Sometimes I honestly wonder what happened to the guy I saw on the campaign trail, I really do. He was all fired up about rectifying the wrongs, putting the country back on the right path, bringing sanity and reason back to the body politic, and yet as soon as he was sworn into office (twice) he has become someone else entirely. Instead of wielding his mega-majority like the mighty hammer of Thor, he has meekly capitulated to every single threat issued by the radical right-wing, and he deservedly got his milquetoast ass handed to him in the mid-terms.
I have mentioned more than a few policies in which I am in complete disagreement with the President on this blog over the last year or so, and each has felt to me to be a bigger betrayal than the last, but this latest one simply takes the cake. In the midst of the most bitterly-cold winter that many folks can remember, the President has suggested in his next budget cutting the heating assistance given to the poor almost in half. Specifically he wants to cut out $2.5 Billion from a $5.1 Billion heating budget.
To put it into perspective it was -12F yesterday morning on my way to work, but my house was a nice and toasty 70F, I simply cannot fathom what it would be like to be without heat at this time of year. But more than that, I simply cannot believe that a Democratic President would come up with an idea like this. I am beyond amazed. My flabber is well and truly gasted. This is the sort of heartless shit the rethuglicans are supposed to try and pull. How he or his advisors have squared this circle is beyond me. I can think of no possible way to put a positive spin on the glaring reality that the tax-gifts to the uber-wealthy that the President just authorized are being balanced on the backs of the same poor folk he has proposed may have to go without heat.
I can sort of see how some of the other cockamamie bullshit he has pulled over the last two years could potentially be skewed to make some sort of political sense if you look at them from just the right angle and you squint your eyes a bit, but in this instance he's not even being threatened by the republicans. Bill O'Really, Sean Insanity and Rush Limpballs haven't said a word about this program, and yet, somehow this Democratic President has decided that in the depths of the coldest winter in well over a decade it would be a good idea to let the poor folks know they are well and truly buggered come this time next year.
At this rate the only people voting for Obama in 2012 will be the republicans.
Friday, February 11, 2011
Thursday, February 10, 2011
I can't believe I am about to write this but....for once I agree with David Cameron
Yes, I know, I know, this would ordinarily be one of the sure-fire signs that the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse are on the horizon, but in a recent speech Britain's PM David Cameron suggested that 'multi-culturalism" has failed, and that there needs to be a greater focus on a British national identity, and I wholeheartedly agree with him.
I'll let that sink in for a minute before I continue. No, I haven't lost my mind, and no, my blog hasn't been hijacked, this is just one of those rare occurrences where my opinion on immigration aligns itself with someone who, for once, seems to be talking common sense.
I know a little about this subject personally because I am an immigrant myself. My situation is somewhat different than the one David Cameron refers to because I emmigrated to the US from the UK, a country that is very similar in many respects to my homeland although the two are separated by a common language, but I am still an immigrant in a foreign country and the same rules apply. I am a guest here.
In America the main bugaboo about immigrants is that they swarm over the border, steal all the jobs, (as though red-neck honkies from coast-to-coast are knocking down the doors to be bus-boys, dishwashers and fruit-pickers only to be cruelly denied by those dastardly immigrants) and as soon as 'they' get here they sign up for free benefits anyway. Other than the fact that all three of those reasons are massive exaggerations, the over-riding concern from Joe Six-Pack is about how much that all costs and not that the 'guests' have become radical hate-mongers inciting violence against their hosts.
This isn't the case in Britain though. For far too long in the UK they have been cowed by the immigrants' threats and demands to have things their own way and in many instances, regardless of how far the hosts have actually gone to try and accomodate their agitated and vocal guests, in return there has been nothing but hostility, rage and rancor. All of this has seemed (at least to me anyway) to have been completely ass-backwards. Look, I am all for compromise and a sharing of cultural values, but common sense tells you that you don't move into someone else's house and then demand that they re-decorate the place, change the dinner menu, and give you the remote for the telly...When you emigrate to another country you are their guest and you should learn their manners and customs. If they choose to learn and share yours, fine, but you don't get to dictate that they must abide by the rules and customs you have imported from your homeland. If it was that fucking great there, why not go back? So dear guests, if you're going to stay, please stay off the grass, don't drop your fag-ash on the carpet and keep your feet off the furniture if you don't mind. You might not like them, but we do have a few rules to live by.
Now I really do need a lie down before I agree with anything else that little twerp says...
I'll let that sink in for a minute before I continue. No, I haven't lost my mind, and no, my blog hasn't been hijacked, this is just one of those rare occurrences where my opinion on immigration aligns itself with someone who, for once, seems to be talking common sense.
I know a little about this subject personally because I am an immigrant myself. My situation is somewhat different than the one David Cameron refers to because I emmigrated to the US from the UK, a country that is very similar in many respects to my homeland although the two are separated by a common language, but I am still an immigrant in a foreign country and the same rules apply. I am a guest here.
In America the main bugaboo about immigrants is that they swarm over the border, steal all the jobs, (as though red-neck honkies from coast-to-coast are knocking down the doors to be bus-boys, dishwashers and fruit-pickers only to be cruelly denied by those dastardly immigrants) and as soon as 'they' get here they sign up for free benefits anyway. Other than the fact that all three of those reasons are massive exaggerations, the over-riding concern from Joe Six-Pack is about how much that all costs and not that the 'guests' have become radical hate-mongers inciting violence against their hosts.
This isn't the case in Britain though. For far too long in the UK they have been cowed by the immigrants' threats and demands to have things their own way and in many instances, regardless of how far the hosts have actually gone to try and accomodate their agitated and vocal guests, in return there has been nothing but hostility, rage and rancor. All of this has seemed (at least to me anyway) to have been completely ass-backwards. Look, I am all for compromise and a sharing of cultural values, but common sense tells you that you don't move into someone else's house and then demand that they re-decorate the place, change the dinner menu, and give you the remote for the telly...When you emigrate to another country you are their guest and you should learn their manners and customs. If they choose to learn and share yours, fine, but you don't get to dictate that they must abide by the rules and customs you have imported from your homeland. If it was that fucking great there, why not go back? So dear guests, if you're going to stay, please stay off the grass, don't drop your fag-ash on the carpet and keep your feet off the furniture if you don't mind. You might not like them, but we do have a few rules to live by.
Now I really do need a lie down before I agree with anything else that little twerp says...
Monday, February 7, 2011
Super Bore XXXCCMMMLLLXXXVVVIIII...or how Jeremy Clarkson saved my sanity...
As a Bears fan there really wasn't much of a reason to watch yesterday's big game, the hated Packers were there instead of Da Bears because our massively over-paid quarterback got a boo-boo mid-way through the championship game and didn't want to play anymore lest he get really hurt, and the Steelers were being led on the field by a guy who, allegedly, has more than a little difficulty understanding what the word 'no' means when said out loud by a woman...With neither team being much inspiration to sit through the 3 1/2 hour broadcast of stop-start-stop-action that is the modern game of American Football, interrupted by frequent commercial breaks and coaches challenges as it is, the final straw for me was the network doing the broadcast. It was Fox. And Joe Buck was the lead announcer.
I decided to find alternate entertainment.
As luck would have it BBC America was running back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back (you get the idea) episodes of Top Gear, all day long. Whoever came up with that idea should be Knighted. Immediately. I thought I couldn't hate anyone more fiercely than the white-hot hatred I have for Bob Costas of NBC, but sweet jesus Joe Buck, the number one announcer for Fox Sports, really just sets me off. He's yet another smug bastard in a long-line of never-played-a-sport-in-my-life, always-picked-last-when-it-was-PE, know-it-all smart arses that somehow manage to weasel their way into prime spots on the airwaves in this country. He would be a used car salesman if it weren't for his old man, and yet this prissy little git speaks as though he knows from personal experience what it's like to have been on the field of play. He's the kind of guy that was born on third base, and thought that he hit a triple.
In other words, a total arsehole.
So, the thought of watching two teams I could give a crap about, on a network I despise, commentated on by America's largest walking rectum would have sent me straight over the cliffs of sanity if it had not been for the endless repeats of Clarkson et al on the Beeb. Thanks lads! That was a close one.
I decided to find alternate entertainment.
As luck would have it BBC America was running back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back (you get the idea) episodes of Top Gear, all day long. Whoever came up with that idea should be Knighted. Immediately. I thought I couldn't hate anyone more fiercely than the white-hot hatred I have for Bob Costas of NBC, but sweet jesus Joe Buck, the number one announcer for Fox Sports, really just sets me off. He's yet another smug bastard in a long-line of never-played-a-sport-in-my-life, always-picked-last-when-it-was-PE, know-it-all smart arses that somehow manage to weasel their way into prime spots on the airwaves in this country. He would be a used car salesman if it weren't for his old man, and yet this prissy little git speaks as though he knows from personal experience what it's like to have been on the field of play. He's the kind of guy that was born on third base, and thought that he hit a triple.
In other words, a total arsehole.
So, the thought of watching two teams I could give a crap about, on a network I despise, commentated on by America's largest walking rectum would have sent me straight over the cliffs of sanity if it had not been for the endless repeats of Clarkson et al on the Beeb. Thanks lads! That was a close one.
Friday, February 4, 2011
The Republican Party...your ticket back to the 18th century...
Dammit, dammit, dammit. You know, I almost made it to the weekend without cursing the ground on which the republicans walk, and then I stumbled across this vile piece of misogynistic anti-woman legislation. Having backed off their neanderthalic attempts to redefine rape as only being 'forcible' so as to prevent federal funds being used for abortions, the Anti-Woman party now wants to write into law a provision that prevents doctors from saving the life of a pregnant woman, if by so doing, the fetus does not survive. So what this means for pregnant women is that if, due to complications, a doctor is facing a scenario where they can only save either the mother OR the fetus, they have to concentrate on saving the fetus first. Never mind the living, breathing woman giving birth, save the unborn fetus first. In other words a woman's life is not worth as much as that of the unborn fetus she is carrying. Excuse me? On what planet does that even remotely make sense?
I knew that the religious fervor was strong in this particular group of nutjobs, even if the stupid republican sheep that voted for them ignored it, but I need someone to explain to me how this sort of "christian" fundamentalist, anti-woman legislation is different from the same sort of bullshit the Taliban try and pull in Afghanistan and rural Pakistan, because I honestly can't find it. Besides, I thought that the Teahadist wing of the GOP was supposed to be in favour of less government intrusion, not more? Oh, and while we're at it, where are all those fucking jobs we were promised when they lied their way into power? I thought that getting the economy going again was the "top priority". Strange, it seems to me that their top priority is passing a radical religious right-wing anti-woman agenda instead.
I honestly don't know which is more scary, the fact that 100 representatives have signed up as co-sponsors to this despicable piece of theocratic stupidity, or that there are still women out there that will vote for them anyway.
Funny thing is that no-one has explained to the willfully blind republican voters that their Teahadist representatives only care about the fetus until it's born. After that, they can't wait to send it off to fight in pointless wars of choice, or execute them if they commit a crime. Of course if the fetus, once born, needs assitance in between times say with food or shelter or healthcare it is completely and totally fucked because the Teanuts will have dismantled the social safety net that was once in place.
Yay progress!!!
I need a drink....
I knew that the religious fervor was strong in this particular group of nutjobs, even if the stupid republican sheep that voted for them ignored it, but I need someone to explain to me how this sort of "christian" fundamentalist, anti-woman legislation is different from the same sort of bullshit the Taliban try and pull in Afghanistan and rural Pakistan, because I honestly can't find it. Besides, I thought that the Teahadist wing of the GOP was supposed to be in favour of less government intrusion, not more? Oh, and while we're at it, where are all those fucking jobs we were promised when they lied their way into power? I thought that getting the economy going again was the "top priority". Strange, it seems to me that their top priority is passing a radical religious right-wing anti-woman agenda instead.
I honestly don't know which is more scary, the fact that 100 representatives have signed up as co-sponsors to this despicable piece of theocratic stupidity, or that there are still women out there that will vote for them anyway.
Funny thing is that no-one has explained to the willfully blind republican voters that their Teahadist representatives only care about the fetus until it's born. After that, they can't wait to send it off to fight in pointless wars of choice, or execute them if they commit a crime. Of course if the fetus, once born, needs assitance in between times say with food or shelter or healthcare it is completely and totally fucked because the Teanuts will have dismantled the social safety net that was once in place.
Yay progress!!!
I need a drink....
From the 'you know you're in deep shit when' files....
As some of you may know, Charlie Sheen, the lead actor in the number one-rated comedy show in America, Two and a Half Men, is currently trying to dry out after a monumental bender that included porn stars, booze and a boat-load of Columbian marching powder. He is doing this by going to rehab. At home. On his couch. Yup, that oughta do the trick.
Here's my take, first off, way to go Charlie, you have proven once and for all that you can't really act, all you are doing on that show is just being yourself and getting paid handsomely for it. Wish I could do the same. Secondly, and far more alarmingly, when Lindsay Lohan says you might want to dial it down a notch or five, I'd pay attention if I were you. She knows a little something about successfully destroying careers by partying too hard. But thirdly, and most importantly, get sober. Not 'pretend' sober, you know, the kind of sober used by the rich and famous just so a judge doesn't throw your sorry ass in jail, but 'real' sober. Never-pick-up-another-glass-of-scotch-again, sober. Never-buy-cocaine-by-the-kilo-again, sober. Never-party-with-hookers-and-porn-stars-again, sober. (At least not with ones that then immediately sell their story to the media).
Charlie, if you won't do it for all of the people that depend on you for their own jobs and livelihoods, then at least do it for your kids. Their lives are probably already housed as it is, but the last thing they need is for your final legacy to be that you were just the latest super-rich Hollywood asshole to be found dead, face-first in a pile of coke like Al Pacino in Scarface. The don't need to see their dad's name splashed all over the tabloids as a bunch of whores sell their stories of your last dying moments. They deserve better than that, and so do you. Get sober.
Here's my take, first off, way to go Charlie, you have proven once and for all that you can't really act, all you are doing on that show is just being yourself and getting paid handsomely for it. Wish I could do the same. Secondly, and far more alarmingly, when Lindsay Lohan says you might want to dial it down a notch or five, I'd pay attention if I were you. She knows a little something about successfully destroying careers by partying too hard. But thirdly, and most importantly, get sober. Not 'pretend' sober, you know, the kind of sober used by the rich and famous just so a judge doesn't throw your sorry ass in jail, but 'real' sober. Never-pick-up-another-glass-of-scotch-again, sober. Never-buy-cocaine-by-the-kilo-again, sober. Never-party-with-hookers-and-porn-stars-again, sober. (At least not with ones that then immediately sell their story to the media).
Charlie, if you won't do it for all of the people that depend on you for their own jobs and livelihoods, then at least do it for your kids. Their lives are probably already housed as it is, but the last thing they need is for your final legacy to be that you were just the latest super-rich Hollywood asshole to be found dead, face-first in a pile of coke like Al Pacino in Scarface. The don't need to see their dad's name splashed all over the tabloids as a bunch of whores sell their stories of your last dying moments. They deserve better than that, and so do you. Get sober.
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