Attn: Mr republican voter, what I am about to tell you had better make you sit up and pay attention. Not satisfied with trying to alienate every single woman in the country by trying to redefine the definition of rape (please see this post for more on that little nugget of love), this is what YOUR representatives are trying to do behind your back as well. They are actively trying to find ways for States and Municipalities to declare bankruptcy, get out of debt, and screw the common man all in one shot. You might not be aware of this, but most of the debt piling up for State and Municipal Governments is in the unfunded or under-funded pension plans that were set up under contracts entered into, and agreed upon in good faith, between Government and employee. Now these governments are looking for a legal way to keep from having to honour those contracts and fully fund those pension plans.
In other words, you think that just because you worked for the gummint for 30 years your pension is guaranteed? Think again. Think that just because you are already retired your pension is safe? Think again. And whilst you try and wrap your head around that news, make sure you remind yourself that yes, these are the very same bastards that a) bailed out the "too big to fail" banks with OUR taxpayer dollars even though THEY are the ones that drove the economy straight off the cliff, and b) made it harder for the common folk to get out-from-under in personal bankruptcy filings by changing the rules in favour of the banks and credit card companies. Clear on that? Personal bankruptcy = Make it harder, Government Bankruptcy = Let's see what we can do to make it easier.
So, do me a favour Mr republican voter, the next time some slick political ad comes on the telly and a republican politician talks about how the President is really a secret commie/nazi/socialist/muslim that was born in Kenya and he wants to take away your guns and force you to get health care and force pregnant women to have abortions and he doesn't even love the Baby Jesus....just remember this story. And remember this Mr. republican voter, they are saying things like that about the President specifically, or Democrats in general because they know it pushes your buttons. Regardless of your personal financial well-being, or how much free health care would actually benefit you, or how environmental regulations actually do keep your water clean and your food safe, they know that all of that will fly out of the window if they mention God, Guns or Gays. (That's why pundits and politicos call these issues "red meat"). The republicans know you love it, and they know you can't help but fall for it. Every.Single.Time.
One day Mr. republican voter I hope that the smoke will clear and you will finally see what you are actually getting everytime you send these hypocritical asswipes back to congress.
Bottom line Mr. republican voter is this, they may say they are on 'your side', but they aren't. They may say they love the 'little guy', but they don't. You are being lied to, and it is time for you to snap out of it and stop buying their bullshit because ALL of us wind up getting royally screwed.
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Monday, January 31, 2011
Big Storm on the horizon...or so they say
..according to the Weather Channel we here in the Midwest are about to get clobbered with a snow storm the likes of which we haven't seen in over a decade, up to a couple of feet in some places...my only question is...why couldn't it have shown up this morning whilst I was still nice and toasty under the covers...if it hits, as predicted overnight on Tuesday into Wednesday, instead of throwing another log on the fire and copping a quick feel of the missus while she slumbers, it'll mean getting up at o-dark thirty to shovel tons of the white shit off the driveway and then a 2 hour commute to the office which normally only takes 15 minutes...
Global warming my arse.....*
*I am of course completely kidding about that, but just once in a while I like to see what it feels like to be a smug GW-denier...
Global warming my arse.....*
*I am of course completely kidding about that, but just once in a while I like to see what it feels like to be a smug GW-denier...
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Randumb thoughts for your friday amusement...and consternation...
1) Why does the M$M cover the Teahadists as though the are a separate party? They aren't. Their party registration is republican, not "frothing-at-the-mouth homophobic bigots". They are merely the openly radical wing of the mainstream republican party. Should the Dems come out with their own version of the Teanuts and then demand equal time? Do you think the M$M would do that? Yeah. Me neither. God the media in this country sucks.
2) Bristol Palin was scheduled to give a speech at the Washington University in St. Louis for a fee of $20,000. The topic? Abstinence. No, I am not making that up. Apparently they couldn't rip Charlie Sheen away from the hookers and blow long enough to give a speech on sobriety and moderation, so they asked the un-wed teen mother from Moose-Fuck Alaska to speak on how not to get knocked up. Thankfully the students of the university persuaded the administration that this probably wasn't a good idea and the whole thing has now been called off.
3) Want proof of what republicans really think about women? Legislation introduced by Rep. Chris Smith (R-Caveman) would limit federal aid for abortions to only cover cases of rape that were "forcible". Get that ladies? It isn't enough that some bastard raped you and knocked you up, now they want you to prove that it was "forcible" before they'll help pay for the abortion. What about cases of incestuous rape or cases of statutory rape many of which are non-forcible? Tough shit? Too bad, so sad? Any woman, and I mean ANY woman that votes republican needs their fucking head examined. It makes as much sense for a woman to vote republican as it does for a chicken to vote for Col.Sanders.
And on that note, I believe the bar is open. Cheers!
2) Bristol Palin was scheduled to give a speech at the Washington University in St. Louis for a fee of $20,000. The topic? Abstinence. No, I am not making that up. Apparently they couldn't rip Charlie Sheen away from the hookers and blow long enough to give a speech on sobriety and moderation, so they asked the un-wed teen mother from Moose-Fuck Alaska to speak on how not to get knocked up. Thankfully the students of the university persuaded the administration that this probably wasn't a good idea and the whole thing has now been called off.
3) Want proof of what republicans really think about women? Legislation introduced by Rep. Chris Smith (R-Caveman) would limit federal aid for abortions to only cover cases of rape that were "forcible". Get that ladies? It isn't enough that some bastard raped you and knocked you up, now they want you to prove that it was "forcible" before they'll help pay for the abortion. What about cases of incestuous rape or cases of statutory rape many of which are non-forcible? Tough shit? Too bad, so sad? Any woman, and I mean ANY woman that votes republican needs their fucking head examined. It makes as much sense for a woman to vote republican as it does for a chicken to vote for Col.Sanders.
And on that note, I believe the bar is open. Cheers!
POTUS SOTU, A-OK or WTF?
He came, he saw, he read a speech. In an atmosphere that can most charitably be described as 'muted', Barack Obama delivered his State of the Union speech to a chamber that for the first time in it's history, had everyone sitting together in a display of 'civility'. In reality it just made for some good television viewing for those of us at home, as we watched the attendees fake sincere smiles and handshakes, some of whom looked genuinely uncomfortable sitting with their opposite numbers. This novel seating arrangement also meant that the usual partisan jack-in-the-box standing ovations from one side of the room or the other at the designated moments in the speech were not going to happen. Instead we were blessed with the sight of what seemed to be a series of half-hearted standing ovations by folks that at times looked seriously confused as to whether it was their turn to stand or not.
The speech itself was a mish-mash of watered-down generalizations, with a discouraging amount of red-meat thrown in for the repubbies to get moist over, including Tort reform, lowering corporate tax rates and simplifying the tax code. At one point I wondered if someone from John Boner's office had switched the speeches loaded into the tele-prompter and replaced it with the one that the Weeper of the House is scheduled to give at an insurance lobbyists luncheon next week. For all of the republican wish-list items that were checked off in that speech it made me wonder just what the hell Paul Ryan (R- Eddie Munster look-alike asshole) was going to criticise in the official republican rebuttal? Maybe the colour of the President's tie?
As with the previous Obama SOTU addresses, the real fun begins when the right-wing spin machine goes into overdrive afterwards, starting with the official opposition's response. After the disaster that was Bobby Jindal's coming out speech two years ago, they tried to play it safe with Paul Ryan from Wisconsin this year. I watched him for a few seconds at the end of his "Everything that guy just said is bullshit" routine only to be struck by how stoned he looked. Paul Ryan either hadn't changed his contact lenses in a year or two, or he was high as a kite. Seriously, his eyes were so red you wouldn't use Visine to clear them up, you'd have to use White Out.
Not wanting to be left out, the lunatic fringe of the gop, the TeaBaggers, had their own rebuttal that no-one but the Comedy News Channel (CNN) covered. It featured the walking punchline that is the spectacularly stupid Rep Michele Bachmann (R- Batshit Insane). Actually that's a slur on stupid people, Bachmann is more like 10lbs of crazy stuffed into a 5lb bag. Her presentation featured charts, graphs, and the picture taken at Iwo Jima. The gist of her psychotic rant was, apparently, that Obama is Satan, the IRS is going to use Health Care Reform to tax you back to the stone age, and the the birth of America was 'a miracle' (and there was me thinking it was a bunch of folks trying to escape religious persecution getting on some rickety old boats whilst telling The Crown to 'fucketh off').
If the subject matter wasn't whacky enough, the delivery of it was completely bizarre. It appears that the Teabaggers didn't want to pony up the extra dollars for a professional-grade tele-prompter that allows the person reading it to look directly into the camera, but instead opted for one that was off to the side of the camera. This resulted in the speaker looking completely mental as she appeared to be earnestly addressing someone that was standing off camera. (This also raises the question of why she using a tele-prompter in the first place? I thought that was a clear violation of the Tea Party Code because they continually attack the Socialist/Nazi/Commie from Kenya in the Whitehouse for using one?)
In conclusion there was very little for the Dems to get too thrilled about, we've heard alot of these promises before, and instead of being a true assessment of the 'State of the Union' (there were only two paragraphs about only one of the two wars being fought, and bugger-all about the chronically unemployed) it was more like a republican speech delivered very eloquently by a centrist who apparently thinks that invasive TSA pat-downs are hysterical.
*As an aside Mooselini has reappeared from her self-imposed exile to chime in with her two cents about the speech, and said that the President's use of 'Win The Future' is the wrong use of 'WTF'. This would be amusing if A) she had come up with that line herself, and B) if her entire politicial career wasn't the biggest WTF of all time.
The speech itself was a mish-mash of watered-down generalizations, with a discouraging amount of red-meat thrown in for the repubbies to get moist over, including Tort reform, lowering corporate tax rates and simplifying the tax code. At one point I wondered if someone from John Boner's office had switched the speeches loaded into the tele-prompter and replaced it with the one that the Weeper of the House is scheduled to give at an insurance lobbyists luncheon next week. For all of the republican wish-list items that were checked off in that speech it made me wonder just what the hell Paul Ryan (R- Eddie Munster look-alike asshole) was going to criticise in the official republican rebuttal? Maybe the colour of the President's tie?
As with the previous Obama SOTU addresses, the real fun begins when the right-wing spin machine goes into overdrive afterwards, starting with the official opposition's response. After the disaster that was Bobby Jindal's coming out speech two years ago, they tried to play it safe with Paul Ryan from Wisconsin this year. I watched him for a few seconds at the end of his "Everything that guy just said is bullshit" routine only to be struck by how stoned he looked. Paul Ryan either hadn't changed his contact lenses in a year or two, or he was high as a kite. Seriously, his eyes were so red you wouldn't use Visine to clear them up, you'd have to use White Out.
Not wanting to be left out, the lunatic fringe of the gop, the TeaBaggers, had their own rebuttal that no-one but the Comedy News Channel (CNN) covered. It featured the walking punchline that is the spectacularly stupid Rep Michele Bachmann (R- Batshit Insane). Actually that's a slur on stupid people, Bachmann is more like 10lbs of crazy stuffed into a 5lb bag. Her presentation featured charts, graphs, and the picture taken at Iwo Jima. The gist of her psychotic rant was, apparently, that Obama is Satan, the IRS is going to use Health Care Reform to tax you back to the stone age, and the the birth of America was 'a miracle' (and there was me thinking it was a bunch of folks trying to escape religious persecution getting on some rickety old boats whilst telling The Crown to 'fucketh off').
If the subject matter wasn't whacky enough, the delivery of it was completely bizarre. It appears that the Teabaggers didn't want to pony up the extra dollars for a professional-grade tele-prompter that allows the person reading it to look directly into the camera, but instead opted for one that was off to the side of the camera. This resulted in the speaker looking completely mental as she appeared to be earnestly addressing someone that was standing off camera. (This also raises the question of why she using a tele-prompter in the first place? I thought that was a clear violation of the Tea Party Code because they continually attack the Socialist/Nazi/Commie from Kenya in the Whitehouse for using one?)
In conclusion there was very little for the Dems to get too thrilled about, we've heard alot of these promises before, and instead of being a true assessment of the 'State of the Union' (there were only two paragraphs about only one of the two wars being fought, and bugger-all about the chronically unemployed) it was more like a republican speech delivered very eloquently by a centrist who apparently thinks that invasive TSA pat-downs are hysterical.
*As an aside Mooselini has reappeared from her self-imposed exile to chime in with her two cents about the speech, and said that the President's use of 'Win The Future' is the wrong use of 'WTF'. This would be amusing if A) she had come up with that line herself, and B) if her entire politicial career wasn't the biggest WTF of all time.
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Wait, Obama said what?..about whom?..you must be joking...
Today, January 25th, 2011 President Barack Obama will make his second State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress and many a political pundit is giddy with excitement guessing which topic will be the primary focus of the speech. In these trying times it is hard to imagine that it would be anything other than jobs, jobs, jobs, but in light of the recent tragic events in Arizona, it is fair to speculate that he will reiterate his call to extend tolerance and civility into political discourse. Back here on planet Earth this is known as 'casting pearls before the swine', but the Prez has never been one to readily accept the reality that the right-wing despise him and everything he represents regardless of how bi-partisan he is. And that is what makes his OpEd piece, published yesterday in USA Today, so totally and completely baffling. In it he praised Ronald Reagan (whose 100th birthday would be coming up soon if he wasn't you know, dead) and said that "he was a patroit that always put his fellow citizens' welfare above all else", and that "we remain forever grateful for the gift that was his view that it was always 'morning in America'."
I'm sorry, what? Are you kidding me?
That's just wrong on so many levels. For a start it's total bullshit. And I mean completely and utterly, pure, unadulterated bullshit. I know, I was there. I became politically aware during Raygun's Reign of Error, and the one thing I know for sure was that he didn't gave a tinkers' damn about his fellow citizens unless they were a) rich, b) white, and c) male...if you were a woman, gay, or a minority you were screwed...He was quite possibly the single most destructive occupant of the Oval Office ever. His disdain for the environment was breathtaking in its' audacity ("when you've seen one Redwood you've seen them all", "trees cause more pollution than automobiles" - yes - he actually said that), his disregard for the mentally ill and those suffering from AIDS was horrifying, and his defense spending was so reckless we are still paying for it now.
Whether he was mentally competent or not during the whole Iran-Contra debacle can be argued ad nauseam (and his son Ron Jr, has said that he was almost literally out of his mind for at least part of his presidency), but the fact remains he still broke the law, and his support of vicious right-wing regimes in Central America was directly responsible for hideous acts of torture and the deaths of many innocent people.
I don't think he was stupid, and I don't think he was (entirely) evil - you know, like Dick Cheney is - I just think he was ill. Seriously ill. A British comedian at the time questioned the sanity of having such an aged old geezer in the Oval Office with his finger hovering over the nuclear trigger when his own grandad was the same age as Reagun, and they wouldn't even let him have control of the t.v remote! Thankfully we never found out, even though the clueless bastard did joke once about launching nukes at Russia as he was warming up for his weekly radio address.
But here's what drives me nuts. I am beyond sick of the constant re-imagining of this senile old bastard from weepy-eyed snake-oil salesmen on the right, but I feel almost physically ill when one of the sycophantic revisionists is allegedly 'one of us' on the left. Having lived through that time I can honestly say that the only thing I am truly grateful for about Raygun was that his gibbering idiocy was term-limited to only eight years...and even that was eight years too many..
And as for Obama? He should bloody well know better..
I'm sorry, what? Are you kidding me?
That's just wrong on so many levels. For a start it's total bullshit. And I mean completely and utterly, pure, unadulterated bullshit. I know, I was there. I became politically aware during Raygun's Reign of Error, and the one thing I know for sure was that he didn't gave a tinkers' damn about his fellow citizens unless they were a) rich, b) white, and c) male...if you were a woman, gay, or a minority you were screwed...He was quite possibly the single most destructive occupant of the Oval Office ever. His disdain for the environment was breathtaking in its' audacity ("when you've seen one Redwood you've seen them all", "trees cause more pollution than automobiles" - yes - he actually said that), his disregard for the mentally ill and those suffering from AIDS was horrifying, and his defense spending was so reckless we are still paying for it now.
Whether he was mentally competent or not during the whole Iran-Contra debacle can be argued ad nauseam (and his son Ron Jr, has said that he was almost literally out of his mind for at least part of his presidency), but the fact remains he still broke the law, and his support of vicious right-wing regimes in Central America was directly responsible for hideous acts of torture and the deaths of many innocent people.
I don't think he was stupid, and I don't think he was (entirely) evil - you know, like Dick Cheney is - I just think he was ill. Seriously ill. A British comedian at the time questioned the sanity of having such an aged old geezer in the Oval Office with his finger hovering over the nuclear trigger when his own grandad was the same age as Reagun, and they wouldn't even let him have control of the t.v remote! Thankfully we never found out, even though the clueless bastard did joke once about launching nukes at Russia as he was warming up for his weekly radio address.
But here's what drives me nuts. I am beyond sick of the constant re-imagining of this senile old bastard from weepy-eyed snake-oil salesmen on the right, but I feel almost physically ill when one of the sycophantic revisionists is allegedly 'one of us' on the left. Having lived through that time I can honestly say that the only thing I am truly grateful for about Raygun was that his gibbering idiocy was term-limited to only eight years...and even that was eight years too many..
And as for Obama? He should bloody well know better..
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