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.