Live Free or Die

As we passed through New Hampshire today on the way from Maine to Essex Junction, I saw the great welcome sign that reads, “Welcome to New Hamphire: Live Free or Die”. This is a quote from a Revolutionary War New Hampshire resident and Continental Army General John Stark. For a reunion on a Vermont battlefield years after the war, the entire quote read, “Live Fee or Die: Death is not the worst of Evils”.

Compare and contrast with the prior administrations motto, “Be afraid of Dying. Damn the Constitution, full speed ahead!”

Anyway, the contrast was stunning and I can only be hopeful that the old American spirit will live to fight another day. Raise my chance of dying before reducing my liberties Mr. President. We were once the land of the free.

Liberal Media Bias. What’s the motive?

Okay, we all watch enough cop shows to know that without a motive, there’s no case. So why is it that the Right Wing Echo ChamberTM gets away with calling, oh, let’s say NBC biased to the left? What possible motive could General Electric, parent of NBC and paragon of all that’s free market capitalism, have to lean left? Did Jeffrey Immelt leave a commune to run the conglomerate? Before him, does anyone really think Jack Welch had a liberal bias? What possible fucking evidence is there for such a nitwit conclusion that apparently 20-25% of the nation has taken to heart? GE exists for one thing and one thing only. Profits. That and number one or two position in an industry, but no-fucking-where is there anything to motivate a liberal bias. To the contrary, one would expect the opposite.

Ever hear an interview with Ted Turner? Other than marrying (briefly) Jane Fonda, there isn’t a liberal bone in his body. Yes the Right gets away with calling CNN the “Clinton News Network”. Huh? No motive, no case.

As Steve Colbert so wondrously put it, “The truth has a known liberal bias.”

Democracy in Iran

Jeez, I was looking forward to a little loosening of the screws in Iran, when the incumbent pulls off a rigged election. Holy crap! It’s like the The Gang That Couldn’t Vote Straight. Okay, how’s this on the smell test- the Mousavi vote in his hometown was under 30%. I’mADinnerJacket got something like 85% in his. Things that make you go “huh?” Next somebody managed to hand count all them millions of ballots and declare a victor 2 hours after the polls close. How?

I knew a lot of Persians (as I believe most Iranians prefer to be called) in college, before and after the last revolution. Though they were mostly kids of Shah employees, they had great things to say about their country and it’s millennia of history. Iran is an educated and Western leaning enough country that has it’s young coming up connected to the world, and dying for a little freedom. Before 1979, though the Shah was a thug, Teheran was a center of scholarship and (some) Western ideals. It’s been 30 years since a revolution turned Iran into an Islamic Republic; maybe the next generation can turn it into a democratic one this time.

Mousavi is out of the same mold as the Dinner Jacket, but progress, especially women’s rights, could have a chance under him. The current leader is definitely a nut job, so this thing really needs to be corrected before Israel pulls a preemptive nuclear strike on Iran’s nuke sites. Holy crap! Can you imagine the violence that would be unleashed against not just Israel, but her enabler, the good old US of A?

It’s terrifying, but I can’t take my eyes off it.

Death by Conservatism

Sadly, we’ve seen two slayings recently for which the blame can be laid at the feet of the right wing punditry and the Republican Party. A security guard at the Holocaust Museum was gunned down by an 88-year-old White Supremacist. Last week, an abortion provider was shot at his church. Pro-life, indeed.

If you listen to the likes of Sean, Rush, et al., you’d pretty much have to take the job of killing abortion as a God given directive. If you really believe the guy killed 60,000 human beings rather than zygote clusters of cells, then it probably makes sense in your twisted little mind. As I’ve said, ad nauseum, if abortion is so damned un-Christian, why didn’t the Big Guy let us know? Abortion wasn’t invented in 1973 by Democrats, no matter what the fat man on the radio says.

The anti-Semitic basis for raiding a museum has a powerful basis in the Republican Party with a big ironic twist that most people miss. The Religious Right supports Israel only because it has a big role in “the end of days”. That’s when all the Jews get sent to hell and the “elect” ascend to heaven. Great. With friends like these, who needs enemies?

How bad can it get?

So, I was driving up to Camden to visit a friend who’d had a stroke (get better Bill) with Rick from lowernine.org, and as we do, we spent most of the drive vilifying, excoriating and bloviating about whatever a couple of liberal bigmouths go on about. Usually, I’m the pessimist in the room when it comes to the economy, but two years of living for the most part in New Orleans’ lower ninth ward have convinced him we’re headed for Mad Max, rather than the The Grapes of Wrath that I’m expecting. The Lower Ninth Ward looks like a disaster scene after all these years. So few homes repaired, no retail, no public transportation, no nothing. Could we see a lot more of this, only man created everywhere else? Rick certainly thinks so.

Back here in the Green Zone, I keep reading horrible statistics, but see and hear very little about people getting all medieval on someone’s ass. I would have thought by now there’d be militias or tent cities or stockbroker massacres or something, but so far it’s all quiet on the Eastern Front.

Listening to the Assclown Twins, Sean and Rush, you’d think our current Commander in Chief was Karl Marx. Remember Dick Cheney’s famous “deficits don’t matter”? Well somehow, under President Obama, they are the greatest threat since “islamofacism”, to use one of the most historically ignorant terms ever invented.

Anyway, it’s really sounding like the Right Wing Pundrity is just asking some screw loose possessing nut to take a shot at POTUS. Great. The only good news is the Repubs would end up without 10 seats in the Senate and 50 in the House given the backlash. And for Dog’s sake, who wants Joe Biden for President?

Enough of this random post.

Sotomayor and the RightWingHateMachineTM

This should a rich vein to mine through the summer. I really thought for a minute there that the lowest they could sink would be to call someone second in here class at Princeton “stooped”. Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard on Bill Bennett’s radio show actually tried to imply that she got into Princeton through Affirmative Action, so her degree means nothing. Number 2 at Princeton? Is anyone swallowing this except a few blowhards and the ignorant poor white trash that needs an explanation that fits their worldview and tells them why some Puerto Rican is doing better than them. Could it be the lack of education? Nope. Obviously dropping out of high school and knocking up your girlfriend was a great career move, but “liberal elites” are trying to give away your richly deserved seat on the Supreme Court to some spic in an act of reverse racism. Such injustice.

Speaking as a rich, white, middle aged American Neo-Socialist the GOP does NOT have my sympathies, but we really need a two party system. G. Gordon Liddy (a convicted felon) actually said on his radio show “What if she’s menstruating during an important conference?” Whiskey Tango Foxtrot!!! I hadn’t heard that one since the 70’s!

So if you insult and piss off the slightly more than half of the US electorate who vote (women) and the fastest growing minority (Latino) while actively telling Republican moderates to get the hell out (Susan Collins & Olympia Snowe) while you’re cling to a tenuous 40 seats in the Senate, you’re probably not going to ascend to the majority anytime soon.

Further Disabling Republicans

So, the Republicans were basically plotting strategies to derail anyone at all that President Obama might want to nominate to the SCOTUS. It is SO obvious that when Judge Sotomayor was announced as the candidate that the party’s PR machine just wanted to blastmail the base, “Dumb Spic Bitch!” Of course, they are still trying to figure out how to use their (racist) base, and not look like complete assclowns to the emerging generations that have no time for that happy horseshit. Honest to Dog, the leaked talking memos from the Rethuglicans and Talibangelists had at their core the idea that Sonia Sotomayor was somehow intellectually not up to the task.

Rove repeated it, “I’m not really certain how intellectually strong she would be.” So did Fox News, “not the smartest.” Um, do these people have any idea how freaking bright you have to be to graduate second in your class at Princeton? Karl Rove doesn’t even have a college degree! Rush Limbaugh dropped out of High School. She edited the Law Review at Yale. And she did all this growing up as a poor Puerto Rican immigrant in the Bronx who spoke no English till age nine. Not intellectually strong coming from a dropout. Nice move, Karl.

Think GWB would have made it to Yale and Harvard with that pedigree and his intellect? I think not. They just want to play the race card so badly, and they can’t figure out to do it and not lose a couple of generations of voters.

Good vs. Evil

So, is it just me or did the Cheney/Obama damn near consecutive speech thing look like Light vs. Dark? Cheney with that scowl and grinding voice selling all fear, all the time, everyone be very afraid as only I can protect you. Obama with another reasoned, well spoken, thoughtful take on things. I’m so tired of the whole fear thing. And when the hell did it become the Presidents number one job to “protect” us? This from the enemies of the “nanny state”? I thought it was protecting the Constitution. Silly fucking me.

We’ve seen more of Cheney than we did when he was in office, and it’s like he’s letting us know that the only reason the second GWB term wasn’t even worse (hard to imagine), is because people started listening to Condi more than him. My Dog, what a troll.

It’s especially funny in light of having actually watched both speeches, how the RightWingMedia machine could try to spin this as Obama is whining and Cheney is wise. How do you put “9/11” 27 times into a 20 minute speech, and then say, “We don’t want to dwell on the past”? Still, the thugs on the right offer headlines like “Cheney's Compelling, Human Speech Was Better Than Obama's Boring Legal Seminar” (US News).

Hannity went on the air gushing about what an all American Cheney is and what a show of gratitude we owe him for protecting us AFTER 9/11, but wait. Who was in charge on 9/11? None other than Monkey Boy and Darth Vader. How that smug jackass can say, “To the very end of our administration, we kept al-Qaeda terrorists busy with other problems. We focused on getting their secrets, instead of sharing ours with them. And on our watch, they never hit this country again. After the most lethal and devastating terrorist attack ever, seven and a half years without a repeat is not a record to be rebuked and scorned, much less criminalized. It is a record to be continued until the danger has passed.” Huh? On your watch more Americans BY FAR were killed by terrorists a month after you got a briefing headlined “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US” that detailed a plan to use airliners.

Let me guess. You couldn’t pursue it because Clinton thought it was important, but your ideological purity required ABC. Anything But Clinton. 3,000 Americans dead in the US and thousands more in Iraq and Afghanistan, cuz you had to be ideologically pure.

Thanks a lot, asshole.

Republican Self-Immolation

It’s almost enough to make you feel sorry for them, until you remember how much they screwed over this country and its’ people. If you missed it, here’s a great clip of Jesse Ventura taking down Sean Hannity. My favorite part is when a straight-faced Sean claims that Bush left America in better shape than he inherited it. Unfreakingbelievable.

Everything I’ve heard from any right wing pundit, talking head or guest on The View says the same thing, “We need to be true to our conservative roots and stop acting like Democrats Lite.” You can’t make this shit up. It’s also hilarious when they try to distance themselves from George W. Bush, whom they backed with Messianic fever for both terms. I actually heard one on NPR yesterday that people had somehow come to confuse “conservative” with “republican”. Really? Ya think so? How the hell could that happen?

Maybe we’ll see the right try to start a national Conservative Party that would be ideologically to the right of the Republicans. I’d donate right up to the legal limit to get that off the ground and watch them crumble into tiny splinters (to mix a metaphor) and into complete ineffectiveness so they would stop ruining my country.

I was in Costa Rica with my nephew Aaron and his wife Carla, and we were just being amazed at how clean, prosperous, healthy and well educated the country is. They stopped having a military in 1948; now THAT’S progressive. Neighboring Nicaragua has a GDP per capita of $2,900, Guatemala $5,200, and Costa Rica $11,600. Carla made the comment that Costa Rica is what happens when educated Liberals run a country. Wouldn’t it be nice to put the US through the same process?

Let me dream, okay?

Vote Right, Vote White

Thanks Zirgar.

Stolen Flat Out

I usually like Bob Cesca over at HuffPo, but he outdid himself with this quote. Apparently Jess Ventura was heard to say, “You give me a waterboard, Dick Cheney and one hour, and I'll have him confess to the Sharon Tate murders."

Priceless. For our younger reader, Sharon Tate was murdered by the Manson Family in a pretty horrific late 1960’s killing spree. I’m pretty sure Cheney wasn’t involved, but if he admits it? I dunno.

US Socialists: Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines

You know, the US military basically makes up the largest socialist institution in the country. Everything from glasses to health care to training to education is paid for by the government, and it seems to work well. How the hell can the Right be so rah rah about the military being so great and socialism so wrong when it’s practically the same thing? Practically every decision is government supplied. Every need is government supplied. It all somehow manages to work out well, being run by the same government that the righties don’t want to trust with their health care, education or damn near anything other than cops and soldiers.

Sheesh.

Health Care and the Lunatic Right

Okay, if you love your health insurance company, raise your hand. No one? Anyone? Huh. I guess people aren’t happy with their health insurance companies. After all, their incentive is to get as much of your money as possible and pay out as little of it as possible. How is this a recipe for happy healthy outcomes? It isn’t.

And yet, the assclowns of the Republican Party, out of intense ideological purity, insist that the worst thing that could happen would be for the government to cover health care for all Americans in a single payer system. I think they just might be on the wrong side of history (again).

Basically, on talk radio, they say things like you’ll be on a waiting list for years, no one will go to med school, government bureaucrats will make your medical decisions and a whole lot of other nonsense. One problem; the rest of the developed world does it that way, and for way less money and with way better results. Someone on NPR yesterday offered this way to investigate if it works. Take your phone number and add a Canadian area code. Call and ask how they like their healthcare system. Is that enough for you?

We spend more on health care and live less long than most developed countries. How about we get off of the ideological bullshit express and do the right thing? The entire health insurance industry is nothing but a bloodsucking industry taking our dollars and limiting our access to healthcare. Would taxes go up? Yes, but expenses (at least to the health insurance oligarchy) would go down. What’s to hate? This is a genuine citizens’ vs. big business issue and for Dog’s sake let’s get it right this time.

The Underlying Financial Problem

While there’s plenty of blame to go around as to why are in so much trouble financially, the underlying time bomb that overshadows the others by a mile is the unregulated market for credit default swaps or CDS’s. Today on NPR, Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto came up with a number nearly twice the size of the one I was using. These unregulated private deals are thought by him to total about $1.2 quadrillion. US$1,200,000,000,000,000.00. There isn’t that much money in the world. The world economy is, well, smaller than that. Like 4% of it; let’s use the World Banks figure of $48 trillion. The liabilities out there are worth a quarter century of total global output. Needless to say, a trillion here and a trillion there will not correct this massive house of cards.

The graphic above shows what a quadrillion pennies would look like. Multiple by 120, and that's the debt we're talking.

Dog help us.

National Defense

So it turns out that the right wing talk radio machine is aflame over the Prez’s plan to look at cutting some fat from the half trillion-dollar “defense” budget. Other than 1812, 1941 and 2001 we’ve really been more about offense than defense, but whatever. And other than WWII, when is the last time things turned out to be a big win? Korea? Tie. Viet Nam? Loss. Mogadishu? Lebanon? Iraq? Afghanistan?

Anyway, the right claims that any cuts to “defense” make us more vulnerable to terrorist attack. Huh? How the hell does an F-22 keep terrorists out? Aircraft carriers? Nuclear subs? The US spends more on “defense” than the rest of the world combined. Can you say overkill? The runners up, China and Russia? We spend 18 times what they do. 18 times. Can you say corporate welfare for the military industrial complex?

We can’t afford freaking health care, but missile frigates by the dozens are terrific. To use the military parlance, “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?” If I hear Sean Hannity say one more time, “He’s making an attack inevitable by slashing our military!” I’m gonna have to get all medieval on his ass.

Shouting Into The Closet

Just when you think it can’t get anymore ridiculous, the right wing punditry steps on Obama for ordering a cheeseburger and asking for “spicy mustard, maybe Dijon” rather than good old American ketchup. I kid you not. Hannity, Limbaugh and Ingraham all checked in on this one. There are two particularly funny parts of this. Obviously, the problem is that Dijon is in France, the right wing’s idea of the anti-America. (Thanks again for saving our bacon in the American Revolution.) Grey Poupon is, and has always been, a product of Kraft, a company as American as, well, mustard. Anyone who’s ever been to Chicago knows that mustard is the condiment of choice and if you ask for ketchup, you’d better be under twelve. So it’s come to this; the best the vast right wing conspiracy can come up with is his choice of burger topping?

Holy crap! It’s worse than even I thought!

More Madness from the Right

These people just won’t get a clue to save their lives. How many ways can you call the President “radical” before realizing that he is both the elected leader and wildly popular? How can a majority be rationally called “radical”? I return again to the “socialist” label than conservative pundits use at their peril. I know a lot of people who’d pay more in taxes to avoid student loans and health insurance nightmares. The USSR has been gone for decades, so the “commie” label just doesn’t scare like it used to. Um, let’s see, helping the poor? Check. Fairness? Check. Education for all? Check. Affordable healthcare for all? Check. I can’t tell whether that’s more Jesus or Marx. Oh well. That’s what we get for raising a generation of thoughtful and empathetic young adults. They voted him in and just might not be the biggest fans of the selfish, Ayn Randian right wing Republican Party.

Libertarian Paradise

Okay, so the right really hates taxes. Somehow borrowing trillions from the Chinese is better than taxing Americans for American stuff. Hmmm. How does that scale? Anyway, they really don’t want anyone anywhere ever paying taxes, and somehow that leads to a better future. Don’t know about you, but I like paved roads, police protection, regulation of food safety, zoning and a host of other things our taxes buy us. I think we could shrink the military budget by 75% and not miss a step, but I digress.

A favorite of the right and especially Libertarians is the so-called “fair tax”.

The idea is that transactions are taxed, rather than earnings or income. It’s a consumption tax. Uh huh. This is going to work. How about if I sell a car to a relative (which I just did). Are we expected to cough up a tax? What if I don’t? What about yard sales? Barter? Gun shows? I can’t imagine a more intrusive invasion of privacy than checking up on all personal transactions. When I was 29, my dad gave me $20,000. When I was 36, I bought him a $20,000 Miata. Was that a taxable transaction? What if I donated $30,000 to the SAAB dealership and coincidentally they donated a car to me. Is that taxable? The rate they presume for this scheme is 23%, so my dealing with the SAAB dealer would save me almost $7,000. As much effort as is spent on tax avoidance now, one could only imagine the kind of scams that would proliferate under a “fair tax”. I honestly think these right wing assclowns want the US government to simply collapse to fit into their virulently anti-tax, anti-government agenda.

Thanks Dog the Republicans are down to one in five Americans.

Just a quilt I made

Delusional Republicans

This just in. The Republican Party can now be announced clinically insane. In an effort to invigorate the party they are turning to Bush administration insiders for guidance. Friday, they’re having a workshop for Republican press secretaries, and Bush alums are the instructors. Why not bring back Typhoid Mary to deal with swine flu? These people are so delusional about what the last eight years meant to America that they are turning to “battle tested” Bush alums for guidance going forward.

These people actually still manage to believe that the problem is getting out the word on what they stand for. I’m pretty sure Americans got a pretty good idea of what they stand for after eight years of Republican rule under the Boy King. “No, no! That wasn’t real conservatism!” Um, why didn’t you mention that at the time, rather than letting the economy go down in flames before discovering you needed a do over?

The evidence is all there. In spite of today’s lamenting of Obama’s deficits, the right gladly followed Bush into a trillion dollar mistake in Iraq, a trillion in tax cuts for the rich (I pay zero federal taxes) and an unprecedented run up in debt. Remember the outcry from conservatives about the massive overspending? Neither do I. Just another pile of hypocrisy from a party used to shoving it down willing dupes throats. At least now, some of the dupes seem to be reconsidering.

Political Stance and Luck

I read an interesting bit on HuffPo today that confirmed a prejudice of mine. The author stated that you could guess a new acquaintance’s political views by asking what role luck had played in his or her life. If they say “none” they are almost certainly very conservative. “Outliers” is a book newly published that purports that even the great titans of industry or athletes or whatever owe much of their success to luck, circumstances and other people who played pivotal roles. Conservatives tend to believe that both the rich and the poor deserve it.

I’ve probably said 1,000 times to conservatives, “Bill Gates if born in 6th century Somalia wouldn’t have survived to adolescence.” That generally gets me a dumb look.

If you believe that everything you have or don’t have in life is due to hard work and initiative then naturally you won’t have much use for social justice, not to mention feeding, sheltering or educating the poor. Ironically a high proportion of these people are evangelical Christians who apparently never read their own book. I just wish for one super power; the ability to turn every wealthy American into a 6 year old in Darfur for a year, and let them retain the memory when returned to their previous lives. I’d like to think some minds would be changed. Anyone who tells me they had the wisdom and insight to be born to white parents in late 20th century who valued education and hard work can kiss my ass.

What ever happened to “there but for the grace of god go I”?

Hypocracy, Misogyny, Racism on the Right

So the Southern Strategy stopped being so damned effective over the last few years, and some Republicans actually noticed. Two recent moves are especially hilarious. To make it seem like they aren’t generally sexists, the Republicans put a women on the ticket. With typical ham handedness and tone deafness, they picked Caribou Barbie, an insult to any thinking woman out there who saw right through their cynical ploy. But now they’re stuck with her. And you know their increasingly cretinous base will make her a contender in 2012. And she stands zero chance of winning in the general election.

Next, to counter four decades of perceived (and actual) racism and perhaps dull the pain of a popular, though rather dark hued for their tastes, Democratic President, they put Michael Steele in change of the Republican National Committee. Somehow they managed to forget that the guy running the RNC actually gets to make decisions and might even speak to the press. They also managed to forget that African-American Republicans tend to have, shall we say, quirks? It takes a lot of self-loathing or just plain confused thinking for a black man to work for the party that has won elections by yelling “Nigger!” since the 1960’s.

Anyway, now that Mr. Steele has stated a few opinions that stray from the ideological party line, they’re calling for his scalp. There are calls for the Republican Party to stop funding their own national committee. So now they get the added bonus of beating up on the Negro in the house. That’ll go over big in the hip-hop culture that is young America.

If they hadn’t so trashed this country that I love, you could almost feel sorry for them. Almost.

Republican Solution to Drowning? Add Weights.

Hanging out near Mercersburg, Pennsyltucky, where nephew Josh will attend boarding school in the fall. Beautiful campus, great teaching staff, smart students; I’m jealous!

So anyway, just when the Republican Party seems to be careening into irrelevancy, they go and reinforce their racist cred and target the fastest growing demographic in the US of A. Michelle Malkin can’t stop saying, “I told you so. Dirty Mexicans are infecting us!” She’s getting an amen from Sean and Rush and Anne and Laura and all the other usual bullies. Besides being patently false (the infections apparently were in Americans who had traveled to Mexico) it’s extremely insulting to Latinos, the only group that could make Republicans relevant again. Why do these people hate hard working, family oriented Catholics? It makes no sense to me, but then again, racism is very deeply ingrained in the Republican Party, and requires very little logic. First generation Korean-American Michelle fails to see the irony in her anti-immigrant screeds. Unbelievable.

So, basically the decades of one party rule that Karl Rove envisioned looks about as silly as the Thousand Year Reich. Every election cycle, more Republican (angry, old, white, Southern) are dying, while the young voters coming up are overwhelmingly Democrats. Good riddance to bad beliefs, bad policy and bad governance.

Let’s look at a few of the pointless issues muddying the minds of listeners to right wing talk radio.

1. Obama is spending more than anyone ever!
Actually he inherited a $10 trillion deficit that included tax cuts for the rich (I pay zero federal taxes) and an unnecessary war. At least Obama wants to spend it on us.

2. This is tyrrany!
Um, I wanted to vote in November, but jack booted thugs from the Democratic Party kept me from the polls! Oh wait. No they didn’t. It’s not called “tyranny”. It’s called “losing”.

3. He’s trying to make us socialists by nationalizing the companies!
Actually, the banks and auto companies came to the government, not the other way around.

4. He wasn’t born in America!
This one slays me. How did his birth announcement make the Honolulu newspaper the next day?

I think if one spends an hour with Diane Rehm and an hour with Hannity or Limbaugh, it would be really, really hard to say they were all anywhere near balanced. Diane usually has conservative guests who are allowed to speak their minds without interruption. I have never heard her put down or shut off a guest. Sean? Yell them down. Rush? Never get past the screener.

The Republicans and their media pals are killing their party.

Good.

Off to Pennsylvania

Waiting in the rain for it to stop so we can break camp and move another step closer to Maine, I ponder Obama’s state of mind. Remembering the Onion headline before the Inauguration (“Black Man Given Nation’s Worst Job”), it’s hard to imagine worse circumstances under which to govern. Two wars, economic collapse, pandemic, sheesh. All we need are locusts, boils and death of the firstborn.

Anyway, I think he’s doing a great job, especially under current circumstances. His continuing popularity is encouraging too, but (as both my readers know) I expect the economic malaise to last for much of a decade, and I fear how patient people will be as the reality sinks in.

The self-immolation of the Republican Party is sort of disturbing and fascinating, like a car wreck. As the angry southern white racists die off and the hip-hop loving kids come of age, the Southern Strategy comes to a grinding halt, and the response from most of the party is to get rid of the moderates. Oh my. Breathtaking hubris has defined this party for decades now, and OMG, it’s coming home to roost.

There was a great piece in the NY Times last year about how there are two approaches to family and childrearing and how they are reflected in party affiliation; one is the strong Dad demanding good behavior, with corporal punishment for wrongdoing, and the other is the supporting, nurturing family that protects and supports the kids. I grew up in the former in a staunchly Republican family, so I bought into this theory pretty easily. I had friends whose parents were much more relaxed and supportive, and, go figure, the parents were generally Democrats.

Listening to Limbaugh, et al, they seem to be saying that the cure for the child that ran away is to beat the remaining kids that much more harshly. We’ll see how that works out.

Chrysler Goes Broke

Not that long ago, it was unimaginable to most Americans that Chrystler would go under, never mind GM, which only hasn’t filed for bankruptcy yet. My family gave up on American cars in the mid-70’s, and except for trucks, I’ve gone overseas for cars. Here’s an interesting exercise; cars I’ve bought in my life.
9 Saabs, 2 Porsches, 2 Suburbans, 1 Ford F-150, 2 VW’s, 2 Toyotas, 1 Mazda and 1 Audi.

The loss of jobs by the thousands of autoworkers is a microcosm of the contraction we are all going to see. American society is currently living an unsustainable lifestyle, and the rest of the world wants it too. That’s not going to happen, but the disconnect will be an ugly thing. Every generation of Americans has expected to live a better life than their parents, but it’s unlikely that the current set of kids will see that happen. How will we handle extreme hardship is the question for our time. Nobody is talking about it. The economic collapse caught them by surprise. This is looming, but undiscussed.

With 25% unemployment, and oil at $300 a barrel, many things will have to change. We’ll be more focused on food production than we’ve been in decades. Our current agribusinesses are much too dependent on fossil fuels to keep cranking out cheap processed foods. I can’t say I’ll miss the parking lots torn up for agriculture.

Well Written Look at America Soon

Somewhat long, but THIS is a really interesting look at a posteconomicapocalyptic vision of the future. Tomorrow will be nothing like yesterday

Getting Rid of the RINOs

It’s really just too damn easy to shoot down those silly Republican, but as long as writing continues to be therapeutic, I’ll just have to keep it up. The latest rant on talk radio is all about “good riddance” to Arlen Spector (R>D:PA) and any other “RINOs” that want to leave. They have somehow come to believe that the reason they got voted out in droves is that they weren’t conservative enough. I’m not making this up!

After 8 years of GWB and his wasted trillions on Iraq and bankers, they get their panties in a knot about $800+billion that at least goes to America and Americans. You have to love the logical gymnastics that goes like this.

Criticism of Bush is “blame America first”.
Bush ran the government.
Government is bad.
Criticism of government is good.
Repeat as needed.

Sheesh.

As has been pointed out, it is difficult to compare the outcome of a fair and (small d) democratic election with tyranny. Define tyranny: a form of government in which the ruler is an absolute dictator, not restricted by a constitution or laws or opposition, etc. Has anyone put forward an argument that somehow the Democrats are ruling outside the constitution? I remember voting last fall, and there was a full-throated opposition.

Again, it’s not the hate, it’s the stupidity. Like trying to tie Al Qaeda with Fascism, which is a real hoot if you look up the definition of Fascism.

Basically the minority party expects the Dems to do what they want, thus making America long for the warm, comforting embrace of George W. Bush and Darth Vader. People can be scared, and they can be lied to. One thing is for certain. Great Depression II is going to be no place to oppose single payer (government paid) health care, a better social safety net and tax cuts for the rich. The “raising taxes” bogeyman is such a load of crap. If my taxes went up $17,000 a year, I would still be saving money on health care.

Try telling the coming generation that you’re in favor of crushing student loan debt, health care denial by insurance companies, bailouts for bankers, no help for home owners and a bankruptcy law that looks a lot like debtors prison and let me know how that works for you.

Republicans and Torture

So now, the right wing has their panties in a bunch over release of the now infamous “torture memos”. I’ve heard everything from how damaging this is to our security, demotivating for the CIA and a gift to terrorists everywhere. This from the same assclowns who preach that the ends don’t justify the means. Unless we’re scared. And man, they can spread fear like nobody’s business.

So here we have another example that shows the Christian/Right WingTM coalition is all about what the wealthy guys want rather than what their namesake (JC) would have to say about it. JC was severly tortured before being killed. I can infer two things from that; one, he’s not real keen on capital punishment, and two, he’s not a big fan of torture, having been a victim of each.

It’s disturbing that the issue has come down to whether it worked, rather than is it legal, moral, ethical or something we wouldn’t mind having done to our troops. America’s moral sense of goodness has been pretty trashed by the last eight years. Taking torture off the table would be a good start to shining it up a little.

Sean Hannity Defines Assclown

So I’m driving around Metropolis, Illinois (home of Superman. Really.) and I’m bored so I give the AM dial a spin. Who pops up but Sean “I am SO an assclown” Hannity spewing his usual nonsense, bile and lies, when he comes up with this winning question to ask each of his knuckle dragging guests, “How many Americans will die because of Obama’s actions this week?” Huh? Exactly what actions is he speaking off? The release of the torture memos from the CIA.

Right. We admit in writing to what everyone in the world already knows and that amounts to dooming Americans to death. Gotcha. What‘s it like living in bizarro world? Here’s a document very similar to the “torture memos” from a different era, but one that has echoes of Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/Ashcroft:

Confidential!
To: Chief Public Prosecutor in Düsseldorf .
Subject: Mistreatment of Political Prisoners
Meeting at the Reich Ministry of Justice on June 4, 1937
It has been recognized by government leaders at the highest levels that more rigorous interrogations are necessary and indispensable. In such cases, it would be nonsensical to prosecute the officers carrying out the interrogation for exceeding their authority. However, public prosecutors must carry out the letter of the law and have no possibility of choosing to prosecute or not as they may judge fit ... At present, we thus have a situation which cannot continue: a deficient sense of what is right on the part of judicial officers; an undignified position for police officers, who try to help matters by foolish denials [that torture has taken place in court proceedings]. The purpose of this meeting is to discuss the possibility of relevant limits. There followed a discussion of individual questions:
Question 1: For which offenses are more rigorous interrogations permissible?
There was general agreement that, in principle) interrogations of this kind may be undertaken in cases where charges involve the immediate interests of the state. ... chiefly treason and high treason. Representatives of the Gestapo expressed the opinion that a more rigorous interrogation could also be considered in cases of Jehovah's Witnesses, explosives, and sabotage. ... It was unanimously agreed that charges under paragraph 175 of the Criminal Code [that is, charges of homosexuality] should not be considered as grounds. A more rigorous interrogation is, as a general principle, never permissible in the case of foreigners. ...
Question 2: Nature of corporal punishment?
As a general principle, in more rigorous interrogations only blows with a club on the buttocks are permissible, up to 25 such blows. The number is to be determined in advance by the Gestapo (see Question 3). Beginning with the tenth blow, a physician must be present. A standard club will be designated, to eliminate all irregularities.
Question 3: Who may order a more rigorous interrogation?
As a general principle, only Gestapo Headquarters in Berlin. Local state police stations must obtain permission in advance from Berlin. Without permission a more rigorous interrogation may not be conducted.
...

Question 5: What assurance exists that innocent persons will not be interrogated with the more rigorous measures?
This question is answered by the measures named under Question 3.


Question 6: How are judicial officers to deal technically with cases:
(a) in which permissible corporal punishment has been inflicted under the terms stated above? If an office of public prosecution receives a complaint, it contacts the state police and confirms that permission was granted (by the Gestapo Berlin). If said permission is shown to have been given, no charges are pressed, and a formal announcement should be made: "Investigation has shown that a criminal act was not committed."
(b) in which corporal punishment has been inflicted that is not permissible under the terms stated above?
If it transpires that permission was not obtained, commence investigation immediately and report at once to the Central Office of Public Prosecutions [in Berlin]. ...
The Gestapo will receive a copy of [this memo] from the Ministry [of Justice], whereupon it is to act on them immediately ... and issue instructions to state police stations. The Ministry of Justice will for its part then issue instructions to public prosecutors.

Nice company to be hanging with, guys.

Alcohol and the Church

Maybe it’s different from when I was coming up, but one of the key features in the lifestyle of Evangelicals was abstaining from alcohol. I remember the little plastic shot glasses of Welch’s grape juice and cubes of Wonder Bread for Communion. Even at that age, I couldn’t figure out why none of the people in the church drank beer, but all the neighbors did.

If drinking was so bad, why did JC actually produce the stuff miraculously? Once again, the disconnect from these people’s practices and the alleged source of them could hardly be farther apart.

American Evangelicals and the Poor

One of the most repeated concepts in all four gospels is that JC wants his followers to help the poor. Most of his admonitions were about helping the poor. Damn near the only thing He said that all four gospels agree on is, “If you want to be perfect, give all that you have to the poor and follow me.”

Okay, so the real important items that most Evangelical assclowns follow is to have a HUGE megachurch building, fight homosexual rights, protest abortion, fight for lower taxes and get rid of welfare. Why the fuck would an eternal, all-powerful God need a new house? I’m pretty sure a guy like that would be protected from the weather by other means. I go kind of apeshit seeing a HUGE church in an area that has homeless people. Any allegedly Christian church that has a building (used a few hours a week MAX) that doesn’t also run a food kitchen and a homeless shelter is a complete fraud. That would be most of them, of course.

So, anyway, these are the sheep that have been co-opted by a rapacious Right WingTM and basically are doing damned near zero that their deity asked for, just following the will of the Republican task masters. What the hell is wrong with American Christians?

More Fun with Christians

Okay, there are a lot of things Christian in the US rant and froth about that the Big Guy never mentioned. We’ve covered abortion and gay marriage in that context. But the Republicans did such a great conflation and confusion of Republican virtues and biblical ones that most US Evangelicals oppose paying taxes, even though the Big Man said, “Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s” in direct response to question about whether taxes should be paid.

Basically, Christian tax resisters and tax cutters are working in direct opposition to what their own god said in their own holy book. But the Republicans have such a tight grip on them that they disavow their own god’s words in order to reduce taxes on the wealthy, who, incidentally, are also condemned by the same god.

Once again, the younger ones seem to not be as rabid for the most part, but honestly, taking apart this religion is like shooting fish in a barrel.

Opposed to Gay Marriage?

If you haven’t seen the video making the rounds, it’s a hoot, if unintentionally. Another set of Evangelical activists have put on a scary ad about how much gay marriage is harming the nation and every American. It uses the usual fatuous nonsense about the “biblical” ideal of a family. Biblical? Have the read that book they keep thumping?

Here are a few snippets from the good book:

Lamech said to his wives, "Adah and Zillah, listen to me; wives of Lamech, hear my words.

so he went to Ishmael and married Mahalath, the sister of Nebaioth and daughter of Ishmael son of Abraham, in addition to the wives he already had.

Give me my wives and children, for whom I have served you, and I will be on my way.

Then Jacob put his children and his wives on camels,

Esau took his wives from the women of Canaan:

the sons of Bilhah and the sons of Zilpah, his father's wives, and he brought their father a bad report about them.


And that’s just a quick glance through Genesis, never mind the rest! So we have one verse among ceremonial laws that can be read as opposing homosexuality, there are countless stories of men with multiple wives. David was alleged to have seven hundred!

Now would somebody please with a straight face tell me where Christians get cover for their anti-gay phobia from the Bible? A couple of centuries back, they used it to deny women their rights, not to mention slavery. The entire Southern Baptist Church, the largest protestant denomination was created for the sole purpose of keeping out them darkies!

The good news, as with most good news involving the scary right-wingers, is that they are fewer with every passing election cycle. They are a group based on old, white, southern, angry men. And they’re dying off.

Good riddance.

PS Apparently the same idiots who brought you "teabagging" without googling it first have now given us "2 million for marriage" which they choose to hiply call 2M4M. Ever read a personal ad section and seen M4M?

Priceless.

This I Believe

I’m listening to This American Life on NPR (of course) and the topic is, “This I used to believe”. This leads me to need to repeat a rant that I’ve given live many, many times.

I’ve offered this up to dozens, possibly hundreds of Christians, and I’ve gotten no answer more satisfying than, “I never thought about it that way.” American Christians seem to have issues that drive them nuts. They loathe the idea of abortion. This is pretty consistently held across most Evangelical groups and exploited by Republicans. Abortion is murder. Period. Always wrong, never acceptable, forbidden by God, Jesus and Mary.

Nobody is pro-abortion. Abortion is required as a correction of a mistake. If no mistakes were ever made, no abortions would be needed. But humans are flawed and always have been. The word “prostitute” occurs hundreds of times in the bible. You have to assume prostitutes frequently became pregnant, and it’s also safe to assume that pregnant prostitutes get very little business. Given no contraception at the time that we know of, they must have practiced abortion, whether by some mix of herbs or falling down a staircase.

And yet, the issue of the evil of abortion, so important to many Christians that it is their single issue in all political choices is never, not once, called out in the bible as a problem. Why is that? Jesus hung with hos and never called them on it. Not once. Never. What is wrong with these people? Shouldn’t your most important political issue be at least mentioned in your holy book?

Right Wing and Hating America

If you want to get depressed about the level of political discourse in the country these days, just pop on over to the delightful Hannity forums, and read a few. The moderator (the MODERATOR mind you) of the site opens a thread called. “Is it time to shut it down?” The idea is that democrats in general and President Obama in particular have so thoroughly ruined America that we need to shut down all businesses in the US until we can remove all of the duly elected Democrats are replace them with real Americans.

Bad enough for the moderator to open it, but the 750 posts in the next 24 hours contain outright threats on the life of the President, a call to armed insurrection and much talk of violence. As Jon Stewart put it so well, “You’re confusing tyranny with losing.”

These people somehow can’t manage to see that they lost an election, actually quite a few, and when your party loses, you can’t just called for a revolution and claim to believe in democracy. It just doesn’t make sense. One of the unintended funny comments echoed GWB’s preemptive war strategy, “We have to take out Obama for what he might do in the future!” Here’s another actual quote, “Obama is the greatest threat to this nation that it has ever faced.” Really? Not Hitler? Tojo? The Civil War? (These are the type of assclowns who call it, “The War of Northern Aggression”.)

Huh? No wonder these guys lost.

The Republican Party is in real danger of falling off a cliff, and as it’s aging, dwindling membership loses moderates and independents, the remaining folk become more and more toxic, and more and more marginalized which will make them madder and madder. This can’t end particularly well. And their own little media circus of Sean and Rush and Ann and Michelle Glen and all their lesser wannabees are fanning the flames of this desire to harm, hurt or destroy those who’s opinions vary from theirs.

A two party system is probably a healthy thing, so the disappearance of the Republican Party would likely be an ugly thing. Personally, I’d like to see a parliamentary system, which coalitions and a Prime Minister, but that would require a constitutional conference, and THAT would be really, really hard to pull off in the current atmosphere. Imagine not having to pick the lesser if two evils, and actually join a Socialist or Nihilist or Populist or Libertarian or Agrarian or Green or Muslim or Christian party? Works for me.

American History

Sorry to not write today, but is the funniest damn thing I've seen in forever, especially in light of the recent teabagging absurdity.

(Sorry but blogspot decided to mess with my head and the tags won't work.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLzo9pOXa-s&feature=player_embedded

Really Red State Territory

We’re here in Barkers Crossing, Georgia, which means I tend to shut my mouth and open my tailgate. From the graphic above, you can see that I appear vaguely partisan to the passing driver and have gotten some dumb shit yelled at me over the years, but at least there are a few advantages to being most of two meters tall and a hundred kilograms. Somehow, they never actually take a swing. Go figure. Anyway, with the tailgate down, it’s a lot quieter and more peaceful which the dear wife appreciates.

I’ve been reading the follow-ups to the whole Tax Day Grass Roots (Really Not Funded By The Usual Republican Billionaires) Tea Bag Day Event, and it strikes me what a bunch of ignorant angry idiots there are in our fine country who can be so easily swayed.

My current favorite is Right WingTM outrage over DHS reporting (ordered by the GWB administration) that extremist groups might target veterans for membership and recruiting to carry out terrorist acts (anyone remember Tim McVeigh?) Without pausing for breath, they go on to call for the violent overthrow of the US Government in a revolution. Do these people have any inner monologue? Hello? Is this thing on?

Honestly, the fact that these idiots got their candidates elected and reelected in the last decade makes me wonder what a great idea democracy really is. Democracy if we win, revolution if we lose. Sounds sane to me. NOT.

Republicans Losing It

You know, you just can’t make this stuff up. The whole “tea party” thing is pretty funny, but the best part is how they make themselves look increasingly lost to the young. They are promoting these things on Fox News, and Hannity, Limbaugh, et al are talking up teabagging as the great new Republican stand for the common man. Teabagging will be just the trick to reach out and grow the base!

One small problem. Before betting the house on it, you think one of these geniuses would google it. Apparently, anyone under 30 is fully aware that “teabagging” refers to scrotal/facial contact, often while the facial contributor is passed out or asleep and the scrotal contributor has a camera. There’s also a large gay fan club of the practice, which is just icing on the, er, nutbag.

C’mon Republicans! Let’s go teabagging!!

Next, this great piece in the WashPo has determined that Rush Limbaugh is the leading cause of the growth of socialism and socialist thought, especially among America’s youth.

I love it. Twenty years after the fall of the Soviet Union, “socialism” just isn’t the boogey man it once was. It’s more like, “European style socialism!” leads to kids looking it up on line and finding that in “European style socialism” education and health care are damn near free, life expectancies exceed our and they get 6 weeks of vacation to start. Where do I sign up?

Anyone under 40 today knows that communists are either crazy North Koreans, bullied people in Cuba or the people who make all the stuff we buy at Wal-Mart. They are likely much more pissed about some 27 year old on Wall Street making more in a year than their entire extended family will in their lifetime, after a taxpayer funded bailout. Now THAT’S where the populist rage is pointed, and the Republicans are having a hard time keeping a straight face talking to anyone but bankers and the mega wealthy.

WHEN WILL THIS DEPRESSION END?

(With thanks to Jal S. Desai)
Please tell me good friend,
When will this depression end?
When will the homeless have a roof over their head?
When will the starving have money to buy bread?
When will you stop being part of a mob
Desperately looking for a job?
When will the good times return?
When will people have money to burn?
When will all this misery end?
I'll tell you, good friend.
When compassion fills the human heart,
Then this depression will depart!
Things will change at the hour
The rich think of helping the poor.
When the wealthy think it proper
To share their wealth with the pauper.
Everything will become all righty
When we all live in an egalitarian society!

Day Three on the Road with Harvey

Well, there were fewer open restaurants in the Keys this winter, a good five within a half mile of my house. Tourist oriented businesses have a low life expectancy, so it’s not a huge surprise. But driving into Kissimmee, Florida today, neighbor to Orlando, holy crap! So many shuttered and “for sale” posted businesses, and not just the Mom and Pop variety. Today we saw a shuttered Shell station, also Waffle House, McDonald’s, KFC, Sears and a load of closed motels and restaurants.

I’d been waiting to see what the economics would look like on Main Street, so the next six weeks travel through small town America should be instructional. I’ll try to post daily.