within his own base, an opposition party that wants to crush him like they’ve never wanted to crush another and yet, he’s virtually assured a second term in office. It almost feels like he’s won the lottery ten times in a row, by buying one single lottery every week.

His incredibly good fortune started when the republican party rolled out their clown car of potential opponents. Seriously, these people are just fucking embarrassing. They weren’t just bad candidates. They were among the dumbest, and most dishonest people in the country. We started with two morons that (mercifully), never ran; Sarah Palin with her IQ of lint, and Donald Trump who never met a company (or hairstyle) that he couldn’t bankrupt. Then we moved onto Michele Bachmann, whose own staffers said has no use for facts. Next up was Rick Perry, who I’m convinced has alzheimer’s or some other similar affliction (I’m not kidding). When he proved to be too dumb for anyone that isn’t a Texan, we were treated to Herman Cain who took almost as much pride in his ignorance (remember Uz Becky Becky Becky Becky Stan Stan Stan), as he had hubris in his perceived sexual appeal. And let’s not forget Rick Santorum who is all about small government, except that he literally wants government up your ass in order to make sure that nothing else gets up there. Because once you let something up your ass, you’re invariably going to want to fuck (and marry) your neighbor’s schnauzer. Come out of the closet already, Rick. You’re entirely too obsessed with the ass to pass for straight.

This brings us to Obama’s latest winning lottery ticket; Newton Leroy Gingrich. This is a man whose own party voted to remove him from the speakership for being too corrupt, even for congress. This is a man who, at the age of 16 was fucking his teacher whom he later married, and subsequently left after she was diagnosed with MS. But don’t worry about Newt, he was already fucking the woman that would become his next wife, before he left the first one. Being nothing if not consistent, he left that mistress-and-then-wife when she received a cancer diagnosis. Once again, he had the next mistress/wife lined up before he left the cancer riddled one. And since everything Newt does must be more loathsome than the thing he did before, he was probably sitting in his car (parked at the hospital), after just having served wife #2 with divorce papers, getting blown by soon to be wife #3, while on his cell phone with CNN, doing an interview about what a dirtbag Bill Clinton was for cheating on his wife. But Newt’s long history of douchebaggery isn’t where Obama got lucky.

Obama’s luck stems from the fact that Newt is going to do to his (Obama’s) eventual opponent, what Obama won’t; tear him from limb to limb. Over the course of the next nine days, before Newt is forced to realize that he’s done running for president, he’s going to make Mitt release his tax returns. Not just this years tax returns, but several years tax returns. He’s going to force Mitt to go on the defense, which is something that Mitt sucks at.

Every time Mitt opens his mouth, he looks like more and more of a self entitled fat cat, who has no fucking idea how 99% of Americans live. Seriously Mittens, fire your health insurance provider? Where the fuck do you live? Because where I live, you get the insurance plan that your company provides you with(assuming you’re lucky enough to have a job). And if that plan sucks, you’re lucky if there’s one provider in your area that takes single subscribers. Firing your company sponsored health insurance plan will cost you hundreds of dollars a month, if you never seek out health care. What a fucking asshat, seriously. Newt is going to force Mitt to confirm that he has millions of dollars parked in the Cayman Islands, not because he’s sheltering it from taxes of course, but because the money prefers a tropical climate. Massachusetts is just too frigid a climate for the money. In order to keep the money happy, Mitt needs to keep the money warm and nicely tanned so that it’s in a good mood when it pays all of the taxes it owes the United States.

Newt is going to force Mitt to say stupid, implausible shit like that so that when he does become the nominee (and he will), Obama’s PACs need only run clips of Mitt speaking. I don’t believe that Obama is capable of damaging Mitt the way Newt is. During the 2008 campaign, we all collectively believed that Obama rope-a-doped Hillary. We were wrong. She rope-a-doped herself. In watching Obama govern for three years now, it’s obvious that he’s not a fighter. He’s quiet and subdued right up until the moment when he acquiesces to his opponent.

Yes, Obama got unfuckingbelievably lucky again. He can keep sucking at his job without fear of getting fired from it.

Dear Internet, Here’s My Advice On SOPA

January 19, 2012January 19, 2012 by Bitchy

SOPA is dead! But don’t get too excited. It won’t stay dead. It’s going to come back to life over and over again for at least the next few decades. It will keep coming back mostly because of what tech companies did, not because of what Hollywood interests have done (or will do).

What did they do that was so horrible? I have to give you a little bit of background info before I can explain where the monumental fuck up by Google (I’m using Google to refer to most of the tech industry here, since listing them would take too long) happened. The tech sector in general, is not a big contributor to political causes. I’m not saying they don’t make donations, but they make fairly insignificant donations in the grand scheme of corporate “giving”. Here’s where the tech companies fucked up; when SOPA and PIPA first reared their ugly heads, the tech industry responded by hiring lobbyists and throwing money at politicians. On its face, that seems like a reasonable course of action.

But in reality, throwing money at the issue is going to prove to be disastrous. Google basically told congress that they’re willing to cave in to extortion. And we all know that when you pay a blackmailer once, you invite other blackmailers to fuck you.

No, they made a bad opening gambit. They basically insured that some version of this bill will come back again and again, since it proved to be such a great fundraiser this time around.

We have a system of governance with seriously fucked up incentive structures built into it, which is why is will never serve the people. There’s no reason why our representatives should give a shit about “the general welfare” of the people. They answer to their corporate masters, because that’s who pays them.

Paying politicians not to fuck you just perpetuates the problem. No, the opening gambit should have been to shut down the internet. Doing that would have put this SOPA bullshit to bed once and for all. Reddit, WiKiPedia, Boing Boing, and everyone else that went dark on Wednesday did a great thing. They should have opened with that move.

While I appreciate Google’s part in the protest, I’m a little pissed at them for not going all in. It was a stupid move on their part. If Google had shut down all of it’s offerings, they would have literally brought the world to its knees. A day without Google, Gmail, G+, or G anything, would be a day that goes down in history. Can you imagine the horror of having to use Bing for a day? Oh, the humanity! They cost themselves a shitload of money by not going dark yesterday. The extortion money that they’re going to have to pay to our politicians over the next couple of decades will far eclipse the loss of revenue from going dark for twenty-four hours.

Are you listening, Eric Schmidt (I’m actually speaking to every CEO that does business on the internet)? I know that you’re new to this whole, our-politicians-are-feckless-thugs thing, but you’re going to have to figure it out fast.

I almost forgot – before I sign off, I would like to say something to Twitter. You guys are a bunch of ASSHATS and simpletons for not being able to recognize a threat to your livelihood when you see it. Fucking morons!

Vice President Rand Paul?

January 18, 2012 by Bitchy

No, I’m not crazy.Okay, maybe I’m slightly crazy but let me make my case. I haven’t commented on the republican primaries because I haven’t found them to be all that interesting. Romney is going to be the nominee. Romney was always going to be the nominee. None of the drama that ensues along the way, was every going to be memorable in a long lasting way.

The primaries weren’t interesting to me until now. They got interesting when Newt reverted back to the Newt we all know and loathe. But that alone didn’t do it. The emergence of the old, loathsome Newt combined with an infusion of $5 million dollars (to help him amplify his hatefulness) is what has peaked my interest. Newt is determined to implement a scorched earth campaign on Romney. He’s going to leave Mitt as bloody and bruised as his funds will allow.

Here’s why that’s interesting; republican primaries are not set up as “winner take all” elections. So if a candidate wins the primary in a state with 39% of the vote, they don’t get all of the delegates for that state. They get a percentage of delegates that is roughly proportionate to the percentage they won the state by. If Mitt Romney keeps “winning” each state by getting less than 50% of the votes, he won’t have 51% of the delegates and will not be the nominee. He would have to go to one of the other candidates that have the percentage of delegates that he needs to broker some kind of deal with them, in exchange for giving him their delegates.

We can safely assume that Santorum, Perry, and Huntsman will be out after South Carolina. I have a feeling that Paul is staying in until the end, which makes Gingrich the determining factor in Romney’s fate. If Gingrich can hang in until super Tuesday, he sets up Ron Paul as the “king maker” that Romney will have to deal with to get the delegates he needs to be the nominee. That’s a big “if”. Right now, Gingrich’s campaign is being fueled by one single donor that, thanks to citizen’s united, stuffed his PAC with $5 million dollars. $5 million goes a long way in South Carolina because it’s such a small media market with relatively cheap air time. If he can’t get more money, he won’t make it beyond South Carolina. But if Gingrich makes it to super Tuesday, he will be siphoning those votes away from Romney. If Paul can keep getting 20% – 25%, that puts Romney at less that 50% in a lot of primaries.

Gingrich won’t make it all the way to the end for a couple of reasons. First off, his vitriol and arrogance will most definitely gaffe him out of the race. Secondly, he’s going to need several fairy Godmothers to “PAC” him $500 million dollars. Before citizen’s united, that would have been impossible. As it stands now, he has a small chance. He’s also got the party elders gunning for him, so he won’t be raising any funds through traditional means. Karl Rove seems to be on a war path against Gingrich.

So if all of that happens (I’m not saying it’s likely, but this is fun!), then Ron Paul ends up with the delegates that Romney needs. These deals are obviously usually centered around getting the Vice Presidential slot. I don’t believe that Ron Paul has the slightest interest in being the VP on the ticket. Plus, he’s older than god. I don’t think that reminiscing about his play dates with Jesus are going to play well with voters.

No, he’s going to deal for his miscreant son that no one likes. Hence, my theory that Vice President Rand Paul may be an ugly, ugly reality we may face just as we’re feeling safe that the republican car has passed us by.