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Cheney In Wonderland

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I’ve been trying to write a post about Dick Cheney’s autobiography for weeks now. I highlighted every single demonstrably wrong thing that he said in the book, with the intention of debunking it all one by one. I even went as far as to read the awful George Tenet book that I couldn’t get through when it originally came out. I looked up statements from Colin Powell, Condi, and even George W Bush refuting Cheney’s claims. I was armed and ready to fire away at the book. But when I started writing that post, I realized that this approach was both pointless, and a waste.

It was pointless because any diligent follower of politics already knows the facts about Iraq, Bin Laden, and Katrina. It would have been a waste of a post because I would have to completely skip over the things that really struck me about Cheney in this book.

So I’m going to write a post about my impressions and observations of Dick Cheney, as a result of reading his book because I think it will make for more interesting reading.

The first thing that struck me about the book is that the prologue, the fucking prologue is the day of 9/11. Seriously, Dick? First of all, he obviously has no idea what purpose a prologue is supposed to serve. Secondly, the worst goddamned day in American history is the thing he’s salivating to talk about first?

I can’t understate how much Cheney gives the impression that he was running the show on that day. In his version of the story, he was literally calling all the shots because of “communication issues” on the president’s end. Don’t get me wrong, I tend to believe this account because I remember Bush’s famous “My Pet Goat” seven minutes. There was nothing in that performance that told me he was prepared to deal with a kid with a skinned knee, let alone a major attack on America. I just find it fascinating that Cheney chose to say what he did. Most people, after having served a president, have the decorum to never ever malign or damage that president’s reputation or authority in any way. Not Cheney. He’s classless and feels no loyalty or respect for Bush (you’ll see more evidence of this later). He has no qualms sharing an account that makes the president look like a hapless rube while Cheney “has everything under control”.

At one point during that attack on that day, Cheney actually gave the order to shoot down flight 93 after it had gone off course. I don’t have a problem with the order being given under those circumstances. I have a problem with the fucking vice president giving that order, because the guy who was never legitimately elected to be president in the first place can’t (unsurprisingly) handle the job. He claims that he had approval from the president to give that order, but that statement isn’t at all consistent with the lack of communication between the two of them throughout the day.

So there are a few things that struck me about Cheney’s upbringing. They mostly struck me as odd, given the political ideology he advocated for later in life. He talks about his father who, while struggling to make ends meet while getting through college, decides to take a civil service exam and subsequently takes a government job instead of finishing college. He then takes another, higher paying government job. At one point in the book, he writes (about his father)


He was also proud of the pension that came with federal employment – a pride that I didn’t really understand until as an adult I had learned about the economic catastrophes that his parents and grandparents had experienced and that had shadowed his own youth. I’ve often reflected on how different was the utterly stable environment he provided for his family and wondered if because of that I have been able to take risks, to change directions, and to leave one career path for another with hardly a second thought.So let me get this straight, Dick: the government came in on a white horse and saved your family in a much more overt way than it helps the average American and yet, you join the party whose aim is to destroy government because it’s never helped anyone?

At this point in the book, I’m realizing that naming him Dick was nothing short of prophetic.

Another interesting event: in 1959 Dick was awarded a full scholarship (which included room and board) to Yale. He ended up getting kicked out for getting shitty grades. What kind of asshole pisses off the gift of a free ivy league education? And my first question about the grant is, was it a federally funded grant?

When he got back to Wyoming from Yale, he took a union job where, “I was earning $3.10 an hour, which was good pay in those days, and picking up a lot of overtime and time and a half.” It’s nice to see you enjoying the benefits of union membership, Dick.

At some point, he decides to go back to school and enrolls at the University of Wyoming because they had to take him regardless of his shitty academic record, because he had graduated from a Wyoming high school. Let me work through all of this; so Dick went to a socialist, state funded school because the government had a mandate that they had to take him? This fucking asshole has been the beneficiary of government handouts and regulations his whole miserable life. But his sucking off the government teat didn’t end there. While he was in school, he earned some extra money by reading to a veteran who had lost his sight. Dick’s $1.75 an hour was paid for by the granddaddy of all socialist medicine; the veteran’s administration.

I honestly can’t comprehend how someone can have so much disdain for government when they have directly benefitted from its existence in so many ways. But not learning lessons from life is an ongoing theme in Dick’s life.

At one point, he and Lynne are engaged so he starts saving money for their honeymoon. He gets a bad case of food poisoning and has to go to the hospital. He didn’t have any insurance, so he had to spend all of the money he had saved on medical bills. Here’s another example of Dick’s imperviousness to learning from facts and life experience. There are three kinds of people in the world; the kind that can empathize with people, even though they’ve never been in their shoes; the kind that can empathize with people only if they’ve been in their shoes; and then there’s Dick, the kind that have been in your shoes, but still want you to go fuck yourself because they’re wearing much more expensive shoes now. Look Dick, you didn’t have insurance because you couldn’t afford it. How about you learn something from that experience and apply that to your political ideology?

Another part that I found fascinating was when he talked about his draft dodging. The dodging wasn’t interesting, the way he ignored it was. Here’s everything he said about it, in its entirety:

Shortly after I began work on my PhD, I had turned 26 and was no longer eligible for the draft. In the days when I had been, I had received deferments as a student and father. Earlier, when I was doing line work, I had been classified 1-A, but draft numbers were low and I wasn’t called. If I had been, I would have been happy to serve.

I find it fascinating that there’s no emotion or explanation here at all. He doesn’t explain the deferments, doesn’t talk about how the possibility of drafted made him feel, nothing. Just says that he deferred (he left out that it was 5 times), and then contradicts his actions by saying that he would have been happy to serve. Okay Dick, that sounds plausible. And again, this is a guy who was terrified of dying in a battle. One would think that those days of worrying about getting drafted would have occurred to him when his administration started a war and an occupation. But no, not Dick! He’s got some kind of fucking Kevlar vest that deflects wisdom and learning.

Another interesting part – he’s talking about Nixon’s chances of getting reelected in 1972. He writes:

Richard Nixon’s reelection was far from a sure thing. It looked very much as though the war in Vietnam, which he had said when he was campaigning in 1968 he knew how to end, would be an issue in 1972. Meanwhile, the hefty bills for Lyndon Johnson’s determination to fight the war in Vietnam and fund his great society had come due.

There were two components I found interesting there. First, he had already had experience getting a president who kept pushing for an unpopular war reelected. But the second part is more important. His lack of self awareness in talking about Johnson’s “hefty bills” being due is unfuckingbelievable. This asshole went on to serve in an administration that never bothered to pay for a fucking thing they passed is whining about cleaning up after someone else’s financial mess? Seriously Dick?

A particularly galling part of the book is when he talks about the speech President Ford gave, announcing that America was done with Vietnam. He writes:

I remember distinctly that when he spoke those words, some people in the audience wanted to cry and some wanted to cheer, but there was an unmistakable sense of relief for all of us that transcended one’s view of the war. Indeed, even for me, and I had supported the effort, hearing the president say those words was welcome in a way it’s hard to describe. We had lost more than fifty-eight thousand young Americans in the war, and Vietnam had divided us as a nation for so long. The war in Southeast Asia had ended in an awful way, but at least it ended. It was over.

I was fucking livid, reading that paragraph and thinking about what he had pushed to do with Iraq. Either the emotion he speaks of here is complete bullshit, designed to make him appear to be less of a robot, or he learned jack shit from that experience. Are you picking up a pattern yet?

This post is already very long, so I’m going to get to the rest of the book in part 2, which is disturbing and twisted in a completely different way than part 1.

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Anthony Weiner’s Penis May Have Saved Social Security

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Which makes me a big fan of his penis. In fact, I may be a bigger fan of his penis than anyone he actually shared it with. Because of Anthony Weiner’s penis, Obama appears to be acting more like a democrat in a way that we haven’t seen since the campaign.

Why do I believe that Americans owe Anthony Weiner’s penis a big debt of gratitude? Because one day after losing that seat to republicans, Obama announces that he’s taking social security reform off the table. This is a complete reversal from every signal the administration has ever sent out on the topic of social security. We obviously have Anthony Weiner’s penis to thank for this.

This reversal may (I’m being a sunny optimist again) be good news for Obama’s testicles, since they appear to finally be dropping. We’ll see what happens over the next few days, but it appears that Obama is finally starting to realize that the problem isn’t that crazy, rabid liberals have unrealistic expectations. The problem is that that he has failed to protect the needs of the middle class.

I’m optimistic because I’ve come to expect nothing from Obama, in terms of standing up to teapublicans. So when he shows even the slightest hint of a spine, I’m overcome with joy and optimism. But I’m still a pragmatist, so I’m a little concerned about the statement the white house released on the matter. Here’s the statement:

“The president’s recommendation for deficit reduction will not include any changes to Social Security because, as the president has consistently said, he does not believe that Social Security is a driver of our near and medium term deficits”.

I’m concerned because the statement should have stated that social security has never added a dime to our deficit because it’s a deficit neutral program by design. He needs to start reframing issues, rather than talking about them in republican terms. He needs to make it clear that since social security is a deficit neutral program, that any objections to it are purely ideological. He needs to put this cutting social security bullshit to rest forever. He needs to dispel the lies about social security once and for all. He needs to articulate the facts that no one ever hears. He needs to let Americans know that 2011 is the first year that social security has paid out more than it’s collected. He needs to talk about the $2.5 trillion dollar surplus that social security has at this very moment. He needs to point out that social security is collecting 8% less than it was projected to collect because of income inequality. Regardless of how much someone makes, they’re done paying into the system once they’ve earned $106,800 a year. Since we have fewer people making $90,000 a year, and more people making upwards of $1,000,000 per year than ever before, the system is being strained by that wealth disparity. Obama needs to make these facts clear, not to garner support for social security (70% of us, liberals and teapublicans alike adamantly want social security to stay), but to bring the argument back to a fact-based framing.

I know, I know, he gives me an inch and I want a mile (did I mention how big a fan of Anthony Weiner’s penis I am?).

James Carville is advising the Obama administration to panic. I hope they do. Obama needs to radically change course, not out of fear of losing reelection, but out of duty to the American people. I frankly don’t give a shit about his reelection. If he stays on the course he’s been on, four more years of this shit is nothing I’m fearful of losing. He was elected by people that were hoping for change. He owes two and a half years of change that haven’t yet materialized.

I’m going a step further than Carville. Obama needs to take the fight to republicans. He needs to push for temporarily lowering the medicare and social security eligibility ages as part of his jobs plan. Anyone that is in their 60s is virtually unemployable in this economy. Lowering the eligibility age to 60 on both of those programs will enable some of those people to retire from the work force early, thereby lowering the unemployment rate right away. And he should make the argument that taking them out of the private insurance system will keep premiums flat for everyone else, since they won’t have to pay out those medical bills. At the same time, lowering the average of the medicare risk pool should help medicare.

This will make John Boehner’s head explode, since most Americans will be for it. He and all of the republican presidential hopefuls will have to run against Obama’s plan. He would force them to explain how they don’t give a shit about your mother or your grandmother and that they’re your problem to deal with, because anything else would be a big government intrusion in your life. Yeah, that’s going to play well.

Republicans have created an illusion of a version of a socialist lefty they want to fight against. I think that Obama should turn into an actual socialist lefty that they’re completely unprepared for.

I for one, hope that Anthony Weiner’s penis is actually powerful enough to help make my dream a reality.   



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Snatching Defeat From The Hands Of Victory

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That should be the tagline for the democratic party. How can I say that a week after democrats successfully recalled two state senators in Wisconsin, and a day after they successfully defended two Wisconsin senate seats? I can say it because they’re poised to fuck up the rest of the work that needs to be done in Wisconsin.

Here’s the deal; Scott Walker, whose approval rating is abysmal is eligible to be recalled in January. Sounds like a great position for democrats, right? Not so fast. National democratic strategists (I use that term loosely and with with much disdain) are now thinking about rolling the Walker recall vote into the 2012 election. Why would they let this asshole keep screwing working people in Wisconsin for another year and a half? Because it’s not about the people. It’s about the politics. And to rub salt in the wound, it’s about bad politics.

These brilliant “strategists” think that they have a better chance of recalling Walker if they ride the Obama wave in 2012. Yup, you read that correctly; The Obama Wave. I don’t know what the fuck they’re doing, but I’m looking at the polls. The only waving being done here is by Obama, waving at his approval rating as it fades into the distance. He has plummeted into the high 30s. That’s right, the guy that defeated the pirates and killed Bin Laden is within 10 points of Bush when he left office. Now, depending on who you talk to, the low approval ratings are either because 70% of us are among the unreasonable “professional left” or, Obama is just the most ineffective president in recent history. But that’s a topic for another post, or several previous posts, as the case may be. My point is that they’re factoring in a mythical movement that isn’t validated by one single piece of empirical evidence. There’s no Obama wave. There is Obama frustration and Obama apathy. There is a decided lack of “wave”.

I believe that the Walker recall has a better chance if it’s a stand alone election. The polls clearly show that Wisconsinites want him to get the fuck out now. I don’t know why you would dick around for another year, hanging your hopes on an advantage that doesn’t exist.

On top of the sheer stupidity, waiting for 2012 clearly sends a message by democrats; We don’t give a shit about Wisconsin or it’s citizens. We just want to win.

This is exactly why most people don’t pay attention to politics and why they don’t vote. All of the options fucking BLOW, and the politicians are getting worse and worse at pretending they don’t suck.

But don’t despair, there is a glimmer of hope. Wisconsinites can buck the national democratic party and get the recall signatures on their own. They can snatch victory from the hands that want to snatch defeat from the hands of victory. Wait, I’m all confused now. Well, you get my point. Wisconsinites have the opportunity to set an example by ignoring the democrats’ nonsense and the republicans’ tyranny. If they take it upon themselves to rectify the situation, independent of either party, they have the chance to give us all hope that we can buck this two shitty party system that we have.

Both parties are being allowed to be shitty by us. It’s time that we start getting active in a meaningful way. I’m talking to you, Wisconsin! Go get em!


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Here Comes The Austerity

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I’ll keep this one short and sweet. Remember how I told you that we would know if we were going to get fucked on the debt ceiling deal, as soon as we found out who was going to be in the “super congress”? Yeah, we’re totally fucked. I knew we were fucked when Harry Reid announced that Max Baucus was going to be appointed to the committee. If past is prologue, he’s going to lead the charge to fold to any middle class decimating cut the republicans come up with.

Announcements from Mitch McConnell and Boehner today confirmed that. We got five back benchers plus Jon Kyl. No Paul Ryan, no Eric Cantor, no republican with political asperations beyond their current position. Why? Because being on the commission that guts the middle class isn’t exactly an inspirational resume item.

We’re fucked.

Our only hope is that Jon Kyle doesn’t intend for these cuts to be a factual statement.  

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Satan’s Amuse Bouche

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For the non-elitists reading this blog, an amuse bouche is a small, single bite of food served before the appetizer. Emanuel Cleaver was being a sunny optimist when he described the debt ceiling deal as Satan’s sandwich. In my opinion, that deal was just the amuse bouche for what will surely end up being a seven course meal.

We’ll have a fairly good idea of just how screwed we are in about three weeks, when we find out who the members appointed to the super congress (good god, that makes me laugh every time I say it) will be.

But I’m going to go ahead and predict that it’s going to be pretty bad. As I said in a previous post, there isn’t a snow balls chance in hell that a Bernie Sanders or an Al Franken will be chosen to be superior. No, we’re most certainly going to get a stable of blue dog democrats and whackadoo far right wingers on this committee.

I expect to see cuts to medicare and medicaid. I expect to see cuts to pell grants, food safety, the EPA, and a whole slew of other programs that hit the middle class and the poor.

But it won’t be all bad. There will be one single revenue raiser in this plan. My guess is that they’re going to give US corporations a tax holiday to enable them to repatriate all of that money that they have sitting in offshore accounts. They’ll give them a comical 5% rate to entice them to bring the money back in, and they’ll call that a revenue raising measure. Oh, I take back what I said, it is all bad.

In 2005, the Bush administration allowed US corporations to bring their money back into the country for a comical 5.25% federal tax rate. 800 companies took advantage of this and brought 312 billion back into the US. Did they reinvest that money back into their companies and create jobs in the US? Fuck no. You won’t be surprised to hear that they spent 92% of the money on buying back stock (in order to jack up the stock price), paying shareholders, and paying executives big ass bonuses. In their defense, those big ass bonuses were well deserved. After all, those executives had just successfully played American tax payers for rubes. How did this all work out for job seekers? Brace yourself; they got fucked. Here’s a little chart that shows you what the biggest “repatriators” did in the year following their heist of the US treasury;

 

Corporation Amount Repatriated Layoffs In 2005-2006
Pfizer $37 billion 10,000
Merck $15.9 billion 7,000
Hewlett-Packard $14.5 billion 14,500
Honeywell $2.7 billion 2,000
Ford $900 million 30,000
Colgate-Palmolive $800 million 4,000

 

So why would our representatives do this again? They’ll do it so that they can call it a win. Obama loves calling mediocre (or shitty) legislation “historic”. Remember the crappy financial reform bill? That was historic. Remember the health reform bill that does nothing to actually bring down the cost of health insurance? HISTORIC! He’s going to make this shitty deal, and then claim victory for raising revenue. Republicans will claim the win because they cut taxes, again.

So who actually wins in this deal, republicans or democrats? If you picked either of those choices, you’re just not understanding politics in America. You’re still being sucked into the theater that is designed to make you support something that is against your own self interest. The “teams” aren’t republican versus democrat. The teams are working people versus the idle rich.

I took great care in including the word “idle” in that last sentence because I have absolutely nothing against rich people. I hope to be one myself someday. No, my issue is with people born into wealth, that give far less back to their country than they take. My issue is with the CEO that makes 320 times the salary of the average worker in his or her company. No CEO is worth that. Not even if they orally pleasure ever single worker in their company on a daily basis. I have no issues with Steve Jobs or Bill Gates. They created something that the whole world wants to buy, and they create real jobs for people all around the world.

The divide is between those that give to the country and those that take. It’s the idle rich versus everyone else. Make no mistake, the winners in this deal or any deal are going to be the idle rich. The rest of us are going to be the big losers. Let me repeat; if you think it’s going to turn out any other way, you’re just not understanding politics in America.

I’ve been listening to Randi Rhodes and Stephanie Miller go on and on about how brilliantly Obama played the teapublicans on the debt limit deal. Their hypothesis is that by including a trigger that includes deep cuts to defense spending, they’re going to get the defense lobbyists fighting for cuts anywhere else. They believe that this deal turns all of the lobbyists for every major welfare industry in America against each other. They believe that Obama will definitely let the Bush/Obama tax cuts expire.

Every single assumption that Randi and Stephanie make is based on pure fantasy. First of all, these deep cuts to defense are a joke. How do I know that? Because nobody can tell me where the cuts are. No one has been able to say that we’re going to stop making this useless fighter jet, or giving cost+ contracts out to defense contractors. These cuts are hypothetical and intangible, which tells me they’re a mirage. Secondly, Obama is going to stand firm and let the tax cuts expire? Are you fucking kidding me? He’s never, not one time stood firm on anything. You believe he’s going to stand up to the one thing that republicans have repeatedly said is a non-starter? And you believe this based on what? I’m not a pessimist. I believe that past action is the best predictor of future behavior. I’m not foolish enough to expect the president to break his consistent record of folding like a cheap suit. No, this sunny optimistic view doesn’t make any sense at all.

So let’s all put on our eatin’ clothes (you know, the loose dresses and elastic waistband pants) because we’re about to feast on Satan’s all you can eat buffet.

 

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Gratuitously Liberal

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Apparently, that’s my problem. It’s the root cause for why I’m not happy with Obama’s performance. Obama is actually doing a great job. I’m just incapable of seeing it because of my rigid, gratuitously liberal ideology.

Okay, so that explains my discontentment. I’m just a curmudgeon. How does Obama explain his falling poll numbers among independents? He’s losing the liberals, but they’re obviously a bunch of malcontents like me. But the independents? I think I know the answer to that one; they’re also in a very liberal mood these days.

Here’s the thing about America; we’re kind of fickle. When things are going well enough for us economically, that we don’t have a care in the world, we’re conservatives. Remember the late 90s when we had the luxury of talking about Bill Clinton’s penis in perpetuity? We had that luxury because we were employed and generally well off. We could indulge in cockpalooza because we weren’t looking for jobs. We weren’t worried about where our next meal was coming from, and we weren’t one paycheck away from total financial ruin. When Americans are financially prosperous, we start to go right in our thinking. The thought process is; “well I’m working and earning a good living, so someone else is clearly sponging off of my hard earned tax dollars”. You see, when are in a position of thinking that you’re not taking anything out of the system, you start to resent having to pay into it at all. 

Inversely, when times are tough, we all become filthy socialists. Programs like unemployment insurance, medicare, medicaid, and social security suddenly become essential components of the American compact. They suddenly become entitlements. Not in that dirty way of peh, entitlements that you didn’t earn and don’t deserve, you fucking freeloader! No, they become entitlements in the, “I paid into this program that I am now entitled to collect out of”.

We’ve seen these (now) predictable shifts in the ideology of the American people over and over again. The most glaring example being the transition from Hoover to FDR. America was ready to be socialized a la The New Deal. They weren’t sitting in front of their radios, in their Hoovervilles cheering spending cuts. It happened again in the transition from Clinton to Bush 2.0. Americans had jobs, and therefore had the luxury of swinging right. 

So when Obama was elected, his victory was born out of our desire for a little bit of socialism that had been missing from our lives. He was elected to be the dirty hippie that would counteract the policies that left us unemployed, uninsured, and drowning in mortgage debt. This simple fact seems to be lost on him and every member of his administration, regardless of what polling tells them.

When Americans disliked the health reform bill because it didn’t go far enough to change the system, it was because we were all being gratuitously liberal and just couldn’t appreciate a good compromise.

When Americans wanted to eviscerate Wall Street with strict regulations, we hated the ineffective reform bill that ultimately passed because we were being gratuitously liberal and just couldn’t appreciate a good compromise.

When the debt ceiling discussions were going on and congress was talking about cutting the crap out of programs that help the middle class to tread water, while preserving ever single penny of savings that the elite have enjoyed, Americans were unreasonable in their disapproval of the situation. We were just being gratuitously liberal and just couldn’t appreciate a good compromise.

This is honestly how they’re looking at the situation! Never mind the fact that his approval rating went up when he passed the stimulus package. That was a meaningless spike and Americans clearly prefer compromise to socialism.

I don’t know why it is that politicians seem to completely lose touch with Americans once they get elected. And I definitely don’t understand how it is that they become incapable of making the most obvious observations in the world. Nothing I’ve said in this post extends beyond the bounds of common sense and observation. Yet this administration seems oblivious to all of it.


They may be correct in their assumption that most Americans won’t notice that the debt ceiling deal just made college $8,000 a year more expensive. But they’re dead wrong if they think that we won’t notice that life is getting harder. As a country, we may not be engaged in the policy changes that make life more difficult, but we’re definitely noticing that we’re working harder and have less to show for it than our parents did. There’s a palpable anger in the air.

More and Americans are figuring out that Obama is never going to deliver on the hope that he promised. But there’s no one out there to give them new hope, so we’re left with a void.

My hope is that we eventually reach a level of hopelessness that motivates us into action. Not useless action like voting or picking the most likeable corporate shill to support, but real action. Action like collecting signatures to pass publicly financed campaigns all across the country. And action like squelching the myth of corporate personhood once and for all.

Dammit! There I go being gratuitously liberal again.

 



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President McCain

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I’ve been waiting to comment on this whole debt ceiling nightmare until it came to a conclusion, so as not to sound like a pessimist. I didn’t want to sound hyperbolic in beating up on Obama prematurely. Well now we have a good idea of where this is all going, and I can’t possibly beat up on Obama excessively. 

I have so many thoughts on this whole debacle that I hardly know where to begin so I’ve decided to start at the end.

The “deal” is a turd that no one can polish. In exchange for what has historically been the routine task of raising the debt ceiling, Obama agreed to more than $1 in cuts for every dollar that the debt ceiling was raised. Are you fucking kidding me? This is a compromise?

And the cuts themselves seem shady, vague, and downright implausible. Am I really supposed to believe that we’re going to cut 350 billion out of defense? How the fuck is that going to happen? Aren’t there legions defense industry lobbyists whose sole purpose in life is to piss of as much tax payer money as humanly possible on useless equipment that doesn’t work, and that we don’t need? We’re supposed to believe that the politicians they’ve bought and paid for just went along with cutting defense? The only possible cuts to defense that I can see congress agreeing to, are those that pertain to veteran’s benefits. Why do I say that? Because veterans don’t have lobbyists. They’re the easiest target to hit in defense spending.


And I love how there are a first round of cuts with more cuts to come by the end of the year. What the fuck is that? Well let me tell you; it’s all meant to confuse and obfuscate so that we can’t tell exactly what gets cut and when they do it. Now that the debt ceiling crisis is over, does anyone believe that the nightly news will do much reporting on cuts to education, infrastructure, food safety, and a dozen other programs that are responsible for keeping us from becoming a third world country?

And what the fuck is up with this “super congress” bullshit? First of all, I think that most Americans would be overcome with joy if we had an adequate congress. Secondly, we’re supposed to be living in a representative government. Are we going to get to vote on who sits on this “super congress”? Who doesn’t think that the democratic representation in this “super congress” isn’t going to be Mark Warner and Mary Landrieu? Does anyone really think that Dennis Kucinich has a snowball’s chance in hell of being one of the democratic delegates to this super, special congress?

Now I want to rewind back to the beginning of this whole nightmare. Why, when republicans started this talk of spending cuts, didn’t Obama counter with a rational framing of the situation? Why did he accept their premise? Why didn’t he point out that cuts to domestic spending, in this economy are disastrous? Why didn’t he point out that policies like stimulus spending have resulted in more jobs being created by this administration that the entirety of the eight years of the previous one? Why didn’t he make sure that the conversation was about jobs instead of cuts? Why did he perpetuate the rhetoric that entitlement reform is vital to reducing our debt? Is he stupid? 

Here’s a graph that shows who owns our debt:

 

 Let’s take a close look at these numbers. The biggest chunk of our debt is owned by “US investors and private institutions”. Who is that? It’s mostly pensions and retirement accounts, as well as some investors. That would be us as in, you and I. The next biggest chunk of our debt is owned by the Social Security trust fund. That would be us as in, you and I. There are two other owners that I would like to point out; the US civil service retirement fund and the US military retirement fund. These are the nasty, worthless sloth sucking us dry through their government jobs. In other words; us as in, you and I. If you add up the money that is owed to us, we own 67.4% of the debt of the United States.

So when you hear anyone talk about cutting entitlements, what they’re getting at is not paying back the social security trust fund, the civil servant pension fund, and the US military pension fund. Do you think that Obama is unaware of who owns our debt? Or, is it possible that he wants to cut entitlements so that he doesn’t have to pay us back in order to balance the budget?

By the way, they’re called entitlements because it’s our fucking money. We’re entitled to get it back exactly as we were promised we would.

And remember a couple of weeks ago, when it became clear that the republicans were willing to play chicken with the debt ceiling? Remember how many people thought that Obama could invoke the 14th amendment to raise it without congress? And do you remember how Obama took that off the table right away? Why did he do that? Is he stupid? Or is he in on the plot to rob the middle class?

Oh, and do you remember when Obama insisted on a 1/1 ratio of increased revenues to spending cuts? Yeah, me neither. Is he the world’s shittiest negotiator, or is he in on the plot to rob the middle class?

Also, do you remember when he insisted on expiring the Bush tax cuts early in order to help bring the deficit down? Oh right, that never happened. He never mentioned the Bush tax cuts. You decide; is he in on the plot to rob the middle class so that the rich can stay rich without contributing a fucking thing to the country that enables them to be rich, or is he just a hapless rube?

There was a story floating all over the internet last Friday about how Apple Computer had more money in the bank than the US government. I saw people posting it all over the place. I didn’t see much discussion about how that happened. I didn’t see many people talking about the fact that Apple is sitting on all of this money that they were able to amass in part, because they’re paying a pittance in taxes compared to what they were paying when they started out. I didn’t see much talk about the fact that those tax cuts lead to money in the bank for Apple, rather than leading to more jobs for Americans.

Through this whole “negotiation”, I never heard a single word about how US corporations are sitting on 2 trillion dollars in cash reserves while nearly ten percent of Americans are unemployed. I heard plenty about “sacrifice”, but none if it was about sacrificing one cent of that 2 trillion dollars. Why is that? Why didn’t Obama bring up that one simple fact that would have had Americans pouring out into the streets with outrage? Is he stupid? Or is he in on the plot to rob the middle class in order to keep the rich on top of the economic food chain?

I titled this post “President McCain” because as this debt ceiling theater was being played out for us, I couldn’t help but think that we would have been better off if McCain had won the election. Yes, you read that right and no, I haven’t lost it. Think about it, do you think that entitlement cuts would even have entered the discussion if John McCain were president? Or do you think that democrats would have united against a republican president in blocking those cuts, as they have with so many republican presidents before? Don’t you think it’s harder for democrats to stand up against the leader of their own party?

A few of them have spoken out about what an incredible shitty deal this is for America’s middle class. John Conyers, the very first politician to support Obama in his bid for the presidency, suggested that it’s time for Americans to stand up and fight Obama.

I’ve always believed that only a democratic president could unravel the social safety nets in this country. I didn’t think that it would be Obama. I, unlike most political junkies, can admit when I was wrong.

And yes, a big part of me wishes that McCain had won the last election.




 

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Never Play Poker With Republicans

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That’s actually not fair. You can play poker with them, as long as you make sure you get the money from them up front. If you let them play on credit, you’re going to get fucked. They’re never going to pay you what they owe you.

Think I’m being unfair? Let me give you the basis for that advice.

All of this talk about not raising the debt ceiling is bullshit. And frankly, I don’t even know why congress has to vote on whether to raise the debt ceiling. It’s a bullshit vote. They already voted in the affirmative to spend the money that necessitated raising the debt ceiling. If they were concerned with government spending, they should have voted “NO!”

But they didn’t. They voted for all of the crazy ass spending that added to our debt. They voted for “emergency supplementals” to keep two wars going, they voted to spend money on medicare part D, and they voted to pass obviously bogus budgets that didn’t include these expenditures, year after year.

They voted to spend the money. So when the debt ceiling issue comes up for a vote, they’re basically voting on whether to welch on their debt.

Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. This is about whether or not they want to honor their word. Period. It’s not about spending more money, and it’s not about “making sacrifices”. They spent the money, and they did it with every single entitlement they now want to cut in the budget. As an aside, they’re called “entitlements” because it’s your money. You’re entitled to get it back, exactly as you were promised you would. Anytime a republican uses “entitlement” as if it were a dirty word, you should set them straight. Let them know that you’re damned well entitled to get your money back, and they should be entitled to theirs too.

And don’t let an idiot republican tell you that we shouldn’t raise the debt ceiling. If they try, let them know that they’re deadbeat welchers that won’t ever be allowed to play poker with you, unless they show you the money first.

See how simple this issue really is?


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A Source Of Pride

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It’s gay pride month and as I get ready to attend the festivities in New York, it occurs to me that it’s time for me to give the LGBT community some long overdue props.

They are the single strongest arm of the progressive movement by far. This is a group that knows how to “get her done” while the rest of the progressive movement flails around, split into three factions; those that are trying to figure out how to get shit done, those who sit around expecting that someone else will get it done, and those that perpetually make excuses for why Obama can’t get it done.

Marriage equality is not a national conversation that we were having ten years ago. In the grand scheme of civil rights fights, this one is a fetus and yet we already have marriage equality in six states. The LGBT community deserves all f the credit in the world for obtaining the civil rights due them in record time.

How did they do it? By being relentless! I remember having a conversation with a gay friend of mine last year right after this happened:

This was right after Obama finally came out in support of repealing DATD, and things were looking good in terms of its repeal. I took the position that the LGBT community needed to just calm the fuck down because Obama was obviously moving in the right direction on this issue. My friend vehemently disagreed with me, arguing that pressure needs to be applied until we have full equality across the whole country. He couldn’t have been more right, and I’m happy to offer him a mea culpa for having been so fucking wrong in my assessment of the situation.

In relentlessly pressing forward with an agenda of not compromising on anything less than full equality, the LGBT community is getting shit done in a way that few groups without Goldman Sachs money have. They protest and heckle the president at every turn. They organize boycotts against corporations and advertisers that show even the slightest hint of supporting an anti-equality agenda. They are very well organized, making sure that they leverage their strength in numbers, despite the fact that only roughly 10% of the population is gay.

In short, they ROCK!

The rest of the progressive population has much to learn from the LGBT community. When are we going to start taking notes? They have written the playbook for us. We just need to read it.

So tomorrow, I march with my gay friends who I couldn’t possibly be more proud of. BRAVO!

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Sinking My Teeth Into The Weiner

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This will be a quickie, since this isn’t a particularly complicated or nuanced issue.

Let me start by saying that I don’t really care about this beyond the amusement I get from the Weiner jokes which I imagine, will grow tiresome by Thursday. I don’t care because Anthony Weiner is neither a hypocrite nor a criminal. I’m only interested in your personal life if you’re stealing tax dollars, or are trying to suppress other people’s rights based on a “family values” platform of hypocrisy. I didn’t care about Clinton’s sex or Ahhhhnold’s sex because they weren’t hypocrites.

John Ensign, Larry Craig, David Vitter, Ted Haggard, and that “rent boy” asshole all fall into the category of asshats whose sex lives endlessly amuse me because they’re shameless liars and thieves. There’s nothing I enjoy more than watching a liar or a thief exposed for what they are.

But short of that, I just don’t give a shit. We’ve seen enough rich and/or powerful men cheat that it really shouldn’t surprise us. I’ve actually come to realize that cheaters are the norm. I am no longer disappointed by it.

I have to confess to being mildly disappointed in Anthony Weiner, but not as much as I’m comforted by his behavior over the past week. You’re thinking I’m batshit crazy at this point, but let me explain. We’ve been watching Weiner bumble and stumble in regard to this scandal all week. He’s not a good liar. In fact, he’s possibly the worst liar of any politician in the history of politics. He’s undeniably a brilliant guy and yet, he couldn’t have handled this more poorly. He did one shitty interview after another in which, he never flatly denied that the picture was of him. Even after getting hammered for not denying it was him, he couldn’t do it. There’s something admirable about someone that can’t lie with ease. I actually like that about him, a lot. It’s the pathological liars that I’m most concerned with.

His unease with lying makes me more confident that he’s a good politician, intent on doing the right thing. At the end of the day, my only concern is about a politician’s impact on me and my country. The rest is superfluous. His inability to tell a convincing lie gives me more confidence in his morality toward governance. When Anthony Weiner is on the house floor incensed about health care for 9/11 responders, or for you and I, he’s not bullshitting us.

And a politician that is bullshit-challenged is the kind of politician I want, wiener behavior notwithstanding.

On a side note, I applaud Nancy Pelosi for launching an investigation into this matter. That’s how ethics in politics should work. I can’t recall the republican party ever investigating one of their own. Political ideology aside, I don’t know how anyone can support the GOP. They’re crooks and liars, and they don’t even care enough to seem like they’re not.

Oh, and one last thought – the part of this story that I find most disgusting, is the part where Andrew Breitbart gets a modicum of legitimacy. I will be vomiting uncontrollably over that for months!

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