I think there's a kind of hysteresis in politics. You get a certain effect from telling a bold lie, but you don't lose nearly all that gain by retracting it, so it pays to lie. You may gain 100,000 votes by saying your opponent is a cannibal, but if you only lose 30 or 40 thousand when you admit "I was wrong to say that" why not keep lying? There's no limit to how many you can tell and a good part of the public, who really wanted to hear bad things about the other side will tell themselves you were forced to retract it by "the liberals" and it's really true - he's a cannibal from the dark jungles of Kenya. It pays to lie even when you get caught. It doesn't hurt to say one thing to one group and another thing to another. You may actually gain support from people who will think you're being a big man for correcting yourself and will forget that you deliberately lied, deliberately tried to cash in on the meanest and nastiest and most dishonest impulses of the public to get votes.
No matter how much the candidate lies, we can count on the fact that the public is as least as dishonest with themselves and often far more so. If one tells one's family that taking a pay cut won't add to the family debt, one has a tough sell, but the candidate is talking to people who want to believe they would be much better off if their personal tax load were lightened and so they will listen eagerly and listen dismissively when the truth is explained. Tell them their taxes are actually lower than ever and they won't listen. Show them that nearly everybody pays 25 to 30 percent of what they earn and they'll put their hands over their ears and chant liberaliberaliberal. I think this is why the Romney ad I heard this morning on TV could get away with claiming that an independent study proved that Obama planned to tax the average Joe an extra $4000 next year ( and presumably by executive fiat. ) Not one of his likely supporters will bother to check any facts that support their beliefs. First comes the distrust and anger and dislike, and then the reasons we tell ourselves and others. What we want to hear is what we hear and when we hear it, we stop listening further.
So Romney may substantially reduce any loses he suffered by his 47% gaffe by admitting he was "Completely wrong." Takes a big man, after all and of course, we all know that there are still huge numbers of loafers and leeches and welfare queens driving Caddies -- enough to cause us to scrap any attempts at helping people become productive again, keeping children from falling hopelessly into inextricable cycles of crime and poverty and disease by using MY HARD EARNED MONEY that all belongs to ME and of course NOBODY EVER GAVE ME ANYTHING. And isn't it annoying that we have to be so "politically correct" and just like we can't say Merry Christmas any more we can't call 'these people' by our traditional words? I mean traditional values mean something.
Friday, October 05, 2012
Saturday, September 29, 2012
Romney Shrugged
One casual observation I suspect of having some merit is that people who complain a lot about some failing in others are covering up something similar in themselves. Perhaps those who make such a constant noise about large numbers of our countrymen being freeloaders while covering themselves in self-adulation would give weight to the conjecture. Are they really getting a raw deal?
One certainly does hear more than enough fiction from the Republican Party's candidates about welfare queens driving Cadillacs and the stifling of initiative that comes from subsidized school lunches and perhaps a bit less about subsidies for business interests and of course, now we have that abominable new straw man, the 47%.
It's an American habit, and not just a Conservative habit, to dismiss, and often angrily dismiss any discussion of factual support for political arguments and particularly examples of how our assertions fail to be born out in other countries, so of course those who support Mr. Romney for reasons known only to their subconscious minds, that 47% of Americans do not make enough money at present to pay Federal Income Tax are happy to frame that in terms of government dependency.
Of course, as with most things you hear from Romney and Ryan, it's not true at all, finely crafted as the rhetoric might be and as effective in pushing that American middle class self pity hot button. As Ezra Klein pointed out in the Washington Post not long ago, the taxpayer supporting a family on $40,000 a year may not pay Federal Income Tax, but he's paying tax on every dollar he makes while the fortunate one ( excuse me, the selfless job creator) making $4,000,000 is likely paying less than 35% on the whole chalupa. As Klein says, it's phrased that way to make it seem only fair to give a break to those heavily burdened 'job creators.' What it's not supposed to do is to remind you that the $40,000 'freeloader' is paying payroll tax on every dime up to around $100,000. So when you look at the total family tax bill, it seems quite a different story. The numbers make liars out of a lot of people and the burden is being shouldered by the rich and poor only it's the poor and the struggling middle who can't pay their bills because of it. Taxes aren't cutting into the caviar budget, they're making it harder to buy the canned tuna and hamburger helper; harder to pay for college, harder to pay those ridiculous medical bills and harder to buy those new cars and appliances and houses that are the real job creators.
Not 47 percent paying nothing, but everybody paying something, and most Americans paying between 25 percent and 30 percent of their income. Where are the freeloaders? Where are all those hordes of freeloaders eating up the hard earned dollars of the job creating Galts? The taxpayer earning a hundred grand pays more than the one making over a million and the poverty stricken have to pay 20% of their miserable $25K all of which they need to spend to stay alive. Is it difficult to refrain from bad language and malediction when listening to such damaging lies? You bet.
So they're lying of course and as usual. The total tax burden is far more equally distributed than the Republicans want you to believe and one might make a case that the people crying loudest about freeloaders are getting a better deal then they would like to admit. Perhaps there's some hidden guilt involved, perhaps not.
There is no more factual support for calling nearly half of us freeloaders dependent upon government subsidy than there is for Ryan's 3 hour marathon times and in reply to that cynical bumper sticker I saw yesterday sneering "4 more years? Are you out of your mind?" Why no sir, I'm not and I'd remind you that neither intelligence nor honesty are more equitably distributed in the world than money.
One certainly does hear more than enough fiction from the Republican Party's candidates about welfare queens driving Cadillacs and the stifling of initiative that comes from subsidized school lunches and perhaps a bit less about subsidies for business interests and of course, now we have that abominable new straw man, the 47%.
It's an American habit, and not just a Conservative habit, to dismiss, and often angrily dismiss any discussion of factual support for political arguments and particularly examples of how our assertions fail to be born out in other countries, so of course those who support Mr. Romney for reasons known only to their subconscious minds, that 47% of Americans do not make enough money at present to pay Federal Income Tax are happy to frame that in terms of government dependency.
Of course, as with most things you hear from Romney and Ryan, it's not true at all, finely crafted as the rhetoric might be and as effective in pushing that American middle class self pity hot button. As Ezra Klein pointed out in the Washington Post not long ago, the taxpayer supporting a family on $40,000 a year may not pay Federal Income Tax, but he's paying tax on every dollar he makes while the fortunate one ( excuse me, the selfless job creator) making $4,000,000 is likely paying less than 35% on the whole chalupa. As Klein says, it's phrased that way to make it seem only fair to give a break to those heavily burdened 'job creators.' What it's not supposed to do is to remind you that the $40,000 'freeloader' is paying payroll tax on every dime up to around $100,000. So when you look at the total family tax bill, it seems quite a different story. The numbers make liars out of a lot of people and the burden is being shouldered by the rich and poor only it's the poor and the struggling middle who can't pay their bills because of it. Taxes aren't cutting into the caviar budget, they're making it harder to buy the canned tuna and hamburger helper; harder to pay for college, harder to pay those ridiculous medical bills and harder to buy those new cars and appliances and houses that are the real job creators.
Not 47 percent paying nothing, but everybody paying something, and most Americans paying between 25 percent and 30 percent of their income. Where are the freeloaders? Where are all those hordes of freeloaders eating up the hard earned dollars of the job creating Galts? The taxpayer earning a hundred grand pays more than the one making over a million and the poverty stricken have to pay 20% of their miserable $25K all of which they need to spend to stay alive. Is it difficult to refrain from bad language and malediction when listening to such damaging lies? You bet.
So they're lying of course and as usual. The total tax burden is far more equally distributed than the Republicans want you to believe and one might make a case that the people crying loudest about freeloaders are getting a better deal then they would like to admit. Perhaps there's some hidden guilt involved, perhaps not.
There is no more factual support for calling nearly half of us freeloaders dependent upon government subsidy than there is for Ryan's 3 hour marathon times and in reply to that cynical bumper sticker I saw yesterday sneering "4 more years? Are you out of your mind?" Why no sir, I'm not and I'd remind you that neither intelligence nor honesty are more equitably distributed in the world than money.
Wednesday, September 26, 2012
Sin and Atonement
Today is Yom Kippur and being an atheist and unobservant Jew, the fact that I remembered is unusual for me. A collection of ritual and remembrance and appeals for mercy to some doddering old imaginary reprobate in the upper troposphere aren't the sort of things I often occupy my mind with, but for the random musings I sometimes indulge in on gray mornings such as this.
I don't know all that much about the origins of this holy day. Vague memories from childhood religious school attempts at indoctrination, involve the guilt of pretending to be Christian following 1492. I'm not sure it's quite true, but then even the true myths aren't quite honest, are they? Besides that was a few years before I was born and I never pretended not to be a Jew.
Anyway, Judaism is hardly unique in being soaked to the bone in feelings of guilt and sinfulness and the feeling of remorse for things that need not produce it; things that often never happened. There are sins we get from sexual thoughts not approved by authority ( few are) and sins we get from mythological ancestors who didn't exist and couldn't have committed them. That's more of a Christian thing, of course and even if a childless, non-Christian God might forgive you ad libitum and with regard to your subsequent actions. We can't avoid it though, even as Jews, and prophets from time immemorial were there to tell you that every misfortune you'd think God would have prevented happened because -- well just because you're steeped in sin. Whatever happens, there's always a prophet there to cash in by blaming it on sin and with his hand out for offerings.
People will tell you that prostitution is the oldest profession, but of course freedom to exchange favors didn't originate until some priest, some prophet, learned to control his tribe by threatening them with some imaginary god; by inventing sin and selling a way to make it go away. Give part of the hunt to God by letting the priest eat it, support your synagogue and maintain the kind of ethnocentrism needed to support the clergy and government by expiating the guilt, atoning for the "sin."
And sin, almost by necessity, has nothing to do with harming anyone. The original sin had to do with disobedience to arbitrary command ( he's jealous by his own admission, remember) and in particular the disobedience involved in learning about morality -- taking moral decisions into one's own hands as one takes a piece of fruit into one's mouth. It involves a forbidden improvement of our human lot for which we will be punished -- unless. . . Upon that unless is many a church founded.
So if you're a Jew, you may be afraid not to spend today hungry and thirsty and miserable, chastising yourself for committing all those sins we surely must have committed but not necessarily reporting to the police or the IRS or our spouses so that old whoozis in the clouds will let us live another year and you'll do it in full knowledge that there's no correlation whatsoever between ritual, sin, expiation and living another year. After all we've made decisions and had thoughts the priests and prophets, rabbis and our relatives didn't decide or think for us and Yahweh-in-the-sky-with-lightening wouldn't approve of us making all by ourselves.
But of course, this is a Jewish holiday, observed by many Jews simply because they are Jews and feel in need of that sort of identity for one reason or another even if it's only to set them apart from others with their own ways of expiating their innate feelings of unworthiness.
CNN's Belief Blog asks us what we are atoning for, and some of the answers gave rise to this post. One sad response was about pushing his sister down the stairs and blaming it on the dog. Another pointed out that as a Catholic, she atoned for her laziness and impatience, as though she somehow owed some cosmic entity much hard work without asking for any return. (40 days longer than those flaky Jews as she pointed out) Perhaps that lack was somehow as bad as pushing someone down the stairs, but I'll leave the ranking of sins to the self-appointed experts. All I can do is talk about the harm one does to another. Perhaps therefore, an apology to the sister would do more good than religious ritual or the profession of a credo, but I fear an apology to the dog would be as effective in obtaining forgiveness from the infinite and uncaring cosmos.
Then of course was the writer who tweeted:
So anyway, I'm a Jew and it's Yom Kippur and even though there are countless things I'm sorry for having done or not done, my thoughts are my business and I go where they lead me and I don't expect special favors or indulgences for not eating bacon or sewing a cotton shirt with linen thread or any of the 600 some odd commandments or for not atoning for things that never happened or can't be made better or be undone because I don't matter all that much. It all comes to the same thing and our Earth will boil away and our Sun die and the universe disperse forever into the cold and dark and all our gods and atonements in vain, time without end.
I don't know all that much about the origins of this holy day. Vague memories from childhood religious school attempts at indoctrination, involve the guilt of pretending to be Christian following 1492. I'm not sure it's quite true, but then even the true myths aren't quite honest, are they? Besides that was a few years before I was born and I never pretended not to be a Jew.
Anyway, Judaism is hardly unique in being soaked to the bone in feelings of guilt and sinfulness and the feeling of remorse for things that need not produce it; things that often never happened. There are sins we get from sexual thoughts not approved by authority ( few are) and sins we get from mythological ancestors who didn't exist and couldn't have committed them. That's more of a Christian thing, of course and even if a childless, non-Christian God might forgive you ad libitum and with regard to your subsequent actions. We can't avoid it though, even as Jews, and prophets from time immemorial were there to tell you that every misfortune you'd think God would have prevented happened because -- well just because you're steeped in sin. Whatever happens, there's always a prophet there to cash in by blaming it on sin and with his hand out for offerings.
People will tell you that prostitution is the oldest profession, but of course freedom to exchange favors didn't originate until some priest, some prophet, learned to control his tribe by threatening them with some imaginary god; by inventing sin and selling a way to make it go away. Give part of the hunt to God by letting the priest eat it, support your synagogue and maintain the kind of ethnocentrism needed to support the clergy and government by expiating the guilt, atoning for the "sin."
And sin, almost by necessity, has nothing to do with harming anyone. The original sin had to do with disobedience to arbitrary command ( he's jealous by his own admission, remember) and in particular the disobedience involved in learning about morality -- taking moral decisions into one's own hands as one takes a piece of fruit into one's mouth. It involves a forbidden improvement of our human lot for which we will be punished -- unless. . . Upon that unless is many a church founded.
So if you're a Jew, you may be afraid not to spend today hungry and thirsty and miserable, chastising yourself for committing all those sins we surely must have committed but not necessarily reporting to the police or the IRS or our spouses so that old whoozis in the clouds will let us live another year and you'll do it in full knowledge that there's no correlation whatsoever between ritual, sin, expiation and living another year. After all we've made decisions and had thoughts the priests and prophets, rabbis and our relatives didn't decide or think for us and Yahweh-in-the-sky-with-lightening wouldn't approve of us making all by ourselves.
But of course, this is a Jewish holiday, observed by many Jews simply because they are Jews and feel in need of that sort of identity for one reason or another even if it's only to set them apart from others with their own ways of expiating their innate feelings of unworthiness.
CNN's Belief Blog asks us what we are atoning for, and some of the answers gave rise to this post. One sad response was about pushing his sister down the stairs and blaming it on the dog. Another pointed out that as a Catholic, she atoned for her laziness and impatience, as though she somehow owed some cosmic entity much hard work without asking for any return. (40 days longer than those flaky Jews as she pointed out) Perhaps that lack was somehow as bad as pushing someone down the stairs, but I'll leave the ranking of sins to the self-appointed experts. All I can do is talk about the harm one does to another. Perhaps therefore, an apology to the sister would do more good than religious ritual or the profession of a credo, but I fear an apology to the dog would be as effective in obtaining forgiveness from the infinite and uncaring cosmos.
Then of course was the writer who tweeted:
"I don't need to atone for anything. Jesus Christ already atoned for every wrong thing I've ever done or will do."I don't know if he or she was standing on a pedestal while tweeting, but that's how I imagine it. Forgive me if I find that to be dangerous and arrogant and a rejection of moral scruple and if I cannot imagine any mystic process by which the execution of an ancient political and religious dissenter would free one of moral responsibility (or any trace of humility) but that's religion for you. Chum the waters with fear of unavoidable and dire consequences and then offer a hook with a way out wrapped around it that's so entirely meaningless in moral terms it can't be dealt with by appeal to fact or reason and perhaps only with Tertullian's 'Credo quia absurdum' which, being in itself absurd really doesn't deal with it anyway.
So anyway, I'm a Jew and it's Yom Kippur and even though there are countless things I'm sorry for having done or not done, my thoughts are my business and I go where they lead me and I don't expect special favors or indulgences for not eating bacon or sewing a cotton shirt with linen thread or any of the 600 some odd commandments or for not atoning for things that never happened or can't be made better or be undone because I don't matter all that much. It all comes to the same thing and our Earth will boil away and our Sun die and the universe disperse forever into the cold and dark and all our gods and atonements in vain, time without end.
Wednesday, September 19, 2012
Smoke some Tea with Bruce Tinsley
Life provides some tasty moments, even in lean and hopeless times:
delicious little bonbons like the news that the Romney campaign had to
borrow $20 million last month and is still $11 million in the hole.
Of
course that wouldn't have happened if it weren't for that socialist
Obama. Say, maybe he can pay off that debt by cutting costs and
quitting now! Nah, he'll have to raise some revenue by going after the
very, very, very rich. Irony is sweeter than Tupelo honey.
But it's the disconnect, the discontinuity at the interface between reality and the wild and hyperbolic hurricane of principle and theory and doctrine and ad hoc explanations that makes these things so sticky, gooey sweet.
I had to laugh today at a newspaper comic strip called Mallard Fillmore that illustrates that discontinuity; bashing Obama and Liberals and free thinkers so desperately, it's obvious that Bruce Tinsley the perpetrator, has long since run out past the boundaries of the real into a world of his own where Obama is falling in the polls and Tinsley has some far better alternative to offer, but don't ask.
Humor
from the alternate reality where Bush's failures were Clinton's fault,
where the Bush economic fundamentals were 'robust' and where paying off
Bush's unprecedented spending spree means the debt is Obama's fault.A
reality where the government cannot create jobs but that Damn Obama
isn't creating the jobs we demand.
Hey, I'm four years older than I was four years ago. Damn those Liberals!
No, sorry Tinsley, you never were funny. Bitter, angry and a bit delusional and really a bit pathetic certainly. You've been very wrong for a very long time and you need to recognize it. You get printed so that the papers can pretend to be balanced, so that their corporate owners can be told that their viewpoints are being served and so that the barrel scrapings, the scab picking, booger eating, shack dwelling, debt ridden 98 IQ dregs of hung over humanity might buy an occasional paper and find something they have the vocabulary to read and feel good about themselves that they too can hate that Damned Obama just like you -- find an anger bigger than their own to unite behind.
But it's the disconnect, the discontinuity at the interface between reality and the wild and hyperbolic hurricane of principle and theory and doctrine and ad hoc explanations that makes these things so sticky, gooey sweet.
I had to laugh today at a newspaper comic strip called Mallard Fillmore that illustrates that discontinuity; bashing Obama and Liberals and free thinkers so desperately, it's obvious that Bruce Tinsley the perpetrator, has long since run out past the boundaries of the real into a world of his own where Obama is falling in the polls and Tinsley has some far better alternative to offer, but don't ask.
Hey, I'm four years older than I was four years ago. Damn those Liberals!
No, sorry Tinsley, you never were funny. Bitter, angry and a bit delusional and really a bit pathetic certainly. You've been very wrong for a very long time and you need to recognize it. You get printed so that the papers can pretend to be balanced, so that their corporate owners can be told that their viewpoints are being served and so that the barrel scrapings, the scab picking, booger eating, shack dwelling, debt ridden 98 IQ dregs of hung over humanity might buy an occasional paper and find something they have the vocabulary to read and feel good about themselves that they too can hate that Damned Obama just like you -- find an anger bigger than their own to unite behind.
Tuesday, September 18, 2012
Those people
You're going to hear a lot about it today and I have to admit, there's a smile on my face this morning. It's not because I put a lot of store in some stupid remark that may or may not be a window into the true mind of Mitt, but because I've been hoping all along that the sheer arrogance evidenced by the ballooning buffoonery of the Swaggering Right would be their downfall. After all, it's damned hard to step carefully when you're goose-stepping. Looks like Mitt has done just that -- stepped right in it.
Said Willard M. Romney, thinking he was still in an age when you could say things and the words would just fade away.
Romney was, of course flattering his audience as politicians always do; flattering people who like to think of themselves as special because they make or have or have inherited a good deal of money - or people who certainly would be rich if it weren't for all those freeloaders and Democrats. Build up their self-esteem,and a good way to keep up that head of steam is to look down on others. And so Mitt reminded them that his job is not to worry about those people, which is a sideways way to say his job as president would be to worry about these people, his wealthy constituents. Remind them that Obama supporters are just looking for an excuse to pick their pockets.
And should any be troubled by Marley's chains rattling in the background, Mitt is there to remind them that those people don't rate sympathy because they all think of themselves as victims, because they depend on the largesse of the large-assed assembled patricians. Don't worry about those people. His concern is with the 5% the 10% who are thoughtful, not the ignorant under $250K a year rabble with all their cooties.
Those 47% of course don't really live tax free of course. 28% do pay payroll taxes and we're not talking about Social Security and Medicare -- and nearly everyone pays real estate taxes directly or indirectly and we all pay sales taxes. About 17% just don't make enough money or are elderly and dependent -- those whose jobs went to India perhaps or those devastated by huge medical bills, but although there are millions of different stories, it's good to know that Mitt thinks the President's job is not to worry about them. Let them worry about themselves. The real problem for a president according to people like Mitt is that he and his audience have to pay taxes. America is about us. The business of their president is asset retention and Mitt is here to tell them he's their man -- one of these people.
"There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent on government, who believe that, that they are victims, who believe that government has the responsibility to care for them. Who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing."
Said Willard M. Romney, thinking he was still in an age when you could say things and the words would just fade away.
Romney was, of course flattering his audience as politicians always do; flattering people who like to think of themselves as special because they make or have or have inherited a good deal of money - or people who certainly would be rich if it weren't for all those freeloaders and Democrats. Build up their self-esteem,and a good way to keep up that head of steam is to look down on others. And so Mitt reminded them that his job is not to worry about those people, which is a sideways way to say his job as president would be to worry about these people, his wealthy constituents. Remind them that Obama supporters are just looking for an excuse to pick their pockets.
And should any be troubled by Marley's chains rattling in the background, Mitt is there to remind them that those people don't rate sympathy because they all think of themselves as victims, because they depend on the largesse of the large-assed assembled patricians. Don't worry about those people. His concern is with the 5% the 10% who are thoughtful, not the ignorant under $250K a year rabble with all their cooties.
Those 47% of course don't really live tax free of course. 28% do pay payroll taxes and we're not talking about Social Security and Medicare -- and nearly everyone pays real estate taxes directly or indirectly and we all pay sales taxes. About 17% just don't make enough money or are elderly and dependent -- those whose jobs went to India perhaps or those devastated by huge medical bills, but although there are millions of different stories, it's good to know that Mitt thinks the President's job is not to worry about them. Let them worry about themselves. The real problem for a president according to people like Mitt is that he and his audience have to pay taxes. America is about us. The business of their president is asset retention and Mitt is here to tell them he's their man -- one of these people.
Monday, September 17, 2012
Off to see The Liz
The Wonderful Magical Apology tour Is waiting to take you away over at Fox News.
Associated Press Fact Check would beg to differ and the Washington Post agrees that this Wagnerian cycle of Obama's Apology Tour, like Ryan's 'under three hour' marathon time -- a lie.
With the November Elections close at hand, one might expect to be hearing some concrete plans about what the Republicans might actually do about the economy and since we are not hearing some concrete plans about what to do that differ from the deed that got us into this mess, we might rightly expect that, as with Nixon's infamous "secret plan to win the war" the plan consists of clinging white knuckled to the same course that ran us off the cliff and swept the GOP out of power. The plan is to keep the lies coming, keep them consistent enough, outrageous enough and nasty enough to satisfy the Josef Goebbels system requirements. Hey, it works and it got Tricky Dick re-elected.
Yes, indeed -- we all know the debt is enormous and we're told all day and all night that it's all because of Obama's never specified 'Policies.' You know, those policies that have more people on welfare than ever, according to the river of e-mail I get every morning and which isn't any more true than that he eliminated the Democratic 'work for welfare' program or tried to keep military voters out of the polls or that "he went over there and apologized to them." Yes, yes, "the government keeps printing money." They keep saying it, but then the bills need to be paid and there's no new money coming in thanks to the cuts. But remember -- for the most part those bills were run up by the President Who Never Existed: George W. Bush who actually told us the bills would pay themselves - by magic. Now why is it you haven't heard Bush quoted or mentioned for quite some time now? Haven't heard him speechifying for Mitt, now have you? Bush who?
The most expensive war in American history, the GWB prescription drug plan, the biggest, most expensive agency we've ever had and the large cuts to revenue which for 30 years have been promised as the magic fertilizer from which prosperity grows, haven't grown anything but the noxious Kudzu of debt and never actually were supposed to, since as Co-President Dick Cheney smilingly said "Debt Doesn't Matter." No, it's true, no new private sector jobs were created during the Bush frat party years, the government ballooned in size and expense and so did the debt and we didn't hear a God damned peep out of Chicken Little who's clucking himself half to death at the moment. We heard a lot of Liberal bashing though, didn't we? And the Liberals were right though, weren't they?
But we're not hearing it, we're hearing about birth certificates, death panels, radical Socialism and magical, mystical apology tours to 'over there' where he apologized to them. And of course the US has never done anything it needs to apologize for, being the magically mystically greatest country since God created the Earth 5773 years ago today. The Slave auctions to Wounded knee to My Lai, we've always been angels and heroes in our own hermetic consciousness.
You're not hearing that the facts make liars out of the Fox and its friends, that 90% marginal tax rates once presided over prosperity and full employment and diminishing debt, that slashing the top bracket funnels money into the market and real estate and hedge funds and inflated bubbles which bring on busts and recessions. You're not hearing that we're paying less taxes than ever and still after decades it hasn't showed a hint of paying off.
Hell, you're not hearing anything but lies or breathing any thing but the smoke of desperation. That Colored boy - now he's gone and abandoned Czechoslovakia, that empty suit, Commie tyrant Muslim from Africa! whines Fox News. That smell? It's the smoke and the stink of desperation. The collapse, the bailouts -- all that began under Bush and the current candidates loved it -- and Czechoslovakia went out of existence 10 years ago before you ever heard of Mr. Obama and his apology tour over there.
So keep believing, as Liz the Wiz Cheney tells us on Fox, how he went over there and apologized to them even though he didn't, because it's all you've got if you're a Romney supporter. It's all you've got. Keep joking about how he's not an American like fancy pants Willard because the smoke would be blown away if you had any memory and were willing to use it. The curtain of slander would be torn asunder and all you'd see is the few dozen wizards burning up millions and millions trying to make themselves very, very much richer at the expense of your future.
Continued the Liz, as the Fox folk danced down the yellow brick road away from the fact that Al Qaeda is in tatters and the 9/11 planners including Osama are dead and there have been no more attacks on our soil. Yes, and I'm sure he will be pushing it while bashing the health care plan he wrote and extolling all those empty shibboleths like smaller government and all that religious claptrap about morals and birth control. What the hell else can these people do when the facts, if facts be remembered, would cast them all into the pit?
"I will not and I will never apologize for America. I don't apologize for America, because I believe in America."
- Mitt Romney -
- Mitt Romney -
"You know, after he went over there and apologized to them, I can't vote for that guy"
-heard everywhere and every day-
Associated Press Fact Check would beg to differ and the Washington Post agrees that this Wagnerian cycle of Obama's Apology Tour, like Ryan's 'under three hour' marathon time -- a lie.
With the November Elections close at hand, one might expect to be hearing some concrete plans about what the Republicans might actually do about the economy and since we are not hearing some concrete plans about what to do that differ from the deed that got us into this mess, we might rightly expect that, as with Nixon's infamous "secret plan to win the war" the plan consists of clinging white knuckled to the same course that ran us off the cliff and swept the GOP out of power. The plan is to keep the lies coming, keep them consistent enough, outrageous enough and nasty enough to satisfy the Josef Goebbels system requirements. Hey, it works and it got Tricky Dick re-elected.
Yes, indeed -- we all know the debt is enormous and we're told all day and all night that it's all because of Obama's never specified 'Policies.' You know, those policies that have more people on welfare than ever, according to the river of e-mail I get every morning and which isn't any more true than that he eliminated the Democratic 'work for welfare' program or tried to keep military voters out of the polls or that "he went over there and apologized to them." Yes, yes, "the government keeps printing money." They keep saying it, but then the bills need to be paid and there's no new money coming in thanks to the cuts. But remember -- for the most part those bills were run up by the President Who Never Existed: George W. Bush who actually told us the bills would pay themselves - by magic. Now why is it you haven't heard Bush quoted or mentioned for quite some time now? Haven't heard him speechifying for Mitt, now have you? Bush who?
The most expensive war in American history, the GWB prescription drug plan, the biggest, most expensive agency we've ever had and the large cuts to revenue which for 30 years have been promised as the magic fertilizer from which prosperity grows, haven't grown anything but the noxious Kudzu of debt and never actually were supposed to, since as Co-President Dick Cheney smilingly said "Debt Doesn't Matter." No, it's true, no new private sector jobs were created during the Bush frat party years, the government ballooned in size and expense and so did the debt and we didn't hear a God damned peep out of Chicken Little who's clucking himself half to death at the moment. We heard a lot of Liberal bashing though, didn't we? And the Liberals were right though, weren't they?
But we're not hearing it, we're hearing about birth certificates, death panels, radical Socialism and magical, mystical apology tours to 'over there' where he apologized to them. And of course the US has never done anything it needs to apologize for, being the magically mystically greatest country since God created the Earth 5773 years ago today. The Slave auctions to Wounded knee to My Lai, we've always been angels and heroes in our own hermetic consciousness.
You're not hearing that the facts make liars out of the Fox and its friends, that 90% marginal tax rates once presided over prosperity and full employment and diminishing debt, that slashing the top bracket funnels money into the market and real estate and hedge funds and inflated bubbles which bring on busts and recessions. You're not hearing that we're paying less taxes than ever and still after decades it hasn't showed a hint of paying off.
Hell, you're not hearing anything but lies or breathing any thing but the smoke of desperation. That Colored boy - now he's gone and abandoned Czechoslovakia, that empty suit, Commie tyrant Muslim from Africa! whines Fox News. That smell? It's the smoke and the stink of desperation. The collapse, the bailouts -- all that began under Bush and the current candidates loved it -- and Czechoslovakia went out of existence 10 years ago before you ever heard of Mr. Obama and his apology tour over there.
So keep believing, as Liz the Wiz Cheney tells us on Fox, how he went over there and apologized to them even though he didn't, because it's all you've got if you're a Romney supporter. It's all you've got. Keep joking about how he's not an American like fancy pants Willard because the smoke would be blown away if you had any memory and were willing to use it. The curtain of slander would be torn asunder and all you'd see is the few dozen wizards burning up millions and millions trying to make themselves very, very much richer at the expense of your future.
" The president himself has got a terrible record on national security, and it’s clearly something that Gov. Romney ought rightly to be pushing”
Continued the Liz, as the Fox folk danced down the yellow brick road away from the fact that Al Qaeda is in tatters and the 9/11 planners including Osama are dead and there have been no more attacks on our soil. Yes, and I'm sure he will be pushing it while bashing the health care plan he wrote and extolling all those empty shibboleths like smaller government and all that religious claptrap about morals and birth control. What the hell else can these people do when the facts, if facts be remembered, would cast them all into the pit?
Sunday, September 16, 2012
Obama killed Jesus -- and a whole lotta other stuff.
Scientists plead for urgent action to tackle the growing dementia crisis
reads the headline in The Observer. Have they been listening to the 2012 Presidential campaign or watching Fox News?
Brit Hume of the paralyzed face; has the Botox affected his brain or has he been surgically altered so as not to grimace when he dutifully reveals what his corporate masters want you to think: that President Obama sympathizes with the people who killed a US ambassador and some of his staff.
He loved it, Obama did. He loved it like he loved 9/11, like he'd love to grab your guns, raise your taxes and steal your chickens. He hates America and everything you hold dear and he pisses on the Bible and shits on the flag every morning before breakfast and uses them new smart meters the power company installed to sneak through the wires and have phone sex with your wife at night. You know, he does things -- things like the way he 'went over there and apologized to them' and other things, other policies, other histories that only happened in the Budweiser soaked minds of America's demented underclass, straining for some excuse to make it appear that they're not ignorant, demented bigots.
Yessir, Romney was right, just like Mister Brit said -- but Ol' Rom just didn't say it right so's them libby rills would be satisfied, but hell, ya'll know that boy ain't a real Amerkin. And never you mind that ol' preacher Terry Jones who went from roastin' weenies over Koran fires to makin' films showing us how all them other prophets like to lick Satan's privates and Jesus hates 'em all. Just because them pagan ragheads got all exited don't make it his fault or our fault for promotin' him and stirrin' up the good Amerkun Tea Paytry-its in the name 'a righteousness.
reads the headline in The Observer. Have they been listening to the 2012 Presidential campaign or watching Fox News?
Brit Hume of the paralyzed face; has the Botox affected his brain or has he been surgically altered so as not to grimace when he dutifully reveals what his corporate masters want you to think: that President Obama sympathizes with the people who killed a US ambassador and some of his staff.
He loved it, Obama did. He loved it like he loved 9/11, like he'd love to grab your guns, raise your taxes and steal your chickens. He hates America and everything you hold dear and he pisses on the Bible and shits on the flag every morning before breakfast and uses them new smart meters the power company installed to sneak through the wires and have phone sex with your wife at night. You know, he does things -- things like the way he 'went over there and apologized to them' and other things, other policies, other histories that only happened in the Budweiser soaked minds of America's demented underclass, straining for some excuse to make it appear that they're not ignorant, demented bigots.
Yessir, Romney was right, just like Mister Brit said -- but Ol' Rom just didn't say it right so's them libby rills would be satisfied, but hell, ya'll know that boy ain't a real Amerkin. And never you mind that ol' preacher Terry Jones who went from roastin' weenies over Koran fires to makin' films showing us how all them other prophets like to lick Satan's privates and Jesus hates 'em all. Just because them pagan ragheads got all exited don't make it his fault or our fault for promotin' him and stirrin' up the good Amerkun Tea Paytry-its in the name 'a righteousness.
Friday, September 14, 2012
Logic 101
Let's say it's because the truth hurts, but I really hate to be taken for stupid by people who don't know me from Adam. I would at least prefer to be given the opportunity to say or do something to prove it.
So they tried to take me for a fool last night. When my Caller ID screen flashed "Opinion Poll" I was suspicious. It didn't say something like Zogby or any name I would recognize, so I paused the TV and picked it up hoping to have an opportunity to express my displeasure at the illegally late hour. I soon detected that "David" from the "polling company" was actually a computer. Didn't take any Holmesian deduction really. If the Voice on the phone does not stumble or pause at my assertions as to his oedipal relationships it's likely that old Dave is a new Dell.
But I went along, hoping to have my shot, answering that yes, I was going to vote, yes I was certain I was going to vote, am a registered Democrat and no I wasn't going to risk divine retribution by voting for some tin horn torturer like Allen "deport the commies" West, but noticing that the questions all compared the Republican Party with the "Democrat" Party, I began to lose patience.
You probably aren't old enough to remember how easy it was to determine political polarity by noting how the speaker pronounced Vietnam. It rhymed with Pete Ham if you were for the glorious crusade to protect American freedom. Curiously the same dialect discrimination obtained with our invasion of Iraq. If it was Eye-wrack, you were for it. But these chuckleheads can't bring themselves to acknowledge the Democratic Party by saying it right and they're too smugly stupid to notice that I might notice. They always and steadfastly and in the face of cannon fire, call it the 'Democrat' Party.
But I digress. One might expect a careless listener of some intelligence to miss this point, but when Digital Dave asked whether my preference might lie with the Republican plan to create jobs, build prosperity and bring on a new dawn of American world domination in Jesus' name amen by getting rid of crippling business regulation and those unnecessarily Marxist corporate taxes --- or whether I might somehow, perhaps accidentally make the thoughtless mistake of destroying the fabric of the space-time continuum by letting the top bracket rise to the point where Ronald Reagan shocked us by lowering it -- and voting for the Democrat agenda?
So would you vote for peace and prosperity or for disaster?
Somewhere in a primary school class where they teach basic reasoning skills; ( they do do that, don't they?) somewhere in the beginning pages of Logic for Dummies, there must be mention of forced choice questions. No, I don't have advanced degrees and my Greek doesn't exist. My first grade teacher thought I was not first grade material and I only had three years of calculus in College, but really. If this reeks of stupid to me, is this the best these bozos can do?
Somewhere in Hell, just south of the place reserved for cannibals and mass murderers there's a parking spot with a nice tin sign that reads: THIS SPOT RESERVED FOR THE TREASONOUS BASTARDS AT ELKHURST COMMUNICATIONS.
So they tried to take me for a fool last night. When my Caller ID screen flashed "Opinion Poll" I was suspicious. It didn't say something like Zogby or any name I would recognize, so I paused the TV and picked it up hoping to have an opportunity to express my displeasure at the illegally late hour. I soon detected that "David" from the "polling company" was actually a computer. Didn't take any Holmesian deduction really. If the Voice on the phone does not stumble or pause at my assertions as to his oedipal relationships it's likely that old Dave is a new Dell.
But I went along, hoping to have my shot, answering that yes, I was going to vote, yes I was certain I was going to vote, am a registered Democrat and no I wasn't going to risk divine retribution by voting for some tin horn torturer like Allen "deport the commies" West, but noticing that the questions all compared the Republican Party with the "Democrat" Party, I began to lose patience.
You probably aren't old enough to remember how easy it was to determine political polarity by noting how the speaker pronounced Vietnam. It rhymed with Pete Ham if you were for the glorious crusade to protect American freedom. Curiously the same dialect discrimination obtained with our invasion of Iraq. If it was Eye-wrack, you were for it. But these chuckleheads can't bring themselves to acknowledge the Democratic Party by saying it right and they're too smugly stupid to notice that I might notice. They always and steadfastly and in the face of cannon fire, call it the 'Democrat' Party.
But I digress. One might expect a careless listener of some intelligence to miss this point, but when Digital Dave asked whether my preference might lie with the Republican plan to create jobs, build prosperity and bring on a new dawn of American world domination in Jesus' name amen by getting rid of crippling business regulation and those unnecessarily Marxist corporate taxes --- or whether I might somehow, perhaps accidentally make the thoughtless mistake of destroying the fabric of the space-time continuum by letting the top bracket rise to the point where Ronald Reagan shocked us by lowering it -- and voting for the Democrat agenda?
So would you vote for peace and prosperity or for disaster?
Somewhere in a primary school class where they teach basic reasoning skills; ( they do do that, don't they?) somewhere in the beginning pages of Logic for Dummies, there must be mention of forced choice questions. No, I don't have advanced degrees and my Greek doesn't exist. My first grade teacher thought I was not first grade material and I only had three years of calculus in College, but really. If this reeks of stupid to me, is this the best these bozos can do?
Somewhere in Hell, just south of the place reserved for cannibals and mass murderers there's a parking spot with a nice tin sign that reads: THIS SPOT RESERVED FOR THE TREASONOUS BASTARDS AT ELKHURST COMMUNICATIONS.
Tuesday, September 04, 2012
Cursing God
Men shall clap their hands at him, and shall hiss him out of his place.
Job 27:23
I was going to begin this with "Only in a Godless universe could Chuck Norris thrive" but of course that's not true. Perhaps there is a God like YHWH who has made another cynical bet with one of his drinking buddies that a nation claiming to be Godly and "under God" and to be possessed of divine virtue and guidance and "values" would reject evil counsel. If so, my money is on the Paraclete and not on that Religious-Right parrot Norris.
“If we look to history, our great country and freedom are under attack . We’re at a tipping point and, quite possibly, our country as we know it may be lost forever if we don’t change the course in which our country is headed.”
Yes, things like taking care of the old and infirm and helpless children will certainly do that or daring to tax people like Prince Romulus and his Court Jester Ryan as much as we tax my gardener. If we dare not to reject the African/Indonesian born Antichrist and his evil plan to salvage Democracy from God's own Ecclesiastical Christian Feudalism. Indeed, as the nitwit Norris claims: the only reason the Evil Obama was elected is that God's own martial artists stayed home, doubtless rolling and gibbering on the floor licking rattlesnakes instead of following the Idiot's Crusade down to their holy polling place to elect a hypocrite whore of a candidate who couldn't remember his own address but was able to parrot anything the Billionaire Electors and pious pimps of God told him to do to gain high office and like Pilatus, serve the needs of Empire.
Yes sir, if the vicious Roman occupation of Judea had had state managed health insurance, Mary would have aborted Jesus for sure said the martial arts messiah, his capped teeth clapping together through his crotch-like facial hair. But not, of course if the Romans had used the nearly identical Romney version. If this makes your head spin, you must be some kind of heretic who has forgotten the mysterious ways of God. Have you forgotten that the more something stinks of bullshit and deceit, the more redolent is it of sanctity?
Yes sir, we're in for "a thousand years of darkness" says Norris' familiar, Gena, quoting the Great Buffoonicator St. Ronnie the Reagan, praised be his name -- even though Reagan, blessed be his memory, raised the evil taxes most high and may have cut a deal with the Ayatollah and facilitated the rape and murder of nuns and other innocents. A thousand years, even though Obama the Unclean hath not done these things nor banned he any sacred guns as did Bush the Elder. It's not the facts that Damn the evil Obama, it's the "policies" we tell you about in our moronic maledictions but never mention specifically, lest truth intrude.
A thousand years of darkness, perhaps much like the darkness pre-Enlightenment Christian world enjoyed in Europe under the domination of the Church and all its pomps.
A thousand years of darkness after those Democrats "enshrine Islamic moral codes into US law" and turn the Boy Scouts gay.
Sure, there could be a God. He could be hardening the hearts and forcing the stupidity of these pusillanimous Pharaonic pretenders in order to destroy them, but I suggest that we don't wait for waters to part or for manna from heaven nor should we wait for 40 years to get to the polls. By all means let's not wait for that Thousand year Reich Norris dreams of. These people are evil and if you don't like such crapulous, worn and loaded usage, lets just call them dishonest, deluded and demonstrably dumb. When you hear them talk about God, know they're talking about a different entity than you might expect and that the praise of God, in their mouths, is a curse.
Your name, so long the last word of the Savant, the sanction of the judge, the force of the prince, the hope of the poor, the refuge of the repentant sinner, -- this incommunicable name I say, henceforth an object of contempt and curses, shall be a hissing among men.
-Pierre-Joseph Proudhon-
Thursday, August 30, 2012
Tampa and the will to power
As I've been saying since Richard "you sure as hell are a crook" Nixon departed the White house and the Republican War on Truth began, if the Republicans accuse their opponents of something, you can be sure not only that it isn't quite true, but that the accusation is an attempt to distract from their own guilt. So when the war criminal Allen West disgusts us with the accusation that the Democrats are "the most racist party I've ever seen in my life" we know the opposite is true.
And why doth West protest? Why because the press isn't showing him the respect his hypertrophied ego demands and why would anyone detest the torturer of innocent civilians; despise the accusations that Democrats are Nazis and Communists (at the same time no less?) It could only be that he's got dark skin, of course.
And then, there's Paul Ryan, the delight of Tea Perverts everywhere who enlightens us with lies like:
when it isn't actually true -- the cuts are in payments to hospitals, not in coverage to individuals. The cuts are savings while Ryan's plan would actually deprive Medicare recipients of coverage. Paul Ryan is a liar, but what did you expect? The truth would ride out of town with him on a rail and covered with feathers.
And then There's Paul Ryan howling like a damned soul about the "corporate welfare" that was the stimulus package. Welfare and Communism and all that, even though the Republicans asked for a much bigger package and with no requirement to tell us who was getting what - even though Ryan stomped his feet and whined and begged for even more money for Wisconsin companies. Paul Ryan is a lying, duplicitous, forked tongued son of a bitch, but I repeat myself. I already said he is a Republican candidate.
And then there's Paul Ryan, the con man, the liar, the swindler, the bearer of false witness -- there's Paul Ryan blaming Obama for the closure of a Janesville Wisconsin plant that was shut down before Obama became president. Ryan, following in the tradition of accusing FDR of causing an economic crash that started three years before he was elected. And there's Ryan condemning from the platform in Tampa that Obama disregarded the advice of a bipartisan debt committee that Ryan himself condemned. Did I mention that Ryan is a Republican? Lying is what they do, whether it's lying to start wars, lying about how top bracket tax cuts don't cause recessions when they do and raising them prevents growth when the opposite is true. That's what history says, but hey, you can't believe history -- history is Liberal. Hell you can't even hear History, it speaks in timorous whispers while the Right Wing roars and threatens and rages from every screen, from every radio speaker and every corporate owned newspaper.
But why lay the lies on Ryan alone? They're all liars and pickpockets and Romney has to take responsibility for it all. He has to explain why taking the $716 billion in Medicare savings achieved by Obama and spending it will reduce spending and why reducing revenue will pay off the debt. He has to give us more than vague generalities and slogans and promises that are negated by other promises, but he can't because what he says is designed to "energize" people who know nothing and prefer to remain angry at their chosen scapegoats.
But of course the truth would lose the election for him and of course the New Right isn't about fixing the country anyway, it's about power. It's not about you or your life, your liberty or your pursuit of happiness; it's about power, power and more power and such such concentrated power that answers only to money -- power over a country that is more and more irrelevant, increasingly deluded and ignorant, ever more bellicose and yet has the power to destroy the world.
And why doth West protest? Why because the press isn't showing him the respect his hypertrophied ego demands and why would anyone detest the torturer of innocent civilians; despise the accusations that Democrats are Nazis and Communists (at the same time no less?) It could only be that he's got dark skin, of course.
And then, there's Paul Ryan, the delight of Tea Perverts everywhere who enlightens us with lies like:
"And the biggest, coldest power play of all in Obamacare came at the expense of the elderly. ... So they just took it all away from Medicare. Seven hundred and sixteen billion dollars, funneled out of Medicare by President Obama"
when it isn't actually true -- the cuts are in payments to hospitals, not in coverage to individuals. The cuts are savings while Ryan's plan would actually deprive Medicare recipients of coverage. Paul Ryan is a liar, but what did you expect? The truth would ride out of town with him on a rail and covered with feathers.
And then There's Paul Ryan howling like a damned soul about the "corporate welfare" that was the stimulus package. Welfare and Communism and all that, even though the Republicans asked for a much bigger package and with no requirement to tell us who was getting what - even though Ryan stomped his feet and whined and begged for even more money for Wisconsin companies. Paul Ryan is a lying, duplicitous, forked tongued son of a bitch, but I repeat myself. I already said he is a Republican candidate.
And then there's Paul Ryan, the con man, the liar, the swindler, the bearer of false witness -- there's Paul Ryan blaming Obama for the closure of a Janesville Wisconsin plant that was shut down before Obama became president. Ryan, following in the tradition of accusing FDR of causing an economic crash that started three years before he was elected. And there's Ryan condemning from the platform in Tampa that Obama disregarded the advice of a bipartisan debt committee that Ryan himself condemned. Did I mention that Ryan is a Republican? Lying is what they do, whether it's lying to start wars, lying about how top bracket tax cuts don't cause recessions when they do and raising them prevents growth when the opposite is true. That's what history says, but hey, you can't believe history -- history is Liberal. Hell you can't even hear History, it speaks in timorous whispers while the Right Wing roars and threatens and rages from every screen, from every radio speaker and every corporate owned newspaper.
But why lay the lies on Ryan alone? They're all liars and pickpockets and Romney has to take responsibility for it all. He has to explain why taking the $716 billion in Medicare savings achieved by Obama and spending it will reduce spending and why reducing revenue will pay off the debt. He has to give us more than vague generalities and slogans and promises that are negated by other promises, but he can't because what he says is designed to "energize" people who know nothing and prefer to remain angry at their chosen scapegoats.
But of course the truth would lose the election for him and of course the New Right isn't about fixing the country anyway, it's about power. It's not about you or your life, your liberty or your pursuit of happiness; it's about power, power and more power and such such concentrated power that answers only to money -- power over a country that is more and more irrelevant, increasingly deluded and ignorant, ever more bellicose and yet has the power to destroy the world.
Tuesday, August 28, 2012
The eye of the idiot
"For dogs have encompassed me; a company of evil-doers have inclosed me; like a lion, they are at my hands and my feet."
On August 28, 1963, a year short of 50 years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King told us he had a dream. I wonder if anyone still does.
Watching and listening to the madness growling and the lies howling across the country, I have mostly nightmares. If "America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned" it's now intent on defaulting on any promise it has ever made to anyone but the corporate robber barons, the rabid Christianist insurgents and the anarchists.
We have a self described Anarchist group of US military personnel, a militia plotting to overthrow the government by violence, some members of which are now on trial for murder. We have the most popular cable news network inventing calumnies against our elected government and some of our wealthiest citizens and businesses spending billions on so distorting the truth that we can't remember how we got here and are eager to repeat everything we did to cause the two largest economic catastrophes in the last hundred years. We have widespread attempts at voter suppression.
No, you can't get to the truth easily these days, but you can bet that if the Republicans are screaming about all the things the demon Democrats and the Beast Obama have done, are doing and are about to do at any minute, you can be sure the truth is that the Republicans have done the same or are engaged in doing it or plotting it. Yesterday I received a thick envelope in the mail, ostensibly from John McCain but certainly written by others. Designed in every way to generate a sense of emergency, it insisted that I take the opportunity and use the express mail envelope (postage not included) to mail $2000, or maybe a little less if I want to risk an accusation of Marxism, as AN EMERGENCY DONATION to "stop the billion dollar Obama fundraising Juggernaut."
Whether or not Jesus cares enough to weep any more, I do. I do at least when the growing rage allows it. Yes, yes, I know. You poor victims of truth, justice and common decency will tell me as you've been doing since you turned the most prosperous nation on earth into the largest debtor with a cynical smile on your face -- you'll tell me I'm simply wrong and generally stupid because I'm angry at the "legitimate rape of America."
It's the logic of liars, the argument of the evil and if God has forsaken us, or left us behind, which may be a better translation, we're still too stupid to know it. We're legitimately stupid enough to see God's will in our own evil that we nod together like hollow bobble heads and agree with the Robertsonians that God saved the Republican convention from getting wet but if an asteroid fails to fall on the Democratic convention, it will mean nothing.
But in a way, that's true. This is America and meaning is in the eye of the idiot.
Saturday, August 25, 2012
Matt and Mitt
And all that shit.
You can't say they don't try to please everyone, and since most people are idiots, or at least made equivalent to idiots by their ignorance, their faiths, beliefs, prejudices and anger; the way to please one idiot without offending the other is to make ambiguous hints, to use a mouthpiece to provide plausible deniability and to make it sound like it's only a joke. You libtards got no sensa humor! Just jokin' here.
For example, we have Willard Mitt Romney "joking" that everyone knows where he was born ( not like that watermelon thief hiding in the woodpile) for the benefit of Detroit's demented minions who might suspect that WMR is secretly one of the boys. Indeed Mitt is good at making everyone think he's secretly on their side rather than being simply ambitious for power.
My memory is good enough to remember son Matt ( how cute) bloviating his Birther bullshit last year, of which Raw Story is good enough to remind us. I also remember Plastic Matt "joking" about how Plastic Mitt would release his tax returns after Obama would release his (already released) birth certificate. Just adorable, who cares if it's true?
Reminds me of all the folks I know who take pains to be polite in public but trot out the racist epithets in conspiratorial tones when they feel safe. Yes Rombo and company are good at playing both sides of everything without actually stating any principles and their constituents are really bad at noticing. Have you noticed?
You can't say they don't try to please everyone, and since most people are idiots, or at least made equivalent to idiots by their ignorance, their faiths, beliefs, prejudices and anger; the way to please one idiot without offending the other is to make ambiguous hints, to use a mouthpiece to provide plausible deniability and to make it sound like it's only a joke. You libtards got no sensa humor! Just jokin' here.
"No one’s ever asked to see my birth certificate. They know that this the place that we were born and raised.”
For example, we have Willard Mitt Romney "joking" that everyone knows where he was born ( not like that watermelon thief hiding in the woodpile) for the benefit of Detroit's demented minions who might suspect that WMR is secretly one of the boys. Indeed Mitt is good at making everyone think he's secretly on their side rather than being simply ambitious for power.
My memory is good enough to remember son Matt ( how cute) bloviating his Birther bullshit last year, of which Raw Story is good enough to remind us. I also remember Plastic Matt "joking" about how Plastic Mitt would release his tax returns after Obama would release his (already released) birth certificate. Just adorable, who cares if it's true?
Reminds me of all the folks I know who take pains to be polite in public but trot out the racist epithets in conspiratorial tones when they feel safe. Yes Rombo and company are good at playing both sides of everything without actually stating any principles and their constituents are really bad at noticing. Have you noticed?
Friday, August 24, 2012
OMG!
Could it be that Anne Coulter just said something I agree with? I think I need to wash out my brain with Lysol. But I guess it's not quite that bad. Yes, I do believe that the oh so Typically Tea Twit Tod Aiken is a swine, but I would stop short of using nuclear weapons on him as she demands ( rather messy at best) but I don't think he's not a real Republican as she asserts and I certainly don't, as most of my saner readers will agree, think the Democratic Party financed his campaign just to make the Republicans look ridiculous. Hell. they've looked ridiculous for over 30 years.
“What he cares about is his own ego,” said Arrogant Anne of the Thousand Ton Ego on Insanity Hannity's Fox News show. She complained about his lack of knowledge of medical facts, as well one could expect of a propagandist who carefully researches and checks her facts to be sure none of her assertions actually corresponds with any.
I probably should rephrase that to use the word 'whined' in ironic emulation of her favorite phraseology: Anne went wah - she went wah, wah wah.
“What he cares about is his own ego,” said Arrogant Anne of the Thousand Ton Ego on Insanity Hannity's Fox News show. She complained about his lack of knowledge of medical facts, as well one could expect of a propagandist who carefully researches and checks her facts to be sure none of her assertions actually corresponds with any.
I probably should rephrase that to use the word 'whined' in ironic emulation of her favorite phraseology: Anne went wah - she went wah, wah wah.
Thursday, August 23, 2012
The legitimate Rape of Freedom
I went to bed ruminating about the predicted course of Tropical Storm Isaac which had it ravaging the West coast of Florida from fort Meyers to Tampa next week. Am I a bad person for dreaming that a random raging force of nature might do what our miserable excuse for a righteous God never seems to do and tear the Tampa Convention Center to pieces, rending flesh from barbarian bone and yet somehow leave the Tampa General Hospital just across the channel intact to tend to any decent folk who got caught out in the storm? Perhaps I am, but the teeth and claws of the GOP are as visible to anyone with eyes to see as if they were painted red with gore -- as indeed they are -- and who will be there to rescue us when the wolf has eaten Grandma (and blamed it on Obama?) Sadly today's National Hurricane Center prediction shows Hurricane Isaac passing to the west of Tampa, leaving only some wind and rain to drown out the demented cries of a dying country.
It won't be quite loud enough of course, to obscure the lies and libels, the slanders, the fabrications or the calls for armed insurrection against the decent, the humane or the lovers of freedom -- nor wet enough to wash away the Tea. But don't bring your guns to Tampa. It was OK for the toothless Tea Whores to bring firearms to Democratic meetings and threaten to use them, but the GOP has banned guns at their sabbath.
There will be and there already are howls about spending and taxes and budgets, but put in the form of a passion play that has more to do with reversing the guilt for having started a war on invented information -- the most expensive war in our history -- and proposed that it would cost nothing if only we relieved the richest of us of a few more percent in taxes. They'll go on pretending that a middle class tax cut was a tax hike, that no additional gun control was somehow a "gun Grab" and that restoring Ronald Reagan's tax relief for the richest Americans, many of whom like Mitt Romney paid paid nothing and are still paying almost nothing was "the largest tax hike in history" and a flirtation with Marxism. They'll continue the tradition of posing pornography, legal birth control, the "personhood" of fertilized eggs and abortion as the great issues of the day and the same people who claim that the universe is only a few years older than the pyramids will howl like idiots about how 14 year old girls won't get pregnant if the rape wasn't forceful enough and how women with hydrocephalic babies can't actually die in childbirth. They'll stand on the bloodstained platform or their vampire religion and call for the subjugation of women, the abandonment of the old and sick and weak and claim we simply can't survive if we do what everyone else in the free, modern world does. They'll suggest a country with a double standard of morality, where the government sleeps in your bed but not in theirs and where they pay nothing and obey no rules.
No, sorry Messrs. Romney and Ryan, I'd like you and your numbered accounts in Bermuda and Luxembourg and Liechtenstein washed out into the Gulf, never to be seen again and soon to be forgotten by the madmen, the congenitally stupid, the misogynists, the sexual perverts who support all the silly, stupid, racist rhetoric. I'd like to drown the contempt for facts, for science, for mathematics, for history and of course your contempt for anyone who didn't lie cheat and steal their way to wealth and power, but of course I can't.
I can't because this is a stupid country, a petty, angry, prejudiced, bigoted, selfish and deluded country who thinks it would be better off and safer with no government at all. We're the country that elected George Bush twice and Richard Nixon twice and Spiro Agnew and savaged everyone that spoke up. This is the party that was outraged at anyone who said the economy was unsustainable and now sneers and snarks about how the economy is unsustainable. This is the country that cheered at the biggest borrow and spend spree and now looks at the spendthrift culprits as saviors. Perhaps we deserve our fate. Perhaps we deserve even worse. Perhaps a better nation might some day emerge from the stinking wreckage, but probably not and probably some other power will come to dominate the world -- a power who cares less for the kind of country we pretended to be and insisted we were while we danced around a bonfire chanting as America died.
It won't be quite loud enough of course, to obscure the lies and libels, the slanders, the fabrications or the calls for armed insurrection against the decent, the humane or the lovers of freedom -- nor wet enough to wash away the Tea. But don't bring your guns to Tampa. It was OK for the toothless Tea Whores to bring firearms to Democratic meetings and threaten to use them, but the GOP has banned guns at their sabbath.
There will be and there already are howls about spending and taxes and budgets, but put in the form of a passion play that has more to do with reversing the guilt for having started a war on invented information -- the most expensive war in our history -- and proposed that it would cost nothing if only we relieved the richest of us of a few more percent in taxes. They'll go on pretending that a middle class tax cut was a tax hike, that no additional gun control was somehow a "gun Grab" and that restoring Ronald Reagan's tax relief for the richest Americans, many of whom like Mitt Romney paid paid nothing and are still paying almost nothing was "the largest tax hike in history" and a flirtation with Marxism. They'll continue the tradition of posing pornography, legal birth control, the "personhood" of fertilized eggs and abortion as the great issues of the day and the same people who claim that the universe is only a few years older than the pyramids will howl like idiots about how 14 year old girls won't get pregnant if the rape wasn't forceful enough and how women with hydrocephalic babies can't actually die in childbirth. They'll stand on the bloodstained platform or their vampire religion and call for the subjugation of women, the abandonment of the old and sick and weak and claim we simply can't survive if we do what everyone else in the free, modern world does. They'll suggest a country with a double standard of morality, where the government sleeps in your bed but not in theirs and where they pay nothing and obey no rules.
No, sorry Messrs. Romney and Ryan, I'd like you and your numbered accounts in Bermuda and Luxembourg and Liechtenstein washed out into the Gulf, never to be seen again and soon to be forgotten by the madmen, the congenitally stupid, the misogynists, the sexual perverts who support all the silly, stupid, racist rhetoric. I'd like to drown the contempt for facts, for science, for mathematics, for history and of course your contempt for anyone who didn't lie cheat and steal their way to wealth and power, but of course I can't.
I can't because this is a stupid country, a petty, angry, prejudiced, bigoted, selfish and deluded country who thinks it would be better off and safer with no government at all. We're the country that elected George Bush twice and Richard Nixon twice and Spiro Agnew and savaged everyone that spoke up. This is the party that was outraged at anyone who said the economy was unsustainable and now sneers and snarks about how the economy is unsustainable. This is the country that cheered at the biggest borrow and spend spree and now looks at the spendthrift culprits as saviors. Perhaps we deserve our fate. Perhaps we deserve even worse. Perhaps a better nation might some day emerge from the stinking wreckage, but probably not and probably some other power will come to dominate the world -- a power who cares less for the kind of country we pretended to be and insisted we were while we danced around a bonfire chanting as America died.
Wednesday, August 15, 2012
You've got to be kidding, part III
When is a joke not a joke? When it's about Allen West the convicted war criminal winning the Republican primary for Florida's House District 18 yesterday. He has been running as a war hero of course, Florida being a kind of Bizarro World where things are their own opposites.
It's considered a swing district and is a snake pit of Tea Party sentiment. So much so that his opponent has been ostracized from the Republican party for even suggesting himself as an alternative to West, that Fascist son of a bitch. That was enough to christen him and all his supporters as Communists in the minds of the local Teabastards. Crowder, a formerly popular county sheriff lost abysmally of course, having only a few thousand bucks, decades of intimate familiarity with the district and good job performance to advertise as opposed to West, who never has lived in the district but had the bottomless pockets of the terrorist Right to fund him.
It remains to be seen who will prevail, but the completely unknown 29 year old Democratic candidate is unlikely ever to win in this Republican cesspool although there once was a one term Democrat in that office after the traditional values Mark Foley made a fool of himself with teenage boys.
I'd call it another unfunny joke that former State Representative William Snyder also carried away the nomination to Replace the pariah Sheriff Crowder. Snyder, as our State Rep strongly supported an Arizona Style "show me your papers" law, which of course made him very popular in this overwhelmingly pretend-Christian area where there are more Churches than dentists and Fluoride is banned in the water supply because it's a Communist plot but only "Liberals" worry about the Arsenic and pesticides and Mercury.
Of course our future as a nation is a pretty unfunny joke too, isn't it?
It's considered a swing district and is a snake pit of Tea Party sentiment. So much so that his opponent has been ostracized from the Republican party for even suggesting himself as an alternative to West, that Fascist son of a bitch. That was enough to christen him and all his supporters as Communists in the minds of the local Teabastards. Crowder, a formerly popular county sheriff lost abysmally of course, having only a few thousand bucks, decades of intimate familiarity with the district and good job performance to advertise as opposed to West, who never has lived in the district but had the bottomless pockets of the terrorist Right to fund him.
It remains to be seen who will prevail, but the completely unknown 29 year old Democratic candidate is unlikely ever to win in this Republican cesspool although there once was a one term Democrat in that office after the traditional values Mark Foley made a fool of himself with teenage boys.
I'd call it another unfunny joke that former State Representative William Snyder also carried away the nomination to Replace the pariah Sheriff Crowder. Snyder, as our State Rep strongly supported an Arizona Style "show me your papers" law, which of course made him very popular in this overwhelmingly pretend-Christian area where there are more Churches than dentists and Fluoride is banned in the water supply because it's a Communist plot but only "Liberals" worry about the Arsenic and pesticides and Mercury.
Of course our future as a nation is a pretty unfunny joke too, isn't it?
Damn the lies -- part II
Perhaps you'll recall my post entitled Damn the Lies the other day about the latest act of treason from the Republican Lie Machine, or Fox news as it's sometimes called. It was about a totally fictitious story warning us about how if "Obama gets his way" voting rights of military personnel would be restricted in Ohio. I suppose that adherents to the Obamahate faith accept unquestioningly that the POTUS writes election laws unconstitutionally in the State of Ohio. I suppose Fox Folk are actually stupid enough, or at least so disgustingly desperate enough to legitimize their hatred of our uppity president that they will believe anything without question and guard the lies with their miserable lives. But needless to say, the most polite thing an honest observer can say about Fox Fraudster Shannon Bream is that it's a filthy, contemptible lie worthy of tar and feathers.
But who cares? This isn't actually reality you know, it's a kind of fantasy amusement park for deranged sociopaths and other borderline personalities with room temperature IQs and it isn't nearly possible for even a well funded and staffed effort to counter the lies or disseminate the facts. It's not just that there isn't enough money outside of the insurgency, it's also that believing the lies is a mighty fortress of faith. If you don't like the Flavor Aid, why then, you're a Liberal and that's that.
So, sure "that Obama" hates soldiers or "warriors" or "warfighters" as the anger merchants like to call any GI who ever peeled a potato. It's all just another passion play. So why get angry about the latest round of TV adds, paid for by unidentified "concerned citizens" who actually are the Koch's Folks or Rupert's Raiders which insist in full snark mode that "that Obama" has removed the Work for Welfare system put into place by that other Commie, that most far left Liberal ever, not the real president; that one-term-at-most Bill Clinton.
Do I have to tell you it ain't true? Probably not if you've read this far. Should I mention that not only is it not true, even in part, but that what the White House is trying to accomplish with further Welfare reform is to accede to the long time requests of Republican Governors to allow them the flexibility to tailor their State's programs to their needs?
Perhaps it's galling to the Fascists and Bigots and Brown Shirts masquerading as Conservatives that, as it was with Bill Clinton, the man they tried to portray as another Trotsky was actually more conservative than they were in some respects and no further to the Left than the center. It's nearly as galling to me that a mob of irate patriots doesn't put these lying bastards, these unscrupulous despoilers of liberty, Truth, Justice, Democracy and Decency in a pillory and piss in their faces.
But who cares? This isn't actually reality you know, it's a kind of fantasy amusement park for deranged sociopaths and other borderline personalities with room temperature IQs and it isn't nearly possible for even a well funded and staffed effort to counter the lies or disseminate the facts. It's not just that there isn't enough money outside of the insurgency, it's also that believing the lies is a mighty fortress of faith. If you don't like the Flavor Aid, why then, you're a Liberal and that's that.
So, sure "that Obama" hates soldiers or "warriors" or "warfighters" as the anger merchants like to call any GI who ever peeled a potato. It's all just another passion play. So why get angry about the latest round of TV adds, paid for by unidentified "concerned citizens" who actually are the Koch's Folks or Rupert's Raiders which insist in full snark mode that "that Obama" has removed the Work for Welfare system put into place by that other Commie, that most far left Liberal ever, not the real president; that one-term-at-most Bill Clinton.
Do I have to tell you it ain't true? Probably not if you've read this far. Should I mention that not only is it not true, even in part, but that what the White House is trying to accomplish with further Welfare reform is to accede to the long time requests of Republican Governors to allow them the flexibility to tailor their State's programs to their needs?
Perhaps it's galling to the Fascists and Bigots and Brown Shirts masquerading as Conservatives that, as it was with Bill Clinton, the man they tried to portray as another Trotsky was actually more conservative than they were in some respects and no further to the Left than the center. It's nearly as galling to me that a mob of irate patriots doesn't put these lying bastards, these unscrupulous despoilers of liberty, Truth, Justice, Democracy and Decency in a pillory and piss in their faces.
You've got to be kidding -- part II
There's something infuriating about those election year robo-calls. For me, it's because of the feeling of helplessness. You can always interrupt a human or even a sub-human caller, or if one has fallen into an incoherent, blubbering rage, can hope for some small effect by slamming down the phone on someone whining obscene untruths in your ear.
I had just finished an annoying conversation with my mechanic yesterday about being in line for a very expensive marine engine repair and before I could stand up, go outside and scream at the top of my lungs, the phone rang again. I normally screen my calls because the majority of them are from people I've never heard of trying to sell me everything from Viagra to mortgage scams, but this time I didn't look at the caller ID. I just picked it up.
Before I could issue a surly "hello" I was blasted by a wild and frenzied voice demanding that I make "an emergency contribution to help Romney fight Obama's disastrous policies." Well, of course it was a recording and no human was offended by my returning the handset to its cradle just a bit harder than the Chicxulub asteroid impact, but the real pain was not so much that I couldn't vent my rage but rather that there was no possibility of asking the paid actor just what those "policies" might be.
Doesn't it seem that the reference is always to unspecified policies? Why would that be but to harness the inchoate rage of the Teabastards while allowing them to preserve the illusion that that rage had anything to do with President Obama and his policies -- and not his ancestry. Perhaps it's no different than the constant reference to "liberals" rather than to people who are opposed to the various scams and handouts and outrageous intrusions into private life that constitute the Republican political platforms of recent years -- things like the war on birth control, the war on pornography, the battle against public education (because as Rick Santorum told us, it promotes "elitism.") and the continued persecution of people who don't wish to be bound by religious taboos or would like to speak Spanish now and then.
Yes, I would have liked to get Mr. Roboto in a stranglehold and demand to know why Obama is to blame for paying for Bush's war and Bush's Medicare prescription plan and Bush's gifts to the oil cartel and why Obama is to blame for giving a tax break to the 98% of Americans who are not in the upper 2% of income earners rather than telling them to eat cake and giving an extra 2% to the Koch brothers and their ill bred ilk. I'd like to know whey that had nothing to do with the recession that started under Bush. Really, the only "Obama Policy" of any stature I can think of is the health care plan written by one Willard M. Romney in conjunction with the health care industry and the one that hasn't really gone into effect yet, nor has it been a "disaster" to Massachusetts.
So what are these "Disastrous Obama Policies" other than paying the bills, other than being unable to remove the Bush tax structure, being unwilling to actually increase the policy that basically broke the back of the economy by neglecting to pay for the Most Expensive War in American History because the Tax Fairy would somehow bail us out by making war profiteers even richer.
Let's face it Tea Twits and Secessionists and all you dishonest hordes of political whores yearning for a scapegoat to excuse the way you've been fighting to ruin life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in America -- repeating lies that you hear because you can't admit that you've been wrong, because you can't admit that you don't know a damned thing about history or economics, because you can't admit that you've made mistakes and because you can't accept that "I've got mine and fuck you" isn't the definition of Capitalism, Democracy or even decency -- let's face it: you applauded everything that got us here, you mocked and persecuted everyone who warned you and you ignored the history you should have learned from.
It's your damned fault, not "the Liberals" the Mexicans, the people who told you that no, there were no Goddamn nukes in Iraq and no way to build them: the people who told you that al Qaeda was a menace when your cowboy president shut down the anti-terrorism team right before 9/11 -- it's yours.
Who was it who told us we hated America when we told you slashing the upper bracket would pour a torrent of capital into the markets and hedge funds and real estate, creating the same bubble and bust we had in the 1920's? It was you, you smug, self pitying, Velveeta and white bread eating, Pat and Rush and Ann cheering sock puppets.
Time to suck it up and take responsibility. There's no way to undo what you've done, no folksy homilies and vague generalities, no Mighty Mitt to save the day. The debt can't be paid down by putting the old and the sick and the young and dependent on an ice floe. You can't fix things by "deporting" people for their political opinions like that malignant Republican war criminal parasite Allen West suggests. We can't "decrease the size of government by spending even more on Homeland Security the largest Federal Agency ever or by building more carriers and bombers to counter the defunct Soviet Union. We can't raise taxes enough to do it. We're going to see inflation - lots of it, at least those of us who can't hide billions offshore like our corporate citizens do, like our Republican supporters and candidates do. We're going to see enough devaluation that foreign countries can hire our non-union, no minimum wage serfs for less than they hire Chinese peasants to work in sweat shops until your grandchildren and your great grandchildren curse your memory, dig up your miserable bones and grind them for fertilizer.
I had just finished an annoying conversation with my mechanic yesterday about being in line for a very expensive marine engine repair and before I could stand up, go outside and scream at the top of my lungs, the phone rang again. I normally screen my calls because the majority of them are from people I've never heard of trying to sell me everything from Viagra to mortgage scams, but this time I didn't look at the caller ID. I just picked it up.
Before I could issue a surly "hello" I was blasted by a wild and frenzied voice demanding that I make "an emergency contribution to help Romney fight Obama's disastrous policies." Well, of course it was a recording and no human was offended by my returning the handset to its cradle just a bit harder than the Chicxulub asteroid impact, but the real pain was not so much that I couldn't vent my rage but rather that there was no possibility of asking the paid actor just what those "policies" might be.
Doesn't it seem that the reference is always to unspecified policies? Why would that be but to harness the inchoate rage of the Teabastards while allowing them to preserve the illusion that that rage had anything to do with President Obama and his policies -- and not his ancestry. Perhaps it's no different than the constant reference to "liberals" rather than to people who are opposed to the various scams and handouts and outrageous intrusions into private life that constitute the Republican political platforms of recent years -- things like the war on birth control, the war on pornography, the battle against public education (because as Rick Santorum told us, it promotes "elitism.") and the continued persecution of people who don't wish to be bound by religious taboos or would like to speak Spanish now and then.
Yes, I would have liked to get Mr. Roboto in a stranglehold and demand to know why Obama is to blame for paying for Bush's war and Bush's Medicare prescription plan and Bush's gifts to the oil cartel and why Obama is to blame for giving a tax break to the 98% of Americans who are not in the upper 2% of income earners rather than telling them to eat cake and giving an extra 2% to the Koch brothers and their ill bred ilk. I'd like to know whey that had nothing to do with the recession that started under Bush. Really, the only "Obama Policy" of any stature I can think of is the health care plan written by one Willard M. Romney in conjunction with the health care industry and the one that hasn't really gone into effect yet, nor has it been a "disaster" to Massachusetts.
So what are these "Disastrous Obama Policies" other than paying the bills, other than being unable to remove the Bush tax structure, being unwilling to actually increase the policy that basically broke the back of the economy by neglecting to pay for the Most Expensive War in American History because the Tax Fairy would somehow bail us out by making war profiteers even richer.
Let's face it Tea Twits and Secessionists and all you dishonest hordes of political whores yearning for a scapegoat to excuse the way you've been fighting to ruin life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in America -- repeating lies that you hear because you can't admit that you've been wrong, because you can't admit that you don't know a damned thing about history or economics, because you can't admit that you've made mistakes and because you can't accept that "I've got mine and fuck you" isn't the definition of Capitalism, Democracy or even decency -- let's face it: you applauded everything that got us here, you mocked and persecuted everyone who warned you and you ignored the history you should have learned from.
It's your damned fault, not "the Liberals" the Mexicans, the people who told you that no, there were no Goddamn nukes in Iraq and no way to build them: the people who told you that al Qaeda was a menace when your cowboy president shut down the anti-terrorism team right before 9/11 -- it's yours.
Who was it who told us we hated America when we told you slashing the upper bracket would pour a torrent of capital into the markets and hedge funds and real estate, creating the same bubble and bust we had in the 1920's? It was you, you smug, self pitying, Velveeta and white bread eating, Pat and Rush and Ann cheering sock puppets.
Time to suck it up and take responsibility. There's no way to undo what you've done, no folksy homilies and vague generalities, no Mighty Mitt to save the day. The debt can't be paid down by putting the old and the sick and the young and dependent on an ice floe. You can't fix things by "deporting" people for their political opinions like that malignant Republican war criminal parasite Allen West suggests. We can't "decrease the size of government by spending even more on Homeland Security the largest Federal Agency ever or by building more carriers and bombers to counter the defunct Soviet Union. We can't raise taxes enough to do it. We're going to see inflation - lots of it, at least those of us who can't hide billions offshore like our corporate citizens do, like our Republican supporters and candidates do. We're going to see enough devaluation that foreign countries can hire our non-union, no minimum wage serfs for less than they hire Chinese peasants to work in sweat shops until your grandchildren and your great grandchildren curse your memory, dig up your miserable bones and grind them for fertilizer.
Monday, August 13, 2012
You've got to be kidding
Paul Ryan -- yes, I know it's already old news, but Jesus. . . . Paul Ryan?
What is it with the GOP that they didn't learn from the Palin experience; that they didn't learn that you don't balance out a weak wishy-washy, candidate (which in Gopspeak means there might be hidden traces of sanity lurking within) by pairing him with some radical anarchist wackadoodle? Ok, ok, it worked with Dan Quayle, but Dan was just an oaf and an ignoramus and after all George I had to protect himself against impeachment. . . . but Jesus. . . . Paul Ryan?
What is it with the GOP that they didn't learn from the Palin experience; that they didn't learn that you don't balance out a weak wishy-washy, candidate (which in Gopspeak means there might be hidden traces of sanity lurking within) by pairing him with some radical anarchist wackadoodle? Ok, ok, it worked with Dan Quayle, but Dan was just an oaf and an ignoramus and after all George I had to protect himself against impeachment. . . . but Jesus. . . . Paul Ryan?
Sunday, August 05, 2012
Damn the lies
“If President Obama gets his way, the special voting rights of some of America’s finest will be eliminated,” host Shannon Bream said Friday night. “The campaign is suing to keep members of the military from having extra time to cast their ballots in one key battleground state.”No it isn't. The suit does not seek to impair voting rights for anyone but seeks to reinstate rights taken from the general population by the Republican controlled Ohio Legislature and if there were a God anything like the fire and brimstone scourge of iniquity people dream about, the earth would open up and swallow Ms. Bream, and Roger Ayres and Rupert Murdoch would become pillars of shit.
The Suit by the Ohio Democratic Party and the Obama Campaign argues that Ohio's new law creates an unconstitutional tiered voting system, where early voting is only allowed for military personnel. As Jonathan Terbush writes at Raw Story:
"The suit would not prevent military members from, “having extra time” to vote, as the Fox report insinuated. Rather, it asks that the court, by blocking enactment of the new law, reinstate the extra time all voters used to enjoy for casting their ballots."
You may suspect that I've lost faith in this truth forsaken land and its lunatic tribes and you'd be close to the truth. Our once powerful and always dishonest country won't be powerful forever nor will its self-righteousness last forever. The worms, the maggots chewing on the gangrenous flesh of America are employees of Fox and Shannon Bream is a liar -- if not damned by God, then at least damned by decency. God damn Fox News. God damn them all to hell.
Saturday, August 04, 2012
Keepin' it white
In general, I support the laws allowing most licensed and qualified citizens to carry concealed weapons in most places. Here in Florida someone who has a permit does none the less, not have the legal right to carry weapons in many areas, like courthouses, police stations, schools, stadiums and of course, bars. A national political convention however, where emotions run high; where the attitudes resemble the local stop-and-sock tavern, and people whom other people would like to harm are present, would seem to be another proper exemption.
I'm afraid it's not so in Florida, where during the upcoming RNC in Tampa, squirt guns, pieces of chain, ropes and other items which might be used to harm or at least get people wet are strictly illegal, Republican Governor Rick Scott seems likely to refuse the City Council's request to keep guns out of the convention. You can bring your Beretta , but leave the Super-Soaker at home.
There are other reasons of course, to wonder how Scott gets away with avoiding the other common nickname for Richard. No, I'm not talking about his rejection of Federal funds because as he says, hiring people kills jobs -- and I'm not talking about the dozen or so felonies his company committed in a billion dollar orgy of Medicare fraud. I'm not even referring to his recent attempt to "purge" the Florida voter rolls of likely Democrats. This time "Rick" deserves a nice cold blast from one of those banned squirt guns for neglecting to tell nearly 18,000 Floridians that their voting rights have been restored and that they can now register. I'm sure he has forgotten how a few hundred votes can put a President who the majority of voters did not vote for into office. Otherwise he would be ashamed, right?
Or maybe he is out of the loop once again. Maybe he just didn't know, the way he didn't know about the 1 billion, 700 million dollar Columbia/HCA medicare fraud; in charge but not guilty by virtue of some ineffable virtue and of course well deserved of his severance package of 10 million dollars, 300 million in stock and a million a year "consulting" fee.
I wonder what he'll make for his part in defrauding America this time; his help in making the White House white again.
I'm afraid it's not so in Florida, where during the upcoming RNC in Tampa, squirt guns, pieces of chain, ropes and other items which might be used to harm or at least get people wet are strictly illegal, Republican Governor Rick Scott seems likely to refuse the City Council's request to keep guns out of the convention. You can bring your Beretta , but leave the Super-Soaker at home.
There are other reasons of course, to wonder how Scott gets away with avoiding the other common nickname for Richard. No, I'm not talking about his rejection of Federal funds because as he says, hiring people kills jobs -- and I'm not talking about the dozen or so felonies his company committed in a billion dollar orgy of Medicare fraud. I'm not even referring to his recent attempt to "purge" the Florida voter rolls of likely Democrats. This time "Rick" deserves a nice cold blast from one of those banned squirt guns for neglecting to tell nearly 18,000 Floridians that their voting rights have been restored and that they can now register. I'm sure he has forgotten how a few hundred votes can put a President who the majority of voters did not vote for into office. Otherwise he would be ashamed, right?
Or maybe he is out of the loop once again. Maybe he just didn't know, the way he didn't know about the 1 billion, 700 million dollar Columbia/HCA medicare fraud; in charge but not guilty by virtue of some ineffable virtue and of course well deserved of his severance package of 10 million dollars, 300 million in stock and a million a year "consulting" fee.
I wonder what he'll make for his part in defrauding America this time; his help in making the White House white again.
Saturday, July 28, 2012
All's fair in fraud and felony
Voter suppression -- there's nothing new about it, but when the support for it comes from people who think testing city water for arsenic is "too much government" you have to expect odd, snarling noises from the cynics. Pennsylvania's latest attempt to reserve the right to vote for the landed gentry, posing as a reaction to voter fraud that might possibly occur but actually does not seem to have, has Pandagon snickering and me barking -- and for good reason. Government intervening in the free exercise of a constitutional right is different I guess, because the goal of keeping Pennsylvania for "real" Americans sanctifies a little bit of double-think.
Meanwhile, back in Florida, where excluding "undesirables" from the voter rolls is a tradition of long standing, former Florida Republican Party Chair Jim Greer is suing the “whack-a-do, right-wing crazies” that filed criminal fraud charges against him in 2010 in a plot to force saner Republicans including former Governor Charlie Crist out of the party and suppress the African-American vote by once again purging voter rolls.
Florida of course, bans ex felons from voting for life for those without good connections in the GOP, like Governor Scott of the Fourteen Felonies, so if one wrote a bad check in 1956 or was found with an ounce or so of Cannabis in 1968, one can go fish forever. In fact if your name sounds like someone else who did, and you live in Florida, you may have been illegally banned from voting in the 2000 election by a similar voter roll purge that targeted minority voters and probably put George Bush in the White House. You may be banned once again and you won't likely know until you show up at the polls.
It's funny how consistently the voter fraud circus parade neglects to mention the voting machine "problems" in Ohio. Again, I'm a cynic so I find it easy to believe that GOP tampering is treated differently in the Post Bush, Tea Party era. Remember those "unhackable" Diebold machines that took only minutes to hack, delivering more Republican votes than could be accounted for by registered voters -- and delivering Ohio for Bush, as the CEO openly boasted before being forced to resign over accounting fraud? I wonder if he's still on the voter rolls.
". . . the argument seems to be that the state can impair a constitutional right because…well, because they can. It doesn’t really matter why, it just makes a kind of instinctual sense, like how vaccines cause autism or how evolution can’t exist because I’ve never seen a thing evolve in front of my eyes despite staring at it and chanting “evolve” for hours on end." wrote Jesse Taylor yesterday.
Meanwhile, back in Florida, where excluding "undesirables" from the voter rolls is a tradition of long standing, former Florida Republican Party Chair Jim Greer is suing the “whack-a-do, right-wing crazies” that filed criminal fraud charges against him in 2010 in a plot to force saner Republicans including former Governor Charlie Crist out of the party and suppress the African-American vote by once again purging voter rolls.
Florida of course, bans ex felons from voting for life for those without good connections in the GOP, like Governor Scott of the Fourteen Felonies, so if one wrote a bad check in 1956 or was found with an ounce or so of Cannabis in 1968, one can go fish forever. In fact if your name sounds like someone else who did, and you live in Florida, you may have been illegally banned from voting in the 2000 election by a similar voter roll purge that targeted minority voters and probably put George Bush in the White House. You may be banned once again and you won't likely know until you show up at the polls.
It's funny how consistently the voter fraud circus parade neglects to mention the voting machine "problems" in Ohio. Again, I'm a cynic so I find it easy to believe that GOP tampering is treated differently in the Post Bush, Tea Party era. Remember those "unhackable" Diebold machines that took only minutes to hack, delivering more Republican votes than could be accounted for by registered voters -- and delivering Ohio for Bush, as the CEO openly boasted before being forced to resign over accounting fraud? I wonder if he's still on the voter rolls.
Thursday, July 19, 2012
The terrorists within
Perhaps now that John McCain is no longer running for president, he doesn't have to be so afraid of every little thing he says to the point where he says and does some incredibly stupid things. Choosing Sarah Palin, for one thing and telling us in all snarkiness that the economy is robust and those lying liberals are talking it down because they hate America or Capitalism or whatever, he made himself foolish to the point where, had he been a Democrat, Republicans would be vilifying him for the next three hundred years.
At least and at last, he has recovered some character and a little dignity yesterday by describing the attacks by such unworthies as Michelle Nachmann and Florida District 18 Representative Tom Rooney against Secretary of State Clinton's deputy chief of staff, Huma Abedin as having "no logic, no basis and no merit." Abedin, of course has relatives "tied to" the Muslim Brotherhood which of course makes Clinton a "serious security concern." It takes some kind of person -- and I use that term loosely -- to think that our Department of State shares an agenda involving "destroying Western civilization from within," as the raving Bachmann wrote and all because of some tenuous and contrived "links" with organizations somehow associated with other organizations by virtue of being Muslim with other groups who may or may not be enemies. It's as obscenely contrived as Rooney's obsessive efforts to impeach the President for treason.
Someone watching all this from Mars might find it very amusing and probably would have found it all rather predictable that the party that since the beginning of the 20th century has manufactured support by manufacturing enemies, would still be grasping for new evil empires to scare us with with stories of Sharia law being instituted in New Jersey and government plots to hand the country over, now that the Communist threat seems almost ludicrous to all but the galaxies far, far away, to some grand worldwide Caliphate. They've been desperate for credible enemies since the fall of the Soviet Union.
Yes, certainly we have had some very, very real enemies, but I seem to recall that during the Rise of Hitler, the Republicans were advising us to ignore the Nazis and the Empire of Japan because of the far more important Communist threat at home. Curiously similar to what Hitler was telling the Germans. Most of those reading this won't remember Joe McCarthy who made a fool out himself and out of America by overplaying his hand - stuffed with blank pieces of paper claimed to be lists of Communists in the State Department and the "Jew Dominated" movie industry. It was shameful, but as with much of rewritten history, Joe is back and his lies have been whitewashed and he has become a model for such equally shameless whores as Tom Rooney and Michelle Bachmann. Here we go again.
Indeed, since Florida has been redistricted, my Mr. Rooney will no longer be representing us and the massive support of his would be replacement, the reprehensible and disgraceful Allen West who claims that 80% of Democrats in Congress need to be deported and that Obama supports slavery, is astonishing. How many politicians have failed by overestimating the ignorance and stupidity and gullibility of the American voter?
How is it, I have to ask, that we have a whole party, a vastly wealthy party, dedicated to terrorizing the American public out of their freedom -- until they give up their rights -- and nobody sees them as terrorists? Communists, Muslim radicals, welfare mothers and of course Liberals - anything to keep the rubes afraid and angry to the point where the real enemy can take over.
At least and at last, he has recovered some character and a little dignity yesterday by describing the attacks by such unworthies as Michelle Nachmann and Florida District 18 Representative Tom Rooney against Secretary of State Clinton's deputy chief of staff, Huma Abedin as having "no logic, no basis and no merit." Abedin, of course has relatives "tied to" the Muslim Brotherhood which of course makes Clinton a "serious security concern." It takes some kind of person -- and I use that term loosely -- to think that our Department of State shares an agenda involving "destroying Western civilization from within," as the raving Bachmann wrote and all because of some tenuous and contrived "links" with organizations somehow associated with other organizations by virtue of being Muslim with other groups who may or may not be enemies. It's as obscenely contrived as Rooney's obsessive efforts to impeach the President for treason.
Someone watching all this from Mars might find it very amusing and probably would have found it all rather predictable that the party that since the beginning of the 20th century has manufactured support by manufacturing enemies, would still be grasping for new evil empires to scare us with with stories of Sharia law being instituted in New Jersey and government plots to hand the country over, now that the Communist threat seems almost ludicrous to all but the galaxies far, far away, to some grand worldwide Caliphate. They've been desperate for credible enemies since the fall of the Soviet Union.
Yes, certainly we have had some very, very real enemies, but I seem to recall that during the Rise of Hitler, the Republicans were advising us to ignore the Nazis and the Empire of Japan because of the far more important Communist threat at home. Curiously similar to what Hitler was telling the Germans. Most of those reading this won't remember Joe McCarthy who made a fool out himself and out of America by overplaying his hand - stuffed with blank pieces of paper claimed to be lists of Communists in the State Department and the "Jew Dominated" movie industry. It was shameful, but as with much of rewritten history, Joe is back and his lies have been whitewashed and he has become a model for such equally shameless whores as Tom Rooney and Michelle Bachmann. Here we go again.
Indeed, since Florida has been redistricted, my Mr. Rooney will no longer be representing us and the massive support of his would be replacement, the reprehensible and disgraceful Allen West who claims that 80% of Democrats in Congress need to be deported and that Obama supports slavery, is astonishing. How many politicians have failed by overestimating the ignorance and stupidity and gullibility of the American voter?
How is it, I have to ask, that we have a whole party, a vastly wealthy party, dedicated to terrorizing the American public out of their freedom -- until they give up their rights -- and nobody sees them as terrorists? Communists, Muslim radicals, welfare mothers and of course Liberals - anything to keep the rubes afraid and angry to the point where the real enemy can take over.
Saturday, July 14, 2012
Thou shalt not laugh
Is it bigotry? Or shouldn't the greater question be: "is it true?" It's no secret to anyone who has read my blog posts that I don't hold religious belief to be any more unassailable, any further off limits than any other opinions and beliefs people hold and since nearly every nasty thing humanity has done has employed some sort of belief to justify it, I think it's dangerous to refuse to question the influence of any particular religion or creed that presents itself to the public, whether it's personal or institutional.Yes, our founding document does guarantee that the government not interfere with the "free exercise" of religion but that such non interference does not convey license to ignore the law doesn't need to be restated every time some group decides it's exempt from restraint ( or subject to taxes.)
Certainly I am not opposed to the right to build churches or attend them and I am very much opposed to a government suggesting or forcing anyone to attend or not to attend or to worship or to recite allegiances to belief systems or gods -- and I suppose I'm not in a minority in that respect, unless we're discussing Islam. In fact I've frequently irritated people by defending Muslims from unfair criticism and bigotry. I've also irritated many by insisting that my freedom of speech and my freedom of belief trumps their efforts to keep me from criticizing their saints and deities and highly criticism worthy personages like Joseph Smith and Elron Hubbard.
It's often be explained to me that Islam is a "transcendental" religion, attempting to convert the world and so is dangerous, while religions like Christianity are not of that sort and so "Christian" or more ludicrously, "Judeo-Christian" law is the basis of our constitution and perhaps takes precedence. Sharia law alone is a clear and present danger say so many Americans. Can we really say that the enormous efforts Mormons make to convert the planet are different than other Christian efforts?
So why are there accusations of bigotry against Businessweek and Caroline Winter's article How the Mormons Make Money, which examines the finances and enterprises of the LDS? It's an
"in-depth look into the business side of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, with much attention given to the tax benefits the church enjoys and the extent of its holdings of property and stock in multinational corporations"
says Dan Merica at CNN Belief Blog. And why is that off limits? Why is the anger more justified than the anger against pictures of Mohammad with a bomb in his turban? Of course a spokesman for the Church of Later Day Saints was quick to tell us the article was in poor taste and intended to insult Mormans, but then I haven't noticed the same attitude as concerns the Book of Mormon and its vile insults against American Indians and people of color nor the same sort of thing as concerns Jews in the Gospels. Unfair and often vicious criticism isn't exactly uncommon in religion or religious texts.
The LDS is a Church, but also in fact, a huge international business enterprise claiming special treatment and special exemption from inquiry or criticism as a religion. It's not unique in that respect but I don't think any church is off limits when it comes to business interests and the obligations that obtain. Is freedom from taxes on income and capital gains and the right to secret dealings really part of the protection of free exercise? No more than the freedom to traffic in underage girls. We have the right to criticize, to contradict, and yes to laugh. As an old friend of mine used to say "one man's religion is another man's belly laugh."
As the Businessweek article says,
"A recent study by Ryan Cragun, a sociology professor at the University of Tampa, estimates the church receives around $8 billion in tithing from members each years and is worth around $40 billion."
They don't have to report it or disclose it and they do get to spend it on influencing Congress to make our laws more in line with their sometimes abhorrent moral doctrines. To me that puts them in the same category, only with more money behind them, than those American Muslims, a few of whom would like to see our laws more in line with Sharia.
Was our bill of rights intended to protect the right of belief, of worship or was it intended to allow organizations to operate as separate countries within our own, free to tamper with our laws, but exempt from taxes and from criticism? I don't think so and I'm far more offended by money they earn at the taxpayer's expense being used to deny freedom to others then I am by a cynical magazine cover.
Thursday, July 12, 2012
Dream on
Dear Mr. Romney Willard Mitt Willard Romney WMR
Forgive me for shredding your name, but as your letter of July 6th was in the same format, I assumed you would find it preferable if I used the same scheme. It's best to assume it was done deliberately rather than being the product of the same method you use to formulate your political positions from one minute to another. Thank you for your letter reminding me that I may legally contribute an amount greater than the average American family income to your campaign, but I suggest that if you can't run a campaign with the hundreds of millions the corporate aristocracy has given you, you might not be the frugal sort of leader you'd like us to believe you are.
I'm glad to hear that
"Growing up, I was fortunate to have been an eyewitness to the American Dream."
but I suggest that your vantage point might have been different from that of the actual
"people [who] worked hard, seized opportunities, and hammered out a legacy of prosperity and hope for their children and grandchildren."
Most of them didn't have multi-millionaire parents who served as governors and Presidential cabinet members and of course very few of them ever realized the kind of success you had handed to you. But I have to ask how you have arrived at the notion that people can no longer work hard or seize opportunities -- after all you're currently engaged in at least one of those activities and I have no doubt that you've spent many hours campaigning. I see absolutely nothing in "Obama's policies" that have interfered with your or my or anyone else's endeavors. Perhaps you could enlighten me as to what policies you refer. Doing that would at least set you apart from your colleagues and staff writers since not one of them seems to know or acknowledge that those policies have either been thwarted or in many cases are policies inherited from the previous administration along with its unprecedentedly expensive wars. Obama has lowered taxes for most of us -- wasn't that supposed to be the Republican panacea? Where were all the jobs that tax structure was supposed to create? Why did we have 8 years with zero private sector job growth which then began to grow under "Obama's policies?" Without some actual economic policy suggestions that might somehow pay off the massive debt Mr. Bush left us -- I mean suggestions other than making our government more like the weak and ineffectual government of India so as to import a wage scale like theirs, without ideas like eliminating Social Security and Medicare and the very health care plan you wrote yourself -- without some real ideas that a moment and a contribution won't reverse, all we can do about opportunity is dream.
Anyway Mr. Romney Willard Mitt Willard Romney WMR, I remember too. I remember solid growth and high employment levels and a land of opportunity when we had a 90% top tax bracket and strong unions. My grandparents remember a time when that wasn't so and 12 hour work days and 6 day work weeks with no vacation or benefits and mostly the rich and the Caucasian went to college was the way it should be according to Republicans -- and you were a communist if you didn't agree.
I remember when I couldn't live in many neighborhoods, when I would be a felon in Florida and most of the south for marrying outside my race -- a time when many jobs and many schools were not open to me and other minorities and when firehoses and dogs were turned on women and children who may have disagreed with your fictitious views of our immediate past. I remember the "conservative" opinions and I don't see that they've changed all that much. For all our problems - for all the problems Republican policies have caused - Today my children and my grandchildren are closer to their dreams than I could have been and it's still a better country than it was when you were born.
In terms of upward mobility and opportunity, in terms of education and health our country has been sinking for a very long time, with perhaps the exception of the all too brief Clinton years. I'm sure you remember Clinton, the fellow your ilk branded as being against Capitalism and business and the "American Dream" and many other absurd and dishonest charges you now try to pin on Mr. Obama.
I'd also be interested to know what your policies actually are other than to beat Obama at any cost and undo the health plan you wrote for Massachusetts. I'm asking how you're different because I and most of the economists I know feel that no matter who is elected, the only way Republican generated debt ( be honest now, the biggest borrowers and spenders in your lifetime have been Republicans and much of the "spending" you accuse Democrats of consists of paying Republican bills) the debt will finally be settled by devaluing the Dollar and evaporating the savings of Americans, leaving us with the kind of America I dream about and wake up screaming. There's nothing you can do to change it.
So no, Mr. Romney Willard Mitt Willard Romney WMR, I won't be putting a stamp on the return envelope to spare your billionaire budget, but as as a measure of my esteem, I am enclosing an envelope sized piece of 1/8th inch rolled steel for ballast. It's American made steel. It's a piece of history. Use it as a reminder of how the greedy liars on the right exported opportunity. Use it as a paper weight for all that money Daddy Kochbux gives you.
Sincerely,
Capt. Fogg Fogg Capt RG banana fanna fogg . .
Forgive me for shredding your name, but as your letter of July 6th was in the same format, I assumed you would find it preferable if I used the same scheme. It's best to assume it was done deliberately rather than being the product of the same method you use to formulate your political positions from one minute to another. Thank you for your letter reminding me that I may legally contribute an amount greater than the average American family income to your campaign, but I suggest that if you can't run a campaign with the hundreds of millions the corporate aristocracy has given you, you might not be the frugal sort of leader you'd like us to believe you are.
I'm glad to hear that
"Growing up, I was fortunate to have been an eyewitness to the American Dream."
but I suggest that your vantage point might have been different from that of the actual
"people [who] worked hard, seized opportunities, and hammered out a legacy of prosperity and hope for their children and grandchildren."
Most of them didn't have multi-millionaire parents who served as governors and Presidential cabinet members and of course very few of them ever realized the kind of success you had handed to you. But I have to ask how you have arrived at the notion that people can no longer work hard or seize opportunities -- after all you're currently engaged in at least one of those activities and I have no doubt that you've spent many hours campaigning. I see absolutely nothing in "Obama's policies" that have interfered with your or my or anyone else's endeavors. Perhaps you could enlighten me as to what policies you refer. Doing that would at least set you apart from your colleagues and staff writers since not one of them seems to know or acknowledge that those policies have either been thwarted or in many cases are policies inherited from the previous administration along with its unprecedentedly expensive wars. Obama has lowered taxes for most of us -- wasn't that supposed to be the Republican panacea? Where were all the jobs that tax structure was supposed to create? Why did we have 8 years with zero private sector job growth which then began to grow under "Obama's policies?" Without some actual economic policy suggestions that might somehow pay off the massive debt Mr. Bush left us -- I mean suggestions other than making our government more like the weak and ineffectual government of India so as to import a wage scale like theirs, without ideas like eliminating Social Security and Medicare and the very health care plan you wrote yourself -- without some real ideas that a moment and a contribution won't reverse, all we can do about opportunity is dream.
Anyway Mr. Romney Willard Mitt Willard Romney WMR, I remember too. I remember solid growth and high employment levels and a land of opportunity when we had a 90% top tax bracket and strong unions. My grandparents remember a time when that wasn't so and 12 hour work days and 6 day work weeks with no vacation or benefits and mostly the rich and the Caucasian went to college was the way it should be according to Republicans -- and you were a communist if you didn't agree.
I remember when I couldn't live in many neighborhoods, when I would be a felon in Florida and most of the south for marrying outside my race -- a time when many jobs and many schools were not open to me and other minorities and when firehoses and dogs were turned on women and children who may have disagreed with your fictitious views of our immediate past. I remember the "conservative" opinions and I don't see that they've changed all that much. For all our problems - for all the problems Republican policies have caused - Today my children and my grandchildren are closer to their dreams than I could have been and it's still a better country than it was when you were born.
In terms of upward mobility and opportunity, in terms of education and health our country has been sinking for a very long time, with perhaps the exception of the all too brief Clinton years. I'm sure you remember Clinton, the fellow your ilk branded as being against Capitalism and business and the "American Dream" and many other absurd and dishonest charges you now try to pin on Mr. Obama.
I'd also be interested to know what your policies actually are other than to beat Obama at any cost and undo the health plan you wrote for Massachusetts. I'm asking how you're different because I and most of the economists I know feel that no matter who is elected, the only way Republican generated debt ( be honest now, the biggest borrowers and spenders in your lifetime have been Republicans and much of the "spending" you accuse Democrats of consists of paying Republican bills) the debt will finally be settled by devaluing the Dollar and evaporating the savings of Americans, leaving us with the kind of America I dream about and wake up screaming. There's nothing you can do to change it.
So no, Mr. Romney Willard Mitt Willard Romney WMR, I won't be putting a stamp on the return envelope to spare your billionaire budget, but as as a measure of my esteem, I am enclosing an envelope sized piece of 1/8th inch rolled steel for ballast. It's American made steel. It's a piece of history. Use it as a reminder of how the greedy liars on the right exported opportunity. Use it as a paper weight for all that money Daddy Kochbux gives you.
Sincerely,
Capt. Fogg Fogg Capt RG banana fanna fogg . .
Wednesday, July 04, 2012
Halleluja, it's the Higgs
So it may be the long sought Higgs particle observed by CERN and
announced officially today. It also might not be and of course this God
particle really has nothing at all to do with God or gods of proofs
thereof. We owe that idea not to physicists, but to journalists who
don't know a Boson from a Bos'n but know anything they can dishonestly
and ignorantly claim to be about scientific proof for any kind of God
will attract ratings like mass attracts other mass.
said Dr. Joe Incandela of the University of California, Santa Barbara, a spokesman for one of the two groups reporting their data today. So far the unofficial theologians of the press haven't mentioned the pantheistic possibilities should Super symmetry and its attendant multiplicity of Higgs particles be the next theory to be backed up by the worlds most powerful and expensive physics experiment, still only running at half power. Even if it isn't and whether we have the Higgs particle or something that doesn't quite fit the model, we've had another giant step for mankind, not that many in the US will take much notice. A door has been opened to a whole new level of understanding and that reveals many other doors. It's another giant step away from mythology and speculation as the key to understanding.
Perhaps few will notice that this was a discovery made in Europe because we decided we couldn't afford such a machine and the next most powerful accelerator at Fermilab was shut down last year because you can't have wars and tax cuts and take giant steps even though of course, we're number one and the greatest country in the history of the galaxy and the only place where freedom rings. Who wants all those scientists here anyway, taking jobs away from Americans and looking down on us all -- confusing us with talk about reality being far more complex than you can dream about -- infinitely more complex than the Bible tells us. It's not a sad failure, it's a victory!
“The whole world thinks there is one Higgs, but there could be many of them.”
said Dr. Joe Incandela of the University of California, Santa Barbara, a spokesman for one of the two groups reporting their data today. So far the unofficial theologians of the press haven't mentioned the pantheistic possibilities should Super symmetry and its attendant multiplicity of Higgs particles be the next theory to be backed up by the worlds most powerful and expensive physics experiment, still only running at half power. Even if it isn't and whether we have the Higgs particle or something that doesn't quite fit the model, we've had another giant step for mankind, not that many in the US will take much notice. A door has been opened to a whole new level of understanding and that reveals many other doors. It's another giant step away from mythology and speculation as the key to understanding.
Perhaps few will notice that this was a discovery made in Europe because we decided we couldn't afford such a machine and the next most powerful accelerator at Fermilab was shut down last year because you can't have wars and tax cuts and take giant steps even though of course, we're number one and the greatest country in the history of the galaxy and the only place where freedom rings. Who wants all those scientists here anyway, taking jobs away from Americans and looking down on us all -- confusing us with talk about reality being far more complex than you can dream about -- infinitely more complex than the Bible tells us. It's not a sad failure, it's a victory!
Rocket's red glare
The firecrackers, the sparklers, the small bottle rockets, pinwheels and other things you can fill your shopping basket with are, of course quite a bit smaller and less dangerous than the artillery your town or city are likely to be using to light up the sky and they're probably set off remotely by professionals, but making smoke and noise on the 4th of July is still well ingrained in our tradition even now that candles are so lethal we're advised never to use them, burning leaves in the fall is highly illegal ( even though shooting a gun in your back yard no longer is in Florida) and every TV show or advertisement that shows anyone driving a car has to have a disclaimer advising us that only trained professionals on a closed course should ever, ever drive fast enough to make the fallen autumn leaves rustle. A show about Alaskan bush pilots I often watch begins with the warning never, ever, to fly planes "at home." Seriously.
I have to think it's sad that the fondest memories I have of childhood: riding my new Raleigh for endless unsupervised miles with the wind in my hair and without body armor, the smell of burning leaves in October, of gunpowder in July -- things like riding beltless and booster seatless in Dad's new MG when I was 9, these are all things that could get you arrested today. Today when life is so dull and safe we retreat into a violent virtual world, when kids are afflicted with lethal allergies because they never encountered a bacterium until they were 25 and can be expelled from school for carrying a nail clipper or an aspirin tablet.
Yes, for sure -- some Budweiser addled, shoeless swamp cracker will hold a firecracker too long today and blow off a finger and some kid will burn his hand with a sparkler, but I'll guarantee a bunch of people will be killed on jet skis and in boats, will drown at the beach and drive their cars under the influence and kill someone coming home from the municipal fireworks show, but that we really aren't going to be asked to ban boats, beaches or beer. Not yet, anyway.
Coming from Illinois, of course -- a state where your car can be confiscated if sparklers are found in your trunk ( but not a firearm) -- it still takes me aback that one can be a criminal so vile and loathsome that your neighbors will shun you in one place and in another place, sometimes right across the state line, you're just an ordinary, law abiding citizen with a good shot at running for mayor.
I saw on TV just the other day, that Chicago has seen more than a 35% increase in violent murders lately, while New York as had a 17% decrease. Seeing as both cities have the most severe gun control laws in the country, I'm interested to know how the "ban it" people are going to explain it all by the need for more and stricter bans. Of course the current Chicago crime wave is the result of our fiercely defended 'substance' bans which finance gangs and gang wars, just as it was during Prohibition when anyone could buy a Thompson submachine gun, or "Chicago typewriter" at the hardware store but a beer would land you in the slammer.
A cynic might be tempted to claim that bans are better at causing crime than at preventing it, but although I'm tempted to agree, I'm cynical enough to think that such an observation wouldn't persuade anyone that I'm not a terrorist and a public menace for having bought sparklers along with the Bratwurst yesterday or that I enjoy an occasional afternoon at the shooting range. I'd really like to give my grandson a ride in my Corvette too, but alas. . .
Tuesday, July 03, 2012
Three pigs for Doctor Higgs
Deus ex machina at CERN
Fortunately someone turned off Dad's new flat-screen before I could draw my gun. I guess my family knows me well enough to predict my reaction to the CNN headline about how "Science" might have found "proof of God" but my Colt Mustang .380 was safely locked out of reached in the car anyway.
If you've read my rants long enough you probably know my frustration with arguments that attempt to prove some concept of God since any of them, even if they weren't fallacious, don't argue for any one of the infinitely possible concepts of any deity over another, but of course, CNN was just being coy so that the viewers wouldn't tune out during the endless commercial breaks. If we had waited long enough we would have found out that they were only speculating further about a possible July 4th announcement by CERN that they have observed a Higgs Boson; that thing not one person in 10,000 is able to describe, but nonetheless knows as the "God Particle." What must he weigh if he's composed of such heavy particles?
I've often wondered why a incomprehensibly small yet massive particle might have anything more or less to do with God than another. God after all seems to exist in some massless form; in some formless, ineffable state that can interact with matter and energy, but is composed of some undefinable, self- negating, insubstantial non particulate substance one calls "pure spirit" and is therefore free from the constraints imposed by the universe on matter and energy. Does not God also claim neutrinos and neutrons as well? If we create such particles artificially, aren't we creating gods, or at least "godstuff?"
The Higgs particle, if it exists, is postulated to explain the property we call mass in the classical model of physics. If gods have mass, it's hard to allow them divine properties if the universe is consistent and it's also hard to explain how some subatomic particle pertains exclusively to Krishna rather than Yahweh or Puff the Magic Dragon and maybe harder to explain why any god could not create a universe without inertia if he wanted to. Can a boson be a trinity or a pantheistic infinity? Crank up the accelerator because inquiring minds want to know.
If it were up to me, I'd have called it the ego particle but if it had been up to the Nobel Prize winner and Director of Fermilab, Leon Lederman who coined the regrettable term in his pop-Science book The God Particle and launched the meme that sunk a billion minds, it would have been called The Goddamn Particle but for his editor's objections. How I wish that editor had had more courage and that we'd been spared the endlessly dimwitted godbothering about some subatomic particle being "proof of God."
Of course those who are prematurely jubilating today about how science proves God -- those disciples of those who have been battling against science for centuries, aren't going to accept the actual scientific proof of the age of "the world" or anything else that challenges their celebrated certainties and I doubt they'll feel remorse about the closing of Fermilab's accelerator for lack of funds, giving the opportunity for divine revelation to foreigners. If those those atheistic, socialistic geeks, buried with their witches circle under the soil of Europe were the ones to prove that the Bible and all our holy Christian beliefs in all their wholly different forms are true, so much the better.
Fortunately someone turned off Dad's new flat-screen before I could draw my gun. I guess my family knows me well enough to predict my reaction to the CNN headline about how "Science" might have found "proof of God" but my Colt Mustang .380 was safely locked out of reached in the car anyway.
If you've read my rants long enough you probably know my frustration with arguments that attempt to prove some concept of God since any of them, even if they weren't fallacious, don't argue for any one of the infinitely possible concepts of any deity over another, but of course, CNN was just being coy so that the viewers wouldn't tune out during the endless commercial breaks. If we had waited long enough we would have found out that they were only speculating further about a possible July 4th announcement by CERN that they have observed a Higgs Boson; that thing not one person in 10,000 is able to describe, but nonetheless knows as the "God Particle." What must he weigh if he's composed of such heavy particles?
I've often wondered why a incomprehensibly small yet massive particle might have anything more or less to do with God than another. God after all seems to exist in some massless form; in some formless, ineffable state that can interact with matter and energy, but is composed of some undefinable, self- negating, insubstantial non particulate substance one calls "pure spirit" and is therefore free from the constraints imposed by the universe on matter and energy. Does not God also claim neutrinos and neutrons as well? If we create such particles artificially, aren't we creating gods, or at least "godstuff?"
The Higgs particle, if it exists, is postulated to explain the property we call mass in the classical model of physics. If gods have mass, it's hard to allow them divine properties if the universe is consistent and it's also hard to explain how some subatomic particle pertains exclusively to Krishna rather than Yahweh or Puff the Magic Dragon and maybe harder to explain why any god could not create a universe without inertia if he wanted to. Can a boson be a trinity or a pantheistic infinity? Crank up the accelerator because inquiring minds want to know.
If it were up to me, I'd have called it the ego particle but if it had been up to the Nobel Prize winner and Director of Fermilab, Leon Lederman who coined the regrettable term in his pop-Science book The God Particle and launched the meme that sunk a billion minds, it would have been called The Goddamn Particle but for his editor's objections. How I wish that editor had had more courage and that we'd been spared the endlessly dimwitted godbothering about some subatomic particle being "proof of God."
Of course those who are prematurely jubilating today about how science proves God -- those disciples of those who have been battling against science for centuries, aren't going to accept the actual scientific proof of the age of "the world" or anything else that challenges their celebrated certainties and I doubt they'll feel remorse about the closing of Fermilab's accelerator for lack of funds, giving the opportunity for divine revelation to foreigners. If those those atheistic, socialistic geeks, buried with their witches circle under the soil of Europe were the ones to prove that the Bible and all our holy Christian beliefs in all their wholly different forms are true, so much the better.
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