I'm a political junkie, which keeps me in a constant state of agitation. This would make me a masochist if it weren't for the fact that I was born bitchy. Following politics just allows me to share my natural gift with the public in a more focused way than would otherwise be possible.
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.
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:
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:
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.
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.
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.
For every ten US citizens there are nine guns, making the US the most heavily armed nation in the world.
40 – 50% of all US households own a firearm.
There were 13,636 murders in America in 2009. 68% of those murders were committed using firearms.
I couldn’t find statistics on how many crimes are stopped annually by armed citizens, but I can tell you that after two hours of searching, I found a whopping six examples over the past two years. That was after combing every whackadodle pro-gun site I could find. They celebrate those six miracles in perpetuity and hold them up as examples of why America needs to be more heavily armed.
I refer to those cases as miracles because they’re so fucking rare, relative to the gun statistics above, that they may as well be immaculate conceptions. And I’m fairly certain that I now have more tangible examples of an armed citizen mitigating a gun crime than any asshat that makes that claim.
I actually found more examples of shootings being stopped by an unarmed civilian, as we saw in the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords.
In a state where a permit is not required to carry a concealed weapon, a 61 year old unarmed woman went after the shooter. Where were all of the gun toting tough guys? Why do they never seem to be around when you need them? This shooting happened at a fucking Safeway, so you can’t say that the place was exclusively filled with democratic pussies. Where were the John Waynes?
The heroes in this shooting were a 61 year old unarmed woman and a gay Latino. Suck on that, Trent Franks.
It always feels to me like NRA members have batshit crazy opinions about guns in America. Probably because the NRA draws batshit crazy lines in the sand. It turns out that Wayne LaPierre (head of the NRA) is a minority nutjob, representing people that aren’t so nutty.
Frank Luntz was commissioned by Mike Bloomberg to do a poll of NRA members last year. He got some fascinating results.
82% of NRA members and 86% of non-NRA gun owners support prohibiting suspected terrorists from being able to buy guns.
69% of NRA members and 85% of all non-NRA gun owners support background checks at gun shows.
Here’s the one where they lost me, but the numbers aren’t as bad as I would have thought them to be;
58% of all NRA members and 36% of non-NRA gun owners oppose a ban on semi-automatic weapons.
That one is a little nutty since the only use for an automatic or semi-automatic weapon, is to kill a lot of people very quickly. But the good news is that the NRA only has four million members so most gun owners in America are not NRA members and they’re not crazy.
Most Americans are for banning semi-automatic and automatic weapons. If Clinton’s ban were still in place, Loughner would not have been able to walk into Walmart and buy a clip with 33 rounds in it. He would have had to follow Sarah Palin’s advice and reload after firing off 10 shots. Does anyone besides Wayne LaPierre actually think that the ban wouldn’t have saved lives in this situation?
Sadly, I suspect that this will be another situation where most Americans overwhelmingly agree on something, but a lone asshole like Wayne LaPierre will override the will of the American people.
Someone needs to start an organization to represent non-extremist gun owners and non-gun owners alike.
Sarah Palin
Glenn Beck
Sharon Angle
Michelle Bachman
Rush Limbaugh
Michelle Malkin
Ann Coulter
Contrary to popular opinion, Sarah Palin isn’t illiterate. She’s just not fluent in English, but she’s extremely fluent in crazy. We all remember the “pals around with terrorists” and other vitriolic comments she made during the campaign. She’s gotten worse with her “reload” crap, complete with visuals of crosshairs on congressional districts (most notably, Gabrielle Gifford’s district). I’m not going to rehash and relink all of her violent rhetoric. I’m sure you’ve gotten an earful over the past few days.
I am of the opinion that words matter. And when you’re in a prominent position, you need to understand that you’re talking to a wide range of people from the sane to the batshit crazy. Sarah Palin doesn’t realize this. And what’s worse, she’s actually the whackjob whisperer. She speaks to, and resonates with crazy people in a way that few do. Not just crazies, but also the stupid. She’s the stupid and whackjob whisperer.
This gift is rooted in the fact that she’s crazy and stupid herself. This stupid bitch actually believes that God has chosen her for greatness, and she therefore doesn’t need to learn anything before she can be president. That’s why she’s not any less stupid today than she was two long years ago. Guess what Sarah, God didn’t pick you for shit. Bill Kristol used his penis as a divining rod and since you were the hottest republican woman he found, he picked you. There was divine intervention involved in elevating your status, Sarah. It just isn’t the kind you think it is. That belief that God “chose” her speaks to her crazy.
Everything else we’ve seen from her demonstrates the stupid. Her comical use of language, her ignorance that there’s a world outside of Alaska, and her general lack of knowledge about anything shows us that she’s an idiot. So when her spokespeople say (when speaking about he crosshairs map) that they “were never meant to evoke guns or violence”, I believe there’s some underlying truth there. Not that they didn’t mean to evoke violence, they obviously did, especially since the word “reload” was little Sarah’s mantra when she unveiled the map. But I think that the kernel of truth lies in the fact that Palin can’t understand that she’s inciting real violence with her language. She doesn’t get that she’s talking to a whole world of people that range from sane to batshit crazy. Am I being overly generous when I attribute her reckless behavior to stupidity more than to malice? I don’t think so. After all, this is the same stupid bitch that continues to preach “abstinence only”, despite the fact that this belief led her and her daughter into premarital pregnancy situations. This woman is utterly incapable of learning and understanding anything. And I really believe that in the rare instances where she does understand something, as she obviously did when she decided to take down the map, that knowledge will fall out of her dumbass head in short order. She will unlearn what she now knows. You can’t have lived on this planet for nearly fifty years and still be as fucking stupid as she is without having the proclivity to unlearn almost everything.
Moving onto Glenn Beck. He’s only slightly less stupid than little Sarah Barracuda. But what he lacks in stupid, he makes up for in hateful. Check out these little gems from pastor Beck:
He’s done his fair share to debase political discourse in America far beyond the point of merely being “impolite”. What kind of person listens to this bullshit every day? The kind that are so full of hate that they’re choking on it, or the kind that are just fucking crazy. Glenn Beck is among the most prolific whackjob whisperers in the world.
Here’s a little whisper from Michelle Bachman:
Nope, nothing that can be seen as incitement here!
Let’s not forget this little golden oldie from Sharon Angle:
I can’t imagine why anyone would ever interpret this as an incitement toward violence. Can you?
I can post video for years, but you get the idea. Every time someone speaks this way, they whisper to the whackos, “Hey, come in from the cold. There’s a home for you here”. Can each individual violent act by a nutjob be directly attributed to one of these assholes? No. Can you dismiss this speech as being irrelevant each time a nutbag shoots up the place? No, that would be inane. These people tug at the heartstrings of crazy. You can’t listen Bill O’Reilly (with a viewership of of over one million people) say the phrase “Tiller the baby killer” in perpetuity and conclude that he definitively didn’t contribute to the murder of Doctor Tiller. That would be fucking crazy.
These people don’t get to walk away blameless for Gabrielle Gifford’s shooting. And these people don’t get to diffuse their responsibility by claiming that the problem is equally prevalent on both the democratic and the republican sides. Here’s a lovely little compilation of hate from the right. This nutbag shot a democratic politician. It’s not hard to tell that he’s no liberal especially since Arizona has no shortage of douchebag republican representatives. In fact, most of Arizona’s douchebag politicians are republicans. The claim that he’s a far left wing nutbag is asinine.
You wanna know who else shares the blame in this shooting? Most of the residents in the state of Arizona. You guys love it when your politicians let their freak flags fly. When an extremist (and criminal) whacko like JD Hayworth forces his opponent to turn up the crazy in order to compete in an election, it’s your fault Arizona. It’s your fault for responding favorably to the crazy. That kind of nutbaggery doesn’t fly in New York or California. Just ask Carl Paladino, who had his ass handed to him in the last election. Or ask Meg Whitman and crazy Carly Fiorina, who had to run relatively moderate campaigns just to stay in the race in California. Crazy extremism in either direction doesn’t play in some states the way it does in Arizona. When the marijuana legalization bill was on the ballot on California, there were no politicians that were willing to support it for fear of being too left wing to be viable. You guys don’t insist on a moderate range that politicians must abide by in order to have a shot at getting your vote. And when the gap between someone that should be institutionalized and someone that is viably competing for a US senate seat in your state is as narrow as it is in Arizona, it’s your fucking fault Arizonans. Don’t kid yourself into believing otherwise. When you keep electing people like Jan Brewer and Jon Kyl, and you keep pushing John McCain into the arms of crazy, and you keep promoting conceal and carry laws in fucking bars, you can’t claim that there’s nothing wrong with Arizona.
I refuse to offer any absolution to the whackjob whisperers among us. And I refuse to accept false equivocations where there are none. Left wing whackjobs exist, but they’re seldom in a position of power or influence. Sure, I can find a dozen left wing crazies posting diaries on Daily Kos but I don’t know any of their names because they’re nobodies. Keith Olbermann is the most bombastic voice on the left. But make no mistake, he doesn’t even come close to the vitriol of the whackjob whisperers.
We’re never going to make strides toward minimizing these violent occurrences if we obfuscate or dismiss the people precipitating them.
I’ve had something on my mind for a while, and a conversation I recently had with a republican brought it to the forefront. But before I get to the republican, I need to go back a few months to add some context.
A few months ago, the French went on strike because the government was threatening to raise the retirement age from 60 to 62. I was stunned by the reaction to that story on Facebook by my friends, who are (as you can imagine) mostly of the liberal persuasion. Most (okay, all) of the people that posted the story, posted it with a snarky comment against the French people. What the fuck? Seriously, what the fuck? People that have it better than you are not your enemy, and hating them for having it better than you is a special kind of stupid. The French are not whiny, self entitled or spoiled because they get to retire at 60. They fought for that privilege, and they’re fighting to keep it.
I can understand a certain amount of resentment, but I’m completely confounded when that resentment manifests itself in the form of disdain. Here’s a crazy thought; how about we support the French, instead of rooting for them to end up in the same shitty boat we’re in? How about we manifest our resentment in a more productive way, by fighting for the same rights they have? I know, my way is inane because it may lead to everyone being better off.
I brought that up so that I wasn’t unfairly beating up on republicans, when I go into my conversation with the republican. This special kind of stupid apparently doesn’t have a party affiliation.
My conversation with the republican started off by my explaining that republicans in the house are likely to try and get legislation through that would allow states to go bankrupt (which they currently aren’t legally allowed to do). Let’s be clear, being bankrupt is a legal state in which you’re broke and therefore allowed to default on some of your debt obligations. You can be broke without being “bankrupt”.
The very first debt obligation that states will absolve themselves of will be pension obligations to state workers. The republican I was talking to thought this was great. In fact, most republicans think that pensions suck and that people shouldn’t have them. One of the more ugly aspects of Reagan’s legacy (yes, there are many), will be his proactive union busting policies. He hated pensions and the unions that make them possible, never mind the fact that when he was a b-movie actor, he enjoyed the benefits that came along with his union membership. I understand why rich republicans feel this way, but what about the other 98% of registered republicans? Why would anyone that works for a living be happy when another gets crapped on? Doesn’t it make more sense to fight to get a pension for yourself, than to rejoice when someone else is fucked out of theirs?
Pensions are deferred compensation. The deal is essentially this; I will take less money every year, in exchange for my company putting X% away for my retirement. This should be a great arrangement for all involved since the employee has some security for their retirement, and the employer gets to use some of that capital for the thirty some odd years while the employee works toward retirement. It would be great for everyone if the company didn’t at some point feel entitled to keep the money that they have been allowed to play with in the interim. They’re the ones with the sense of entitlement. The worker who is demanding what they were promised as part of their employment agreement is not the whiny, self entitled asshole. It takes a special kind of stupid to see it the other way around.
Let me get back to the French for a moment. I can’t find the words to adequately describe the level of respect I have for them and for the rights they have managed to secure for themselves. America is a country in which very few people fight for anything. We generally just sit back and watch our life, liberty, and right to pursue happiness, taken away from us piece by piece.
We didn’t fight for corporations to give us pensions. Thirty years ago, 27% of US workers had pension plans. Today, less than 8% have them. And those 8% are hard working blue collar Americans. They’re not billionaire hedge fund managers and yet, we hate them for wanting what was promised to them.
We didn’t fight back when our government seized the right to monitor our communications without a demonstrable reason, or a paper trail. We just quietly sat back and let them do it, and deluded ourselves into thinking that we were safer for it.
We sit back and allow the corporations that we helped build with our hard work, lay us off while they sit on 1.8 trillion dollars in cash reserves. And we’ll be happy when they hire us back for 15% less than they were paying us before they laid us off.
And we’re going to sit back and take it, when our social security benefits are taken away from us. Sure, we’ll whine because as you can see here, no one wants that to happen. But we won’t fight to stop it from happening because we hate the French for having fought.
We don’t fight because we suffer from a special kind of stupid here in America.
I can’t figure out why we don’t fight for ourselves. Is it because we’re such a young country that has never actually suffered through the misery that comes with having no social safety nets? Is it because we’re arrogant, what with having achieved that whole “world superpower” thing in 200 short years? Or is it because it’s easier to sit around and crap on other people with rights than it is to fight to secure our own.
I’m not sure I’m ever going to get to the bottom of why we’re the way we are. But I do mourn the days when America was filled with people fighting for their right to vote, right to sit at any lunch counter they pleased, and right to earn a fair wage.
They obviously deserve to take the blame for everything from our shitty economy to creating the global warming hoax. If you listen to the GOP, poor people have more power than anyone in America. They’re the impoverished elite. In fact, they’re so powerful that if you were smarter, you’d spend yourself into poverty just so that you can grab some of that poor-people magic.
Here’s a charming little piece from Tucker Carlson’s little read website, The Daily Caller. It’s comically titled, “The DC Investigation; Food Stamps Are Easier To Get Than You Think. It’s comical because the “investigation” consists of a full grown adult, whose parents still support him, committing fraud in order to “expose” the exploitation of our federal food stamp program by those ever powerful aforementioned poor people. Let me summarize the “investigation”; this asshat commits fraud in order to qualify for food stamps. He then goes to that pretentious liberal bastion, Whole Foods and goes on a gourmet spending spree wherein he spent half of his monthly food stamp allowance on one meal. He neglected to mention how he planned to feed himself for the remaining twenty nine and two-thirds of the month, probably because he knows that mummy and daddy were going to have that covered for him. But this shithead didn’t even bother to consider how people that legitimately need food stamps manage to eat on $105 a month. Nor did he bother to offer up any statistics on how widespread his brand of fraud is within the system. By the way, this asshole is working on his masters degree, which is further proof that our education system is in trouble.
After reading this article (I assume I was one of a select few, since no one goes to this site), I was left with one burning question; If a douchebag speaks in the forest and there’s no one around to hear him, is he still a douche?
But the right wing jihad on the poor isn’t limited to a few fringe websites. Newt Gingrich (you know, the disgraced former speaker of the house that had to resign) continued his decades long attack on poor people last week in a speech in South Carolina. He blamed America’s problems on “The leftist news media, Hollywood, tenured academics, overpaid federal workers, and the unemployed. He went on to say, “I’m opposed to giving people money for doing nothing”. If that were true Newt, you wouldn’t charge a speaking fee.
But he makes a good point. If all of the lazy motherfuckers in America hadn’t spontaneously decided to get laid off in 2008, we would all be better off. Never mind the fact that they all had to work in order to pay into the unemployment insurance program in order to qualify to receive payments. That’s not a relevant fact in this argument. This group of feckless sloths clearly worked only to be able to someday bleed America dry.
And since they’ve been funding their lobby with a whopping $269 a week for two long years now, they’ve become too fucking powerful to touch. AIPAC can only dream of amassing the kind of power that the piss poor have managed to grab for themselves. Lloyd Blankfein makes hourly calls to homeless people to accommodate their wishes, just to keep Goldman Sachs in business.
Let’s not forget how the poor approved themselves for mortgages they couldn’t afford and forced Goldman Sachs to make billions of dollars by trading those worthless mortgages.
These people are indeed the most insidious among us, and they should not be underestimated.
Not the kind from the internal Goldman Sachs emails. No, this is a shitty deal to end all shitty deals. I am of course, referring to Obama’s tax cut deal.
Has anybody looked at the details of the detail he struck? He actually went far beyond Bush’s original nation crippling tax cuts. Here are some highlights;
– The top 2% of wealthiest Americans get to stay at the 36% rate they’ve enjoyed for ten years.
– The estate tax goes down from 55% to 35%.
– Capital gains taxes get cut down to 15%
Just so that we’re clear, all of the above cuts benefit ONLY the wealthiest among us. None of these cuts benefit the middle class. The estate tax cut is even worse than it sounds. Not only did Obama cut the estate tax by 20%, but he also raised the level at which the estate tax kicks in from $1 million to $5 million. How many middle class Americans have $3 million dollar estates to hand down, do you think? Capital gains isn’t money that you earn. It’s money that your money earns. It’s stock appreciation, property appreciation, etc. The capital gains tax rate is now FAR lower than the tax rate we all pay on our paychecks.
95% of Americans don’t enjoy capital gains. WHY should any tax rate be lower than the taxes paid on earned income? That’s just crazy. Nothing should be taxed lower than your paycheck. That should be the baseline rate upon which all other tax rates are increased from.
25% of all of the tax cuts in this “compromise” benefit just the top 1% of Americans. Yeah, that’s equitable.
Did I forget to mention that this deal includes a payroll tax cut? Sounds nice, right? Here’s what it actually means; less money will be taken out of your check for your social security contribution. This will hasten the social security shortfall that wasn’t otherwise going to happen until 2037. You understand where this is going, don’t you? This is going to lead to cutting social security. This is a topic for a whole post unto itself, so I’m going to move on.
We don’t have the money to pay for these tax cuts, so we’re going to add to our already astronomical debt in order to make it happen. This growing debt significantly weakens our economy.
Now democrats will say that this deal was necessary in order to save the unemployed from running out of benefits. I say, bullshit. Unemployment benefits are a means to help people to tread water until the coast guard comes to save them. The problem with this deal is that the coast guard is never coming.
Turning this economy around requires a two pronged approach. The first part of recovery was programs like the stimulus package. The government has to step in to be the spender of last resort. When Americans have no money to spend, and corporations aren’t generating revenue because Americans are broke, that’s when the government must step in. Spending money in infrastructure projects creates jobs across a very large supply chain. The second part of an effective recovery plan is to ensure that Americans can tread water until the unemployment rate comes down. This includes programs like unemployment insurance and food stamps. These two programs not only help the recipients, but they also create exponential economic activity.
The idea is that the infrastructure projects will create jobs that cascade over a big supply chain. These jobs will in turn, generate taxable income which will ostensibly help us to pay down our debt and strengthen the federal government so that is has the resources to invest in more job creation programs. The unemployment and food stamp benefits are supposed to help people hang on until that supply chain grows enough to create jobs for the unemployed.
Obama’s deal weakens the federal government by increasing the debt twofold. We’re borrowing money to give to the rich, and we’re borrowing money to keep people on unemployment. Since there’s no further stimulus in this deal, it’s essentially all gratuitous spending with no job creation component.
Nobody is going to show up with jobs for the unemployed. The ’99ers” are going to become the “198ers”. Since I’m in the business of hiring people, let me confirm something that you already know. The longer someone is unemployed, the more unemployable they become. Hiring managers have a viscerally bad reaction to people that haven’t been able to find a job in a year. The 99ers won’t be employable until the unemployment rate dips below 5%. Once that happens, there will be a labor shortage that will make them more attractive to employers.
Nothing about this plan is going to get the unemployment rate down. Obama didn’t “save” the unemployed. He just insured that they’re going to be treading water in their current miserable state of unemployment forever. This plan just prolongs their misery. And they’re still being held hostage by republicans. I can assure you that Obama is going to have to make another appalling deal to “save” unemployment insurance by this time next year. My prediction is that the jobs report for February, when all of the seasonal retail jobs are gone, will be appalling.
This really was the grandaddy of all shitty deals.
And the worst part? Obama is now defending the bullshit republican tax policy. He’s forcing democratic house members to do the same, thereby undermining the democratic position for years to come. We’re never going to get out of this debt because there’s no one left to stand up for sound fiscal policy.
You’re burning down the house with your shitty deal, Obama. Thanks for nothing!
Did anybody read the title and not think that this post was going to be about Obama?
I’ve reached the end of my rope with this president. The tax cut deal was the straw that broke bitchy’s back.
I’ve been of the belief that one of Obama’s problems is that he lacks conviction. I’ve graduated from “belief” to “certainty. He’s not passionate about anything to fight for it, or to even hold his ground.
I honestly thought I voted for a born leader when I cast my vote for him. Turns out that what I got is a middle manager with no real future. He tries to stay under the radar by capitulating to everyone in perpetuity; the quintessential middle manager.
The only belief that he seems to hold firm to, is that there’s always a middle ground to be found. Sadly, he defines “middle” as being slightly less than republicans are demanding, but far more than they ever expected to get.
Just four short weeks ago, all of the republican leaders were sending very strong signals that they would sign a tax bill that excluded the stinking rich if that was all they could get. Did Obama miss that? Was he busy creating a new playlist on his iPod to watch CNN that week? Seriously, what the fuck? Boehner couldn’t have been more clear about his willingness to cave. Don’t believe me? Watch!
And yet Obama still caves by giving them two more years of billionaire tax cuts, thereby increasing our deficit by another 140 billion dollars.
Here’s a fascinating breakdown of the relationship between the top marginal tax rate and the unemployment rate. This graph tells us that there’s an excellent chance that the unemployment rate in this most precarious of times, is very likely to stay high as a result of prolonging these tax cuts.
Can anyone guess what republicans are going to run on in 2012? Could it be the fucking deficit and the unemployment rate?
And what do you think Lloyd Blankfein is going to do with all of the extra cash in his savings account? Is he going to hire people, or is he going to use the money to bitch slap Obama in the 2012 elections by contributing to whoever his republican opponent is?
On the upside, Obama is figuring how to let republicans do three times as much damage with one single kick in the testicles. This saves them a lot of effort. While I admire his deference to Mitch McConnell, in making sure that he (McConnell) doesn’t tire himself out by having to expend more energy than necessary to turn Obama into a eunuch, I wish he would find just a little deference for the people that voted for him and the platform he ran on.
This latest buckling was like so many before it, unnecessary and damaging to us all. You see, we’re having to borrow more money from China so that Jamie Dimon doesn’t have to pay 3.5% more in taxes (as if his accountant can’t find loopholes to cover that).
This s bad for all Americans, but Obama is particularly bad for democrats. Each time he caves into republicans, the thing that he caved in on becomes the thing that Obama owns. These tax cuts for the rich will no longer be referred to as the “Bush tax cuts”. No, they’re the Obama tax cuts now.
Make no mistake – extending these tax cuts is the worst possible thing that can happen to our economy.
And no, this didn’t have to happen (something I hear from democrats all the time). Obama didn’t have to cave. 76% of Americans don’t want these tax cuts extended. He could have leveraged that political capital to stop a compromise from happening. He should have held a prime time press conference to spell out what republicans are trying to do to us, and named names in the process. He should have done this on the day that republicans blocked the tax cut vote on Saturday. He instead made a half assed effort to make his case.
Either he sucks at politics, or he wanted to extend these tax cuts all along.
Democrats already have a serious messaging problem. Having a leader that is willing to shit all over the basic tenets of the democratic party isn’t helping.
I’m worried that Obama is going to irreparably damage the party if he caves in on cutting social security. NO ONE wants for social security to be cut. Well, no one except the people that made out like fucking bandits on these tax cuts anyway. 76% of Americans (republicans and democrats combined) feel adamantly that social security should not be touched. If Obama does so much as raise the retirement age, democrats will forever be the party that cut social security.
Obama’s capitulation has escalated beyond the point of just being frustrating to the democratic base; it’s reckless and dangerous for the country and it will decimate the democratic party.
I’m well past the irritated with this president stage. I’m scared shitless of him in a way that I haven’t been scared by a president in my lifetime. If
