Reagan

If you’re a smart person, I’m not talking to you right now. This is an email I’d like to address to another demographic. Although, smart people can help me out by forwarding this to the people that you know that fit this demographic.

Dear Fucking Idiots In America,

I understand that your panties are in a bunch over a mosque that we’re planning on building at ground zero. I would like to be among the first to tell you to shut the fuck up, you ignorant bigot.

You see, your ass backward thinking is going to get me attacked, here in New York. While you wax poetic about hypothetical terrorism from your safety nest hundreds or thousands of miles away , I live with it every day. And as you propagate your ignorant, isolated views, you put me and my city in danger. I know that you don’t do this with malice, so let me educate you a little bit.

Terrorists aren’t born. They’re created. They’re recruited, and then they’re worked up to hate the purported enemy so much, that strapping a bomb onto themselves and committing suicide just to take a few of them out makes sense. Getting people worked up to the suicide bombing state takes a whole lot of demonization. You really have to frame the enemy as being a threat to all that is good and holy. If you can do that effectively, you can recruit legions of people to commit acts of terrorism until the end of time. They key is really all in the messaging. The nineteen hijackers on 9/11 were brainwashed into believing that America’s primary objective in the world is to destroy Islam. They believed that they were dying for everything that is good and holy.

When we invaded and occupied Iraq, a country that had done nothing to us, we reinforced that belief that America is out to destroy Islam so recruitment became easier. We started seeing Muslims becoming radicalized in Pakistan, Afghanistan, the UK, the US, and in Iraq, where we saw a brand new flavor of Al Qaeda emerge.

All of that happened because ignorant people got to call the shots. People that had no fucking idea about the culture in the middle east were making decisions on how best to deal with the middle east.

Let’s step back twenty years to where this all began. It really began when the Reagan administration, who were ignorant about middle east culture, decided that we needed to help Afghanistan fend off the Soviet Union. None of this was altruistic, of course. Reagan was scared shitless of the Soviet Union. So he was persuaded that going in and training and arming the Mujahideen in Afghanistan was in our best interest. That was all fine and good and it worked out more or less the way the ignoramuses wanted it to in that, the Mujahideen did succeed in driving the Soviet Union out of Afghanistan. It all went horribly wrong after that, when we failed to provide Afghanistan any support to rebuild their country. This created a chaotic struggle for power among various factions of Mujahideen and Islamist warlords, which subsequently gave birth to Al Qaeda.

So you see, Fucking Idiots Of America, two generations of your ignorant brethren taking action without bothering to understand what they were getting into, is what got us to 9/11.

So now that we’re here in 2010, and still dealing with this global terrorism threat thanks to ignorant people like you. I hope that, with the information I just shared, you understand why I want you to shut the fuck up.

Recruitment of terrorists continues, and we’re still in danger. It’s time to disarm the recruiters. We need to cut them off at the knees. Fighting them “over there” is ultimately what brought them “over here”, so that didn’t work.

Now we’re going to try something new. We’re going to demonstrate that we’re not out to destroy Islam, and therefore don’t rise to the level of evil that necessitates strapping a bomb to your chest. We’re going to do that by building a mosque near ground zero. We’re going to make it harder to convince some poor schmuck to commit suicide on order to kill a few of us.

I’m sorry that after all of these years, you’re too stupid to understand this tactic. But I don’t actually need you to understand it. I gave up on the hope that this was possible when you made Sarah Palin your poster girl. I just need you to shut the fuck up, and stop providing fodder for the recruitment of future terrorists. Accept the fact that we’re going to build a mosque near ground zero for the primary purpose of demonstrating that your dumb ass doesn’t represent America.

You don’t think of New York as “the real America” anyway. You can’t shun us one day, and them presume to tell us what to do the next. We’re not within your border so shut the fuck up.

You can be ignorant, bigoted, and small if you want to but do it quietly. I just want to be safe.

Sincerely,

-Bitchy

I’ve been listening to republicans try and diminish the 162,000 jobs that were created last month all weekend. I find it ludicrous on it’s face, that they’re complaining that this administration hasn’t managed to clean up after their unmitigated disaster fast enough! Here’s a newsflash for John Boehner; if your party hadn’t made such a huge mess of the economy, monthly job creation numbers wouldn’t even make headline news!

But beyond the obvious absurdity of the republican reaction to the job creation numbers, there’s a history of fun facts that I thought everyone would find interesting.

Let’s start with this – George W Bush didn’t create his first job until the beginning of his second term. That’s right, not one single fucking job for 4 years. And you wanna know who he put the onus on for that? You guessed it, it was Clinton’s fault. I have audio of Bush, Cheney, Rove, and Fleischer, and McClellan all blaming Clinton for the lack of job growth. Given how they handled Bush’s poor performance, republicans naturally feel that it’s unfair for Obama to ever so much as hint at the fact that the mess we’re in now is Bush’s fault.

Here’s another fun fact; in the last 60 years, the only person that created fewer jobs than a Bush was Eisenhower, in his second term. Poppy and W were the #2 and #3 worst presidents for job creation. Here are some numbers (the numbers represent millions of jobs created):

Truman 1949 -1952 5.2
Eisenhower 1953 – 1956 2.7
Eisenhower 1957 – 1960 0.8
Kennedy/Johnson 1961 – 1964 5.7
Johnson 1965 – 1968 9.8
Nixon 1969 – 1972 6.1
Nixon/Ford 1972 – 1976 5.2
Carter 1977 – 1980 10.4
Reagan 1981 – 1984 5.2
Reagan 1985 – 1988 10.8
Bush 1989 – 1992 2.5
Clinton 1993 – 1996 11.6
Clinton 1997 – 2000 11.5
Bush 2001 – 2004 (0.1)
Bush 2005 – 2008 5.1

It’s interesting that Poppy Bush didn’t blame Reagan for his abysmal performance, isn’t it? Jimmy Carter, by the way, kicked some job creation ass!

Another fun fact; wages went up not at all under the 8 years of George W Bush. So he didn’t create any new jobs, and for those that were employed, he kept your wages stagnant.

Now let’s look at some other fun facts – spending. The numbers on the right represent the change in spending relative to GDP:

Truman 1949 -1952 -23.9
Eisenhower 1953 – 1956 -10.4
Eisenhower 1957 – 1960 -7.9
Kennedy/Johnson 1961 – 1964 -6.7
Johnson 1965 – 1968 -6.8
Nixon 1969 – 1972 -5.4
Nixon/Ford 1972 – 1976 -0.9
Carter 1977 – 1980 -2.8
Reagan 1981 – 1984 +7.3
Reagan 1985 – 1988 +11.2
Bush 1989 – 1992 +12.2
Clinton 1993 – 1996 +3.0
Clinton 1997 – 2000 -9.8
Bush 2001 – 2004 +5.6
Bush 2005 – 2008 +6.3

Can you figure out who the fiscal conservatives are?

When I look at these sets of numbers I have to ask, “Where did the money under republicans go?” We saw less job growth and higher spending under republicans. Their approach is to spend more and tax corporations less. Keep in mind that when republicans talk about cutting taxes, they’re never talking about cutting your taxes. They’re talking about cutting corporate taxes. I hate to break it to you, but you’re not making “game changing” money. Adjusting your taxes up or down 3% – 6% amounts to your annual latte spending. And as they cut corporate taxes and increase corporate tax loop holes, they accomplish nothing in terms of creating jobs for you.

In Reagan’s case, all of that wild spending went into defense which created a crap load of defense jobs. Ironically, Reagan is the best example of how government can effectively create jobs.

These numbers don’t lie. I’m not an ideologue. I like living in the fact based community.

So next time you’re trapped at Thanksgiving dinner with your republican relatives, show them these numbers and help disabuse them of the mythology that they’ve been spewing for all of these years.

Re: The Ground Zero Mosque

Fun Facts