Zombie Zeitgeist

Finished The Last of Us awhile ago. Not sure if it *quite* lived up to the hype I was hearing, but yes I liked it quite a lot. I've often wondered if the dystopian zombie genre is so popular these days because, "things that should have died long ago but still somehow continue on" are such a huge part of our current zeitgeist. We've got zombie ideas, zombie policy solutions, zombie political parties, zombie religions, zombie socioeconomic systems. No wonder fighting that which just seems unkillable, that which seems to Keep Coming Back, resonates. As horror, that sh** is day-to-day, even AFTER the screen time is over.

Does it matter if you're winning Electoral Chess, when your opponent is playing a different game?

I try to feel hopeful. There are overwhelming numbers of polls showing Team Sanity winning the country by big margins, and the swing states as well. Honestly, for someone who voted Bernie, and even sent him money, I have been fairly impressed with Biden's operation thus far, which HAS been moving leftward, IMO. "Lay low, let Trump keep punching himself in the privates, since he's going to suck all the air out of the coverage, anyway." A few weeks of "Where's Joe?" memes notwithstanding, this is actually the smart move. Winning the Senate seems likely now, where once it was a longshot.

But I can't help but feel disquieted, too. Team Trump and the GOP more generally seem to have totally abandoned the field in terms of the whole: "winning an election by having a better argument for the American people" thing. They're speaking only to their most hardcore supporters. While the Trump/GOP tanks with Independents, women, and suburban voters, and that seems like a good thing for sanity in America, it bothers me that they seem to be playing a different game, entirely. Biden and Democratic leadership focus on "winning an election." Trump and the GOP focus on "maintaining power at all possible costs, election or none." What this looks like is desperate maneuvers to to stop non-Republicans from voting - attacks on the USPS, and purposefully-fomented (still low-level) chaos in Democratic cities. Biden and national Democratic leadership may be clearly outplaying the GOP in electoral chess, but that may not matter that much if Team Trump prefers to hone its "whack-a-voter" chops while ignoring the chess game entirely.

I don't know what's going to happen, and anyone who says they do is a liar. But I do believe the next five months may be the most important five months in the USofA since at LEAST World War II. Activate, energize, volunteer, donate, whatever the hell you can. It's all hands on deck time, folks. We need to be in voting booth, in the streets, and in the halls of power too. It's time to drive a stake through the heart of the vampire.

Those Middle-of-the-Roaders Who "See Both Sides"

Granted I'm a fire-breathing leftist and all, but I keep coming across my favorite sub-species of right winger online - the "I Live in a Big City or Run in Highly Progressive Circles, and I'm Aware Enough of My Surroundings to Know that Announcing that I Support Trump is Social Death, so I Don't Call Myself a Republican, I Just Tell Everyone I'm Open-Minded, Both Parties are Equally Bad, and Don't Like Labels" type of right winger.

These clowns would prefer to talk about something else when it comes down to the question of for whom they actually voted in 2016, and plan to support in 2020. Then all of a sudden it's: "Labels are bad. I'm open minded," but when it comes to virtually any other political discussion, they are as doctrinaire about so-called Tea Party Issues as they come.

Common attributes include some melange of both-sidesing turned up to 11, anti-vaxx, COVID-19 is overblown, the current Israeli government can do no wrong and if you disagree with me you're anti-semitic, Hillary Clinton is guilty of every crime ever invented, what are they not telling us about 5G, claiming that "you people see Russians everywhere," posting 65 articles in the last two weeks about Tara Reade while never having once posted a single thing about the two dozen Trump accusers, and the use of the terms "lamestream media," and "corrupt Chicago Democratic machine politics." Individual specimens rarely display all of the above, but tend to gravitate towards one or two of these attributes.

If a Democrat or nominal left-winger is caught in some mis-deed it's ALWAYS: SEE THE DEMOCRATS AND LIBERALS ARE ALL CORRUPT ASSHOLES! If a Republican or right-winger faces the same problem, the language is more measured, ALWAYS: Well, the whole durned system is off, they all do it.

Then when you confront them about supporting Trump or the GOP, it's all: "I'm an independent. I don't like labels." They never get around to admitting: "It's just that I voted for Trump, will do so again, and both publicly and privately agree 100% with nearly every single rotten plank of the Republican death cult platform." It's irritating.

Come on folks, embrace the suck. If you believe it, own it. At least I am AWARE that I'm pretty left wing.

'Bama RepubliCon Out-Assholes the Rest: "No overtime pay for you."

Why we can't have nice things. Reason #9,201,123

I've started to really enjoy the show Face Off, so I'll give Alabama Tea Party Republican Representative Martha Roby (R - Zombiefield Estates) this . . . at least she's got her vapid, creepy stare plastered perfectly to her skull.

But that's about all the credit I can give her, because beyond her amazingly winched and riveted death glare from Jack Nicholson as the Joker, she's definitely the Asshole of the Week, in a week that really was chock full of assholes. Well-played, Rep. Roby. You are truly a frightening, frightening person.

From Janet Allon of Alternet

Alabama Rep. introduces bill to eliminate overtime pay

This is nice. And just in time for the holiday season. Meet U.S. Representative Martha Roby, a.k.a. Cruella DeVille. While the Tea Partying 37-year-old is not fighting tooth and nail against people getting affordable healthcare, she’s coming up with ways to deprive employees and workers of their hard-won rights and protections.

This week she introduced a resolution euphemistically called “Working Families Flexibility Act of 2013,″ which would end the requirement of the Fair Labor Standards Act for employers to pay Time-and-a-Half to employees for every hour worked over 40 in one week. It’s called H.R. 1406, and here’s what the Congressional Budget Office has to say about it:

“H.R. 1406 would amend the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 to provide compensatory time for employees in the private sector. In lieu of overtime pay, employees could receive compensatory time off at a rate not less than one and one-half hours for each hour of employment for which overtime pay would otherwise have been required. Such compensatory time could be provided only in accordance with a collective bargaining agreement or with the consent of affected employees. The changes would be effective for five years after enactment of the bill.”

So, this bill is just so many different types of buckets of puke, it's hard to figure out which to dump into the contractor bag first.

For starters, let's be clear, this bill would basically repeal the portion of the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act which mandates that you get time-and-a-half pay for overtime. Representative Roby, if ever those beady little snake-eyes of yours were ever to glance across these humble lines, I just want you to know, that you have left me dumbfounded, speechless as it were. I mean, I just to I have to admit it here: I am awe-struck by what a horrible, horrible person you are. You have authored a bill that removes a 75-year precedent, and even more importantly, would literally give corporate managers the ability to screw over their employees even more. I salute you for displaying to me new depths of sheer ill-will and malice.

But wait, this pit ain't deep enough for ya?

Why don't you throw in some classic Rovian doublespeak gobbledygook? It's been a good couple of news cycles since the GOoPers opened up that playbook. Could you give the bill a wonderfully innocuous sounding name that makes it seem like it does the opposite of what it actually does? Oh wait, YOU ALREADY DID! The "Working Families Flexibility Act." So now working families have the . . . . ya know . . ."flexibility" or whatever . . . to not get overtime pay. So that's neat.

Now let's be clear, Representative Roby, most people outside of your sleepy little Prozac outhouse of a town, have never heard of you. But this? This just may be your moment to enter the hallowed halls of lexicon. Dare we call naming bills after the opposite of what they actually do Robyan irony? It's a question for posterity, but bream big, you creepy, snake-like creature, and you may just have a type of irony named after you!

Ms. Roby has already wowed me with sheer malice, and potentially entered history's dictionary, which are no small feats. But even these don't hold a candle to the coup de grace.

You know, as a teacher, I don't really get much "overtime pay," as it were. So I could be wrong on this. But I thought the UPSIDE on overtime - from a worker's perspective - was that if you WERE able to put in some extra time, you would get paid a hefty amount more - "time-and-a-half." Now that Rep. Roby, with her welded-on face and robotic smile have done away with that requirement, and made things nice and "flexible," she has gone a step further, and flexibly upended the entire CONCEPT of overtime.

Here's how it works right? So you put in 55 hours one week at work. And no, you're not going to get time-and-a-half. That's gone now. Frowny Face! :-(

But you can turn that frown upside-down, because your time-and-a-half MONEY been replaced by something super-double-plus JUST AS GOOD, which is "time-OFF-and-a-half." Of course, a great majority of American workers do not enjoy paid time off. So that extra 15 hours that was accrued last week? You'll just be staying home for 15 hours next week and not getting paid for that. But don't worry, we'll only dock you ten hours next week, instead of fifteen.

Speaking as someone familiar with Rovian New World order doublespeak, I'd say that sounds highly double-plus flexi-tastical to me, Representative Roby! My working family's bank account will be so much more flexible without that extra money in it. Robyan irony has worked for me.

Unfortunately for Rep. Roby, and fortunately for everyone else in America, this skunk of a bill wouldn't pass the smell test in the U.S. Senate. But then who knows what the future will bring? After all, we live in interesting times. Bills that would have been politically unthinkable just a few years back are now finding their way on to the House floor, thanks to the Tea Party radicals from the extremist right wing. Maybe someday we can ALL enjoy the "flexibility" of not getting paid time-and-a-half for overtime work!

Only thus could a zombie's dream come true.

Stuff This: Let's End Gerrymandering

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone.

This article from the always-indispensable ThinkProgress.org really got me thinking.

Why Americans Actually Voted For A Democratic House

By Ian Millhiser on Nov 7, 2012 at 4:21 pm

Although a small number of ballots remain to be counted, as of this writing, votes for a Democratic candidate for the House of Representatives outweigh votes for Republican candidates. Based on ThinkProgress’ review of all ballots counted so far, 53,952,240 votes were cast for a Democratic candidate for the House and only 53,402,643 were cast for a Republican — meaning that Democratic votes exceed Republican votes by more than half a million. . . . . [Read the full article for the full context here.]

The actual partisan breakdown of the 113th Congress will be very different, however. Currently, Republicans enjoy a 233-192 advantage over Democrats, with 10 seats remaining undecided . . . There is a simple explanation for how this happened: Republicans won several key state legislatures and governors’ mansions in the election cycle before redistricting, and they gerrymandered those states within an inch of their lives. President Obama won Pennsylvania by more than 5 points, but Democrats carried only 5 of the state’s 18 congressional seats. . .

Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), however, cannot simply thank Republican state lawmakers for enabling him to keep his job. He can also thank the conservatives on the Supreme Court. Partisan gerrymandering exists for one purpose: to cut off the ability of people who disagree with a state’s ruling party to influence future elections. It is a a clear violation of the First Amendment, which absolutely prohibits viewpoint discrimination. Yet the Supreme Court abdicated its responsibility to end this discrimination in its 5-4 decision in Vieth v. Jubelirer, where the conservative justices tossed out a lawsuit alleging that Pennsylvania’s congressional districts were unconstitutionally drawn to maximize Republican representation in Congress.

Take a look at the map of Pennsylvania above. Then remember that President Obama won Pennsylvania by 5 points; not exactly a nail-biter in overall terms. In fact, Pennsylvania hasn't been won by a Republican Presidental candidate since George H.W. Bush beat Michael Dukakis in 1988. That was over 24 years ago now. Still, only five of Pennsylvania's eighteen seats in the House went for Democrats.

The RepubliCons have done a very good job at capturing state houses and legislatures over the last few years. (If anyone needed a reminder of just how critical state and local elections are, by the way, here's your comeuppance.) But it's not just 'Cons who do it. In my own state of Illinois, where the Dems control everything, these politicians are doing the same damn thing. After the disastrous 2010 midterms, the Democrats wanted to salvage SOMETHING in terms of their chances of regaining the House of Representatives, so our vaunted Democratic Legislature undertook what's been called a radical gerrymander. This article from the Christian Science Monitor notes that:

Even a cursory glance at the new map . . . seems to indicate that state Democrats are eager to exercise that control [over redistricting] to maximum benefit. While each member of the Democratic delegation was protected, nearly every Republican district was cut apart or shuffled around, inviting scores of intraparty primaries, or forcing GOP incumbents to run in Democratic strongholds or retire.

The plan worked, and RepubliCons lost four seats in the House and a fifth when Illinois lost representation due to low population growth.

Just look at my my district, Illinois' Fourth, which has been described as one of the most bizarrely drawn districts in the country.

Now I'm generally for ANYTHING that puts fewer RepubliCons in office. And to be fair, my home district was drawn to make sure that a Latino representative from the Chicago-area was sent to D.C., a worthy idea that is pretty different in principle from the naked power grabs we've seen in Springfield; Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; Columbus, Ohio, and beyond. (My district was drawn well before the 2011 gerrymander.) To be clear, I support the general notion that our nation's House of Representatives should be ethnically diverse, reflective of the American melting pot. But just as an indicator, don't the maps above show, in a general way, that SOMETHING is off about this whole process?

In his comments, and particularly speaking of the raw vote totals, Ian Millhiser at ThinkProgress.org makes a great point:

Americans voted for a Democratic president, a Democratic Senate, and, barring significant shifts in the vote tally, a Democratic House. Instead, they will get a House majority similar to the one that held the entire nation hostage during last year’s debt ceiling hostage crisis. If the American people wanted this to happen, they would have said so at the polls on Tuesday. Instead, Republican state lawmakers took away their right to democratically legitimate leadership — with a big assist from the conservatives on the Supreme Court.

So what is to be done about this? Well, in some states, a divided government can be a good thing. This brief post from David Weigel at Slate notes that: "in states that weren't very gerrymandered, like Iowa and Colorado and New Hampshire, you didn't see a huge divergence between the presidential vote and the House votes." Each of these states has a divided government, in one way or another. Colorado and Iowa have divided legislatures, while New Hampshire's Democratic governor may have put a check on its GOP statehouse's impulses.

But praying for a divided government isn't really much of a solution, and obviously, the Supreme Court isn't going to be much help. There IS a better way, and we don't need the Supreme Court to jump in and save the day. Though no system is perfect, Iowa, Arizona, and California are three states that have setup independent, non-partisan redistricting committees. Now, NONE of these processes are have been perfect. California's new process, has been accused of crossing the line from independent/non-partisan to basically "clueless." Arizona's committee was famously sucked into a would-be partisan pogrom at the hands of that state's governor, Jan "Shriekingly Insane Bimbo" Brewer. And even Iowa's process, which is ostensibly non-partisan, must be approved by the Governor and General Assembly.

The way I see it, you will never totally get the politics out of decisions like this, but in a general way, I have to agree with Colby Hamilton at The Empire: "the less connected to the legislature the better." There has been some talk of moving towards the model being used in Iowa, California, and Arizona in other states; particularly New York is looking at it. I'm going to be bugging my own representatives here in Illinois about this issue real soon, and probably buggin' my local representatives in Indiana, my workplace too.

The fiasco around our undemocratic redistricting process needs serious attention. Arizona, California, and Iowa might not be perfect, but an independent, less-partisan committee is at least a great step in the right direction. The next step forward is to start talking to your state legislators and representatives. Hey! They're a lot easier to get a meeting with, or get on the phone with, than your Federal elected officials anyway!

FORWARD!

The Rover Ranges On

This frightening piece of Capital J Journalism connects all of the dots, painting a disturbing picture of a fat, flabby, balding, TurdBlossom of a Man, whose slithery hands are behind much of the power in today's RepubliCon Party. Thank you Amy Goodman, and Craig Unger, via Alternet.org

A must read.

Look Who's Covertly Controlling the GOP: Karl Rove, Scheming Election Theft and Raising a Fortune for Vicious Attack Ads

August 22, 2012

Karl Rove is no longer merely Bush’s Brain; he’s the man who swallowed the Republican Party.

The following is a transcript of a Democracy Now! interview with Craig Unger on Karl Rove's comeback.

SNIP!

CRAIG UNGER: Right. Well, Rove did a lot of things that were sort of under the radar and that I think have enduring consequences, and they represent real threats to democracy. One of them was the U.S. attorneys scandal, and I think it was widely misunderstood. And, you know, this was—became best known when eight United States attorneys were fired for sort of not toeing the Republican Party line. Now, in fact, to me, the real question is not what happened in the unjust firing of those eight people; it’s what about the other U.S. attorneys who were appointed by the Bush administration and were toeing the party line? What were they doing? And what we see happening is that they were prosecuting Democrats, essentially. This is best—it came through best in—I think the most egregious case of this is in Alabama, and it’s the case of former Democratic Governor Don Siegelman, who will probably—in early September, will face going to jail for eight years. And I think this is one of the most egregious, unjust acts we’ve seen from the Justice Department.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: I want to turn former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman, who was found guilty in a 2006 corruption case. Critics say Siegelman was the target of a political witch hunt, in part orchestrated by former Bush administration deputy Karl Rove. Democracy Now! spoke to Siegelman about his case in early 2009. We asked if he believed Karl Rove was involved in his prosecution. Let’s just go to his response.

DON SIEGELMAN: I was brought to trial one month before the Democratic primary by Karl Rove’s best friend’s wife, who was the U.S. attorney in the Middle District of Alabama, on charges that the New York Times said have never been a crime in America. Grant Woods, who’s the Republican—was the Republican attorney general from Arizona, said that they couldn’t beat Siegelman fair and square, so they targeted him with this prosecution. We have sworn testimony from a Republican political operative, Jill Simpson, who said that she was on a conversation with my prosecutor’s husband, who said that he had talked to Karl Rove, and Rove had spoken to the Department of Justice, and everything was wired in for them to—for the Department of Justice to pursue me.

... SNIP!

From his rise to power in Texas, to 2000's notorious Bush v. Gore ruling, to Ohio in 2004, to the disturbing and indefensible prosecution of former Alabama Governor Don Siegleman, to Citizens United . . . . the picture is made complete. And it all leads back to Karl Rove's slithery fingers pulling the strings.

Game. Set. Match.

And the election is over.

Poor, Sad, Rick Perry, and His Poor, Sad, Leathery Jawline

Well, this is delicious:

Perry to return to Texas to reassess candidacy


By Ashley Killough, CNN

(CNN) -- Following a disappointing projected fifth place finish in the Iowa caucuses, Texas Gov. Rick Perry said he'll return to Texas on Wednesday to reassess his candidacy.

"With the voters' decision tonight in Iowa, I decided to return to Texas, assess the results of tonight's caucus, determine whether there is a path forward for myself in this race," he told supporters late Tuesday night at his Iowa headquarters in West Des Moines. . .

"We have been told to hold until we hear from Austin," said a Perry source in South Carolina, where the candidate was preparing to launch an aggressive statewide bus tour on Wednesday. "It looks like he is not coming this week. He has definitely canceled his plans."

(bold & italics mine)

UPDATE:
And of course, just like that, he appears to be back on! I can't wait for more!!

At the risk of engaging in Schadenfreude, HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!! It couldn't happen to a bigger asshole. With all due respect to the many fine folks down in Texas, it's apparent that being elected the Mayor of HeeHaw is no longer an automatic elevator straight to the top of the RepubliCon ticket, not even in the far-right Iowa Caucuses.

Gub'ner Perry's decline in the GOoPer primary hasn't been sudden, but watching this charlatan waddle back to Texas with his prehensile tail hung between his legs, to "re-assess his candidacy," instead of making a planned trip to South Carolina, really was worth the long build up. I know, I know, I know; it's too soon to enjoy the Gub'ner's Pop-Shot - when he officially withdraws his candidacy. But usually, when pols announce re-assessment, it means they are trying to find a way to gracefully exit.

I don't know if Perry can do anything gracefully, other than his hair, but exit he most likely will.

If you can stomach it, watch the video on the CNN link above, and be disgusted. At around the 2.30 second mark, when he reads aloud a letter he'd recieved in which the writer - no doubt some inbred, hilljack, fuckmace moron - states:

"Today I saw you [Gub'nor Perry] for the first time in Perry, Iowa. I know you are a good man. But I never realized what a great man you were.

As if to say, "See? See? This guy says I'm not just good but GREAT!!!!" Oh it's kinda disgusting, but it tickled my Schadenfreude nerve just a little, to be sure, watching this ignorant hick-turned-slimebag pol try to save face in front of his family and campaign staff.

Perry's campaign was filled with low-lights, including this despicable video, a high-volume, high-pitched homophobic dog-whistle, which received over 733,000 dislikes on YouTube, compared to just 24,000 likes . . . . because this moron's campaign staff didn't know you could turn off like/dislike on YouTube. And, as much as we might like to, who can forget this rambling, half-cocked, possibly drunken speech in New Hampshire, or the infamous Ooops! moment, when the Gub'nor couldn't remember one of the Federal Departments he was absolutely certain he wanted to abolish . . . out of three. Priceless!

I don't know what it says about America that this man actually had a shot at the Presidency, or that he's the longest-serving Governor in the country, in charge of one of our largest states. But perhaps there is a glimmer of sanity in this nation somewhere, after all . . . even in the GOoP's Iowa Caucuses.

Rick Perry and His Leathery Jawline

Rick Perry: Below Average Student, Fevered Egomaniac

It's Bush Part Deuce

Possum's Gulch TX - August 12th, 2011 - Fevered egomaniac Governor Rick Perry (R - Texas), along with his perfect hair and leathery jawline, have officially jumped into the GOoPer Presidential Field, joining fellow below average students Michelle Bachmann, Herman Cain, and Rick Santorum. Perry recently appeared with his hair and jawline in Possum's Gulch, a wealthy Houston suburb, proclaiming his readiness to be the next President of the nation from which he has also, as Governor of Texas, threatened to secede. He then vaguely threatened to kick Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke's ass.

Another faux aw-shuxity moron who pretends to be an average guy, although he is quite wealthy and routinely wears ten thousand dollar Armani pinstripe suits, Perry is now considered by many to have the best chance to unite the redneck uprising known as the Tea Party movement, and the billionaire class for whom the GOoP has always slaved tirelessly. Although some of the Bushies have been lobbying rhetorical bombs at Perry, possibly due their Yankee old-blood roots' disdain for anyone not themselves, it's not hard to see Perry has a poor-man's George Bush: a long serving Texas governor who loves to campaign but hates to govern; a below average student who talks like your boozy old uncle who won't get out of your ear; a fucking moron who screwed over his own state and argues against the few things that helped provide some level of safety to Texas' economy, like stringent lending regulations at the state-level, and federal stimulus spending . . . which he used to balance Texas' $25,000,000,000.00 budget short fall - that's $25 billion.

I mean who better to pick up the rein's of the GOoPers' final march to fascism than the very man who succeeded Bush as Texas governor? I for one embrace our next Right Wing Caligula.

Blech! There's pee in my coffee.

Well, cue the right wing glee machine, because I have lost most of my collective bargaining rights.

Today, the Indiana Senate concurred with the House version of Senate Bill 575.

It now goes to Governor Mitch "Big Jerk" Daniels for his swift signature, and rests as law of the land.

This is a huge loss for teachers here in Indiana. As I've been saying for some time the victory parties regarding union labor and public education in the Hoosier state were quite premature. In concurring with the House Version of this bill, the Indiana Senate approved measures that would:

* allow annual evaluations to be conducted by other teachers or contracted outside agencies

* eliminate the ability of a local associations to bargain or discuss the evaluation tool

* restrict collective bargaining agreements to wages and wage related benefits

* ban the bargaining of contractual hours or number of days worked.

* eliminate current contractual reduction-in-force processes

* eliminate contractual grievance procedures except in cases related to wages and wage related benefits.

I added the bold for the two worst elements of this bill. Do the parts in bold sound familiar?

They should, if you've been following the labor struggles in Wisconsin and Ohio.

I'm lucky in that my own local union was able to negotiate a two-year extension on my contract, and in that our union has a pretty good working relationship with the administration and the school board. Other locals were not so lucky, and will now see huge chunks of their contract left entirely to the mercy of the local administration and school boards.

But, after our contract expires in two years, if our school board decided to extend my work day for forty-five minutes with no extra pay, guess what they can do?

Why, extend my work day for forty-five minutes with no extra pay, of course!!

And if the locals don't like that? They can get bent, as far as the state GOP is concerned.

This is a sad day for teachers in Indiana.

Destroy Everything: Nihilists on the Right

So I'm a politics dork . . . like a really, really big politics dork. I can hear your jaw hitting the keyboard is stricken disbelief.

A whuh?!? Can it possibly be true?

Yes, I hear you asking that, and I can see your drop-jawed, dumbfounded look of woozy shock right through this monitor. Pick your jaw off your keyboard, and brace yourself, because it really is true.

I'm a politics dork, and I'm okay with that.

Anyway, one of the functions of a politics dork is that I moderate an old-fashioned Motet forum or "world wide web chat room" (remember those?) - called the New Cafe Politics Forum. The forum is old and only has around 20 or so participants who "chat" with any regularity, but I still go back to it because it's one of the few places I get to interact on-line with real, honest-to-God right wing nutjobs. And no one can ban me . . . because I'm the moderator.

At any rate, during a discussion not long ago in our "Is the Reagan Reich on the Verge of Collapse?" thread, we got off-topic, as we often do, and came to a discussion about public education. We were discussing the advisability of private school vouchers paid for by taxpayers . . . an idea so stupid that even the Wrong Wingers in Indiana seem to have understood that it can't work. But don't get me started, this post isn't about vouchers.

"We know Dave," you're saying, "so far it doesn't seem to be about much of anything."

It was during this discussion about vouchers that one of our looniest loons at the NewCafe, a god-awful, evil right wing wacko who goes by "Liz"-almost certainly a pseudonym- made this comment:

Get rid of all public schools and put competitive private schools in their place. WE will all save money and the kids will actually learn something.

Now I read "Liz's" completely lunatic comments and was about to come up with some pithy response, or ignore it . . . when I was struck by something that made me do a double-take.

I was like:

Wait a minute, did this crazy bitch just advocate dismantling all public schools in their entirety? WHAT THE FUCK!?!?!

So I looked back again, as you can now, and see:


Nope, she ain't kiddin. She means it - we should dismantle all public schools. So I was thinking to myself:

Does this completely insane teabagger have any fucking clue of what she's actually implying?

And of course, she doesn't. She doesn't know what it would mean to lay-off hundreds of thousands of teachers nationwide and push them all into religious or other private schools. She has no fucking clue that huge swaths of the population can't afford private schools; that private schools are more expensive than public schools; nor is she, nor could she ever be aware of every other relevant fact that would illuminate how utterly schizoid an idea like "eliminating public education" is . . . to say nothing of the fact that it's illegal. The simple fact that just about anyone with a High School diploma can teach at a private school never entered her mind. And surely "Liz" either doesn't know or doesn't care about the fact that millions of children would likely be cut out of schooling altogether.

(If you're lucky enough not to know this "Liz" person as an online persona, you'll just have to trust me. She really doesn't know what the fuck she's talking about.)

Now this was just one small spark of a comment in an ongoing volcano of crazy, but it got me thinking.

How the hell did we get to the point that advocating for totally dismantling public schools - a nihilistic "burn it to the ground" approach that would obviously solve nothing - can be considered by some to be a perfectly reasonable and rational approach to the discourse on education?

You'll note in the screen shot provided that her right wing friend, "Senator Lampoon," doesn't even bat an eye, or in any way attempt to back away from "Liz's" ridiculous, insane suggestion.

Nope, this kind of nihilism is simply par for the course now in Tea Party Hard Right GOoPer circles. And then it hit me again, and again in fact.

IT'S NOT JUST EDUCATION OVER WHICH THESE TEABAGGERS HAVE GONE COMPLETELY NIHILISTIC!!


Enter State Senator Jane Cunningham, who may or may not be some sort of teahadist right wing muppet, from St. Louis County, Missouri. This insane person sponsored a bill in the Missouri State Senate, referred to as SB 222:

SB 222 – This act modifies the child labor laws. It eliminates the prohibition on employment of children under age fourteen. Restrictions on the number of hours and restrictions on when a child may work during the day are also removed. It also repeals the requirement that a child ages fourteen or fifteen obtain a work certificate or work permit in order to be employed. Children under sixteen will also be allowed to work in any capacity in a motel, resort or hotel where sleeping accommodations are furnished. It also removes the authority of the director of the Division of Labor Standards to inspect employers who employ children and to require them to keep certain records for children they employ.

Well gosharoonies, it kinda sounds like State Senator Muppet is proposing that Missouri eliminate all child labor laws! But that couldn't possibly be-WAIT HOLY SHIT!

SHE IS PROPOSING TO ELIMINATE ALL CHILD LABOR LAWS!!!

Good news, Timmy! You don't have to go to school today, because today you'll be making dresses at Uncle Billy's Garment Factory!!

YAYEEE!!!!

I don't know what's more frightening about these nihilistic proposals . . . the initial Jesus Fucking Christ shock of "Are these people for real?-" or the creeping nausea and disgust that comes with the understanding that "Yes, they are for real."

Oh but I'm not being fair. Some crazy lady on a small, out of the way chat-room and one virtually anonymous State Senator from Missouri does not a "trend" make.

But wait, there's more!

Newly minted teabagger Hard Right GOP Senator Mike Lee (R - UT) recently opined that federal child labor laws are unconstitutional:

ThinkProgress

. . . . In that case, the Supreme Court acknowledged something very interesting — that, as reprehensible as child labor is, and as much as it ought to be abandoned — that’s something that has to be done by state legislators, not by Members of Congress. [...]

This may sound harsh, but it was designed to be that way. It was designed to be a little bit harsh.

Uh, yeah, Senator Insaniac. I guess you're right, I guess I would agree that suggesting that laws against child labor are unconstitutional is "a little bit harsh. . . " ummm . . . except for that "little bit" part. That's the part with which I might take issue, as saying that federal laws against child labor are unconstitutional isn't "a little bit harsh," it's completely fucking insane.

So if Senator Mike Lee - (Teabagger, UT) says that the Feds shouldn't be messing around with child labor laws, and State Legislators like Senator Jane Cunningham - (Batshit Nuts, MO) want to repeal STATE child labor laws . . . ummm . . . . who exactly should be responsible for ensuring that children aren't working as slave laborers for pennies a day? After all, these are the very people who have made it a fairly mainstream RepubliCon opinion that the minimum wage should be abolished! But lemme guess, Senators Lee and Cunningham aren't exactly running to sign up their children for a non-minimum wage job. I would be willing to bet that's something they had more in mind for other people's kids.

But it doesn't even stop there!

Meet Maniac Judson Philips. This maniac is the President of the Tea Party Nation, one of the largest organizations in the disparate web of crazy known as the Tea Party. It was the Tea Party Nation that recently organized the National Tea Party Convention and paid Sarah Palin $100,000.00 to speak. I ain't shitting you, this Maniac, Judson Phillips, recently came out in favor of returning to the days when only landowners could vote:

"The Founding Fathers originally said, they put certain restrictions on who got the right to vote. It wasn’t you were just a citizen and you automatically got to vote. Some of their restrictions, you know, you obviously would not think about today. But one of them was you had to be a property owner. And that makes a lot of sense, because if you’re a property owner you actually have a vested stake in the community."

Talk about tearing down one of the bedrock principles of democracy! This is weird for me because I had always been told that even if you're not rich, you still get to participate in a democracy, which is what makes is a democracy and not a plutocracy or oligarchy.

But this really is just a taste of the Right Wing train of nihilism.

Some nihilist nutbags in South Dakota got together and decided to propose mandatory gun ownership.

John Yoo, of all the torture-approving assholes, recently opined in the National Review regarding the Teahadist movement to repeal the 17th amendment, which provided for the direct election of Senators:

There’s a lot of truth to the argument that the enactment of the 17th Amendment undermined federalism. State legislatures have a greater institutional incentive to protect federalism than do the people of a state. The people of a state may want to expand federal program spending in order to get their share of tax revenues, even at the expense of greater national power over issues reserved to the states.

It's a convoluted argument of which I can make no sense . . . kinda like legalizing torture.

Senators Diaper Dave Vitter (R-LA) and Prodigal Rand Paul (R-KY), apparently to show that they really do hate the Mexicans, have proposed ending birthright citizenship, a very old and uniquely American legal tradition that was enacted in the 14th Amendment back in 1868. Apparently for Paul, coming out against the Civil Rights act just wasn't going far enough.

IMPORTANT POINT: Can you imagine any of this craziness making it into mainstream political discourse just five years ago?

These people don't just want to go back to the 1950's, they want to go back to the 1850's if not the 1550's! Shit like this makes the union-busting efforts of Governor Scott Walker - WI, Mitch Daniels - IN, John Kasich - OH, and Chris Christie - NJ, look like pleasant jaunts through the Rightwingistan Park.

In their nihilistic drive to destroy anything and everything that might counter their ideology, the Tea Partiers Hard Right RepubliCons are willing to abolish or destroy whatever sacred principles, redeeming qualities, or binding values might hold Americans together. This is what we're up against folks . . . . people who no longer believe there is any such thing as "too far;" who want to abolish, repeal, or destroy anything and anyone that counters their narrow viewpoint of the world.

And this is why political dorks like me pay attention to this stuff, so that hopefully, we can keep ourselves and those around us informed what exactly these insane fucking know-nothing right wing jagbags have in store for America, if they get their way.

Yet Another Family Values RepubliCon!!!

Republican House member resigns over 'profound mistakes'

Washington (CNN) -- Republican Rep. Christopher Lee of New York resigned his House seat Wednesday after a report that the married congressman had tried to meet a woman on Craigslist.

"It has been a tremendous honor to serve the people of Western New York," Lee said in a statement posted on his website. "I regret the harm that my actions have caused my family, my staff and my constituents. I deeply and sincerely apologize to them all. I have made profound mistakes and I promise to work as hard as I can to seek their forgiveness."

The statement said that "the challenges we face in Western New York and across the country are too serious for me to allow this distraction to continue, and so I am announcing that I have resigned my seat in Congress effective immediately."

Ahem.

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!

At least this idiot had the moral intellect to do the right thing after going so very very wrong, and resign. Apparently Lee defined himself as a person who was "fit and classy" in his want ad. As you can see from the picture, for a guy his age, he is pretty fit.

Classy though?

Not so much.

Indiana: They're going for the jugular of the teachers' unions

TEACHERS: GOV. DANIELS SPEECH WAS A "SLAP IN THE FACE"

FORT WAYNE, Ind. (Indiana's NewsCenter) - Indiana's NewsCenter met with area teachers after they watched Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels' State of the State Address.

More than half of the Daniels' 30 minute speech centered on education.

. . . One teacher's initial reaction was the speech was "slap in the face" to her decades of hard work.

Unless you've been living in a Gulf of Mexico oil slick for the last six months, you're probably aware that in the GOP's ongoing struggle to destroy what was once quaintly known as the middle class, the latest gambit has been to blame any and all of everything that goes wrong on public sector unions, regardless of evidence.

Well New York City isn't the only place where this is going on. Here in the Midwest, we find Governor Mitch Daniels and the state's GOP-controlled legislature going rather bananas all over the Indiana State Teachers' Association. And unlike the trumped up "work stoppage" charges that look like they'll never go anywhere in New York, and have only made the jagbag who came up with the story look stupid, Governor Mitch and his buddies down in the Hoosier State appear quite likely to succeed in their attempts to deal a death-blow to a union. Here's what the GOP has dreamed up in a their fevered brains for the good teachers in my old home state.

House Bill 1337 contains provisions that would . . .

* allow annual evaluations to be conducted by other teachers or contracted outside agencies
* eliminate the ability of a local associations to bargain or discuss the evaluation tool
* restrict collective bargaining agreements to wages and wage related benefits
* ban the bargaining of contractual hours or number of days worked.

Wow. That's pretty draconian, considering that all of these are things that unions here have been bargaining over for years. This guy sure seems to hate him some union teachers.

The Senate Version of this bill, SB 575, is similar. . . a long list of things that are stricken from bargaining. Both of these bills have passed out of committee. Quite simply, what they're trying to do is put strict limits over what the union can actually negotiate, and it's wages and wage-related benefits, and THAT'S IT. Everything else has been pulled unilaterally "off the table." That's not negotiating, that's dictating. Under these new laws, members of the teachers unions would have no recourse regarding termination, no say in the length of their work week, no say at all in ANYTHING outside of wages. But wait, it gets better . . . meaning worse.

Governor Mitch, whose administration, by the way, slashed education by $300,000,000.00 last year (that's $300 million if you don't like counting zeroes) has also been going around promoting charter schools like they're the new cure for our supposedly "failing" schools. There IS precious little evidence that your average charter school does any better than standard public education. Charter schools are far more likely to be non-union than public school, though. As an added bonus, charter schools, because they are generally selective, get to exclude lower-performing students.

The Governor believes, quite whole-heartedly, in fact, that public school systems should GIVE AWAY unused buildings to charter schools. From SchoolsMatter.org

"If any school district in this state is sitting on perfectly useful school buildings that it isn't using and doesn't have any prospect of needing, people say, 'Well, they should have to sell them. They refuse to sell them; they should have to sell them'," Daniels said. "Sell them? Hell, they should give them away. The public already paid for them once."

How's that for a smart business maneuver from this supposedly business-minded Governor?-giving a way public property for free!?

So to go over the checklist:

1) Gut the teachers unions right to bargain? Check.
2) Strengthen non-union schools that have proven to do better than public schools approximately 17% of the time? Check.
3) Funnel public money to private entities that are actually less accountable to the general public? Check.
4) Further starve public schools and dump them with students who struggle? Check.

Yep, this angry wind continues to roar across the prairie toward union teachers and public education in Indiana, generally. But you guessed it, there's more.

In his State of the State speech recently, Mitch Daniels proposed vouchers that would take public tax money and give it to private schools in the name of "school choice." In many cases that money would go to his fundamentalist friends, who run the burgeoning number of "Christian academies" that are springing up all over the country. This proposal brought a glowing review from the fine minds at the Heritage Foundation, who claimed that Daniels had "put the Hoosier State on the school choice map."

What happens to public school districts and public school teachers all across Indiana, which are already on hard times financially, and which will inevitably be tasked with educating those who don't want to attend John Q. Associate's Degree's Fundamentalist School of Christian Light and Dismissing Evolution; or those just don't get lucky enough to have a voucher? Well they'll just have to make due with less . . .

In Indiana, Contact Your Reps

It can't just be the unions fighting these attacks on public schools and public school unions. Everyone has got to fight back against this. We simply cannot let this stand unchallenged, or the Mitch Model for destroying public education swill be repeated in many other locations.

And this guy's thinking about being President?

Waaaaaooow: We is left-wing as heeeeeyyylll!

Most Americans say tax rich to balance budget: poll

NEW YORK (Reuters via YahooNews) – Most Americans think the United States should raise taxes for the rich to balance the budget, according to a 60 Minutes/Vanity Fair poll released on Monday.

President Barack Obama last month signed into law a two-year extension of Bush-era tax cuts for millions of Americans, including the wealthiest, in a compromise with Republicans. . . ."

Well this is kind of a fun headline to read. But again, I find it a bit on the subtle side of things. Perhaps a more eye-catching headline might read:

Poll: Holy Shitballs! Who let all these left wingers in?

or perhaps

Poll: MMMMYeah . . . . about that whole 'center-right nation' thing

Reuters continues:

Republicans, who this week take control of the House of Representatives, want to extend all Bush-era tax cuts "permanently" for the middle class and wealthier Americans. They are also demanding spending cuts to curb the $1.3 trillion deficit.

(bold mine)

I just found that last bit a little too rich for my blood, given that:

GOP won't count cost of [health care reform] repeal

Politico

House Republicans plan to use a special exception in their budget rules to repeal the Democrats’ health care overhaul without paying for it – technically, at least.

The Congressional Communistical Budget Office said last year that the health care reform law and its accompanying reconciliation law would reduce the deficit by $143 billion through 2019. That figure is widely disputed and Republicans argue the law would actually increase the deficit. Still, since Republicans’ new rules to govern the House require that nearly all proposed legislation is fully paid for, the new House leaders have exempted repeal of the health care overhaul from such requirements."

F'ilarious! You gotta give these assholes some credit for balls. You know? They go around shrieking about the deficit. The Deficit, I tell ya! The Deficit with the . . . And THE DEFICIT!!!

But the first time the Democrats pass a bill improving access to health care that actually cuts the long term deficit by $143,000,000,000.00, the 'Cons have to EXEMPT it from their special rules about deficit-reduction?!?

And why?!? Why you ask?

Because deficit-reduction is bad, if a Democrat done did it. Total. Fucking. Facepalm. (Not that their pathetic attempts to "repeal Obamacare" will ever pass, but that's for a different entry.)

But thank you Politico for noting that the CBO's numbers are "widely disputed." Of course, a more uhhhhhhh "nuanced" take on the CBO's numbers might have noted that the CBO's numbers are "widely disputed by the GOP's right wing," but I guess we can quibble, eh? And let's not forget that while it's no surprise there for Politico, which beatifies the 'Cons desire to "extend all Bush-era tax cuts "permanently" for the middle class and wealthier Americans," (italics mine) those of us who have memories that go back further than one week will recall that it was really the tax cuts for the Very Rich over which the GOoPers were willing to "take a hostage" i.e. the entire rest of the Democratic Agenda back in December 2010. These assholes GOT their vote on tax cuts just for the middle class, and THEY SAID NO.

Was that just a month ago? Boy it seems like forever, don't it?- especially if you're a part of our myopic media, which appears to literally be born-anew, like a screaming infant every single morning at 6:00 A.M. There is no yesterday; there can be no last week; there sure as hell wasn't any last month; and they've never even heard of last year.

Anyway, back to our original, more cheery topic about how left-wing America really is these days. The 60 Minutes/Vanity Fair poll goes on to note that:

Sixty-one percent of Americans polled would rather see taxes for the wealthy increased as a first step to tackling the deficit, the poll showed.

61% want to tax the rich to address the deficit?!?!? God-damn! We is left-wing was heeeeeeeeyyyyyyllll!!

"Well, okay, taxing the rich won that round," I can hear my conservative friends saying, "But surely gutting health care for seniors and food stamps for poor kids is next on the list, right? I mean it's gotta be up there somewhere. Why it's not a good day if I can't cut health care for seniors and basic necessities for poor kids. Probably that came in a close second."

Number two on the list?

The next most popular way -- chosen by 20 percent -- was to cut defense spending.

I can just taste the vomity tingle of our right wing friends' collective coffees coming blurgling back up their throats. It's almost sweet. I mean effin-a we are some straight up communists around here or something!

But don't you worry worry, right wing 'Merka, your budget priorities still made the poll, it's just that they're a teensy bit further down the list:

Four percent would cut the Medicare government health insurance program for the elderly, and three percent would cut the Social Security retirement program, the poll showed.

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!!

[deep breath]

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!!

[Sigh] Ooooooohhhh!

Why Obama Could Never Be FDR

Although they emerged into the Presidency seventy-six years apart, at first glance, the similarities are there: two cosmopolitan Presidents from large cities coming to power in the midst of widespread economic catastrophe, on the heels of deeply unpopular, corporatist RepubliCon predecessors. Surely President Obama's tenure will be judged by some of the same historical precedents set up by FDR, right? Both needed to create jobs, move the country out of economic malaise, and rebuild a sense of American unity that had been deeply damaged on the heels of long-term conservative and corporate dominance alluded to in the term "gilded age."

Forgetting, for the purposes of this post, whether or not Obama actually WANTS to be the new FDR - a question upon which I believe the jury is still somewhat "out" - I will gingerly propose here that there is no way on God's green earth that Barack Obama could ever be the next Franklin Roosevelt, even if he put the entire power of his considerable will and intellect into working towards this wild fantasy.

And why not? Well basically I don't think comparisons between the two are fair, and here's the crux of the issue. President Obama is a black man from lower-middle class background. And FDR was a white man from a rich and powerful family.

No I didn't turn racist overnight. I don't believe that a black President is less capable of enacting transformational change, or less capable of governing in hard times. The facts here have nothing to do with capacity, and everything to do with the tenacity and sheer vehemence of the opposition.

The second President Roosevelt was a rich white man from a patrician family . . . a man whose uncle had served as President, a man as familiar to the upper crust of the American power elite as was the practice of keeping servants and second homes upstate, and personal ownership of vast swaths of capital and real estate. The simple fact is that Obama has none of these advantages. When Roosevelt became President in 1932 after his stint as Governor of America's most populous state at the time, New York, the American power elite had been dealing, for better or for worse, with Roosevelts for forty years already, if not much longer. His paternal Grandfather, Warren Delano II, was directly related to Pilgrims who had come on The Mayflower; and his paternal grandmother, Sara Ann Delano, was a cousin of President James Monroe's wife. And need we even mention FDR's swashbuckling uncle, Teddy, who became the first Roosevelt president in 1901?

Comparing the performance of Barack Obama to FDR is like comparing the college performance of an academically high-end kid from the inner city to the an equally academically high-end kid from the wealthiest suburb in America. Sure, they may both be academically high-end, but one has been given every advantage in life, and one has been given every disadvantage.

FDR NEVER faced the shrieking racism of America's institutionalized reactionaries. Sure there were the Father Coughlins of FDR's day, but even the most outrageous of FDR's critics, as far as I'm aware, never questioned whether or not FDR was legally qualified to serve as President, as the thinly-veiled racists in Obama's opposition have repeatedly been known to do with their seemingly ENDLESS demands for the the "original birth certificate . . ." an item which by the way, roughly 95 out of 100 Americans, including yours truly, probably do not have laying around the house. (In fact, given their set-your-watch-by-it penchant for rank hypocrisy, I'd be willing to personally guarantee that 99% (not 95%) of the Tea Party hate-mongers demanding to see the President's original, paper-copy birth certificate don't have theirs either.)

With their shady insinuations that Obama is a Muslim, and their vague allusions to the President's Kenyan father, his "anti-colonialist leanings" - as if anti-colonialism were such a bad thing - the President's many enemies have used their propagandists at Fox News to propagate outrageous lies, smears, and misinformation that a white man from a rich family would NEVER have had to endure. Indeed, we can safely assume that FDR - having dealt and perhaps dined with wealthy corporatists his entire life - probably spoke their language, knew their customs, could talk yachting if necessary, etc. While FDR was a good man with great intentions who was able to use his family name and his inherent connections to the power elite to propel himself to the Presidency, Barack Obama simply had none of these advantages.

Now as I am not a professional historian, this gets to a realm of some speculation; but once President, it's quite rational to suppose that FDR may have been able to cajole and coax his opposition along in a way that President Obama could never hope to do. FDR spoke the language and knew the customs of wealthy corporatists . . . he may have known some of his opponents as equals for his entire life. Can the same really be said for President Obama?

No, these two men are coming from entirely different circumstances, and comparing the two Presidencies is unfair. Dealing with the mega-wealthy power elite is an entirely different matter when you're one of them. You can't expect an average citizen, no matter how talented, no matter how eloquent or intelligent - and a black man, no less, whose powerful opposition practically owns the media and is running a despicably racist, nationwide smear campaign - to be able to affect meaningful progressive change in the same way that a well-meaning millionaire from an ultra-powerful family can. Our top-down society simply doesn't work that way.

So where does that leave us? With diminished expectations I suppose . . . but then . . . what else is new? We live in an era of diminished expectations. I suppose we can only hope that the President's heart is in the right place and that, to the maximum extent possible, he's trying to wring progressive droplets out of this incredibly difficult situation. With the repeal of "Don't Ask Don't Tell," the attempt to pass the DREAM Act, the success of the new START Nuclear Arms reduction treaty, and the recent passage of the 9-11 First Responders' Health Care bill, I guess there is some reason to hope.

But only history will tell us if Obama is really going to be able to live up to even a fraction of kind the of transformational change he spoke of . . . the odds against this are of course impossibly high. But looking for an FDR-type of sea change out of this President . . . well I just don't think it's fair, or logical.

Gays in the Military: Cue the Wrong-wing Freakout in 3-2-FUN!!!!

I told you in my very last post that this was going to be fun! (It's near the bottom.) And here comes the Wrong-Wing Freakout over the end of Don't Ask Don't Tell!

Benedict Arnold Republicans Destroy Military and our National Security

From those Fun-Loving GOoPers at the American Family Association's "Rightly Concerned"

By Bryan Fischer

We are now stuck with sexual deviants serving openly in the U.S. military because of turncoat Republican senators. (Dictionary definition of “deviant”: “departing from usual or accepted standards, esp. in social or sexual behavior.” “Deviant” is not name calling, it is truth-telling.) . . . .

Yep, it took this asshole all of one sentence to make it clear that he believes that homosexuals are "deviants," and to quote the dictionary to back up this claim. But it gets better. Did you know that other nations allow gays in their militaries specifically because they are planning on having the USA bail them out?

The armies of other nations have allowed gays to serve openly in the military. The reason they could afford to do this is simple: they could allow homosexuals to serve in their military because we didn’t allow them to serve in ours.

They knew they could count on the strength, might, power, and cohesion of the U.S. military to intervene whenever and wherever necessary to pull their fannies out of the fire and squash the forces of tyranny wherever they raised their ugly heads around the world.

Those days are now gone. We will no longer be able to bail out these other emasculated armies because ours will now be feminized and neutered beyond repair, and there is no one left to bail us out. We have been permanently weakened as a military and as a nation by these misguided and treasonous Republican senators, and the world is now a more dangerous place for us all. . . .

Wow. Our army will be feminized and neutered beyond repair? Jeepers too bad, eh? Our macho-beyond-belief military was so masculine that having gay people in it will actually destroy it forever. So I guess having a Harley-ridin butch lesbian serve in the military will feminize it? Go figure.

But it gets better. Our nation is apparently DOOOOOOOOOOOOMED!!!

This isn’t a game, and the military should never be used, as is now being done, for massive social re-engineering. The new Marine motto: “The Few, the Proud, the Sexually Twisted.” Good luck selling that to strong young males who would otherwise love to defend their country. What virile young man wants to serve in a military like that?

If the president and the Democrats wanted to purposely weaken and eventually destroy the United States of America, they could not have picked a more efficient strategy to make it happen.

Rarely can you point to a moment in time when a nation consigned itself to the scrap heap of history. Today, when the Senate normalized sexual perversion in the military, was that moment for the United States. If historians want a fixed marker pointing to the instant the United States sealed its own demise, they just found it.
It won’t happen overnight, but happen it will.

Strong young males? Virile, young men? Who talks like that? Methinks this prick, Bryan Fischer, doth protest too much.

And seriously, this is "the instant the United States sealed its own demise?"

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!! Uh yeah, the Bush-engineered bank bailout was more what I was thinking, but if you want to push it a year or two and blame the gays in the military, sure I guess we can quibble.

You know, I just knew that if I hunted down a picture of this asshole it would be hilarious. And guess what? It was:

Who is this asshole? Ned Flanders's gay uncle? What a douchebag. Gotta love the macho-macho perfectly coiffed white hair and Christmasy sweater. Nothing says "No I most certainly am NOT gay. I'm not gay I'm not gay damnit!" than a look like that, and lots of kvetching about "virile young males."

Too funny!

Some welcome good news.

For lefties like me, the last few months have been pretty demoralizing. From the debut of our new Citizens' United-enabled right wing majority in the People's House of Congress, and the startling speed with which monstrous, corporate-backed interest groups were able to officially purchase our election process with obvious results on November 6th; to the politically inept and dangerous precedent set by the President's total capitulation to the GOoPers' insane, budget-busting obsession with tax cuts for millionaires, it's been a tough haul.

That's why news like this is a very welcome relief for progressives*, an overdue but welcome victory.

Senate votes to repeal ban on gays openly serving in military

"Washington (CNN) -- The military's prohibition of openly gay people serving within its ranks is one step closer to ending, after the Senate voted Saturday to repeal the armed forces' "don't ask, don't tell" policy. Eight Republicans and independent Joe Lieberman of Connecticut joined the chamber's Democrats to back the legislation, which passed around 3 p.m. by a 65-31 margin. The bill needed a simple majority -- meaning support from 51 of the Senate's 100 members -- to pass. . . .

"Gay and lesbian service members -- brave Americans who enable our freedoms -- will no longer have to hide who they are," [President]Obama said in an e-mailed statement to supporters. "The fight for civil rights, a struggle that continues, will no longer include this one."

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said, in a statement, that he'll "approach this process deliberately, (making changes) only after careful consultation with the military service chiefs and our combatant commanders."

Clifford Stanley, a retired Marine and the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, will "immediately proceed" to execute the Pentagon's plan, Gates said."

The end of "Don't Ask Don't Tell" puts a final nail into the coffin of the idea that one's sexual preference affects one's ability to not just serve the country, but to do any job, really. This is good news not just for boys who like boys and girls who like girls, but to anyone who has ever been discriminated against, for any reason. Although the media response to this Friday-evening news dump story (so far) hasn't fully picked up steam, I'm guessing that it'll be fun watching the response of the reactionaries wigging out, the self-righteous pricks. No doubt the heads of right-wingers will be exploding all across the airwaves on Monday. And that's always a fun thing.

For a fascinating look at the history of the movement that finally achieved this victory you can go here. I never thought I'd be thanking Senator Joseph "Sanctimonious Prick" Lieberman for anything ever again. But I will say that on this one, along with Former Rep. Ellen Tauscher, Rep. Patrick Murphy (D-PA), Speaker Pelosi, Majority Leader Reed, and President Obama, Lieberman was among the main backers of the repeal effort, so give credit where credit is due.

After all the disappointment of the last couple of months, this is something about which to genuinely cheer: a legitimate, and long-overdue victory for civil rights.

* You know, the compassion-for-fellow-your-fellow-human-beings people.

Total. Fucking. Facepalm.

Obama tells Republicans he should have worked more with them

Washington (CNN) -- "A political summit between President Barack Obama and congressional leaders Tuesday yielded further talks on how to extend Bush-era tax breaks scheduled to expire at the end of the year, as well as an acknowledgement from Obama that he needs to reach out more to Republicans.

The meeting, dubbed by some the "Slurpee summit" for a campaign dig by Obama at congressional Republicans, involved the president and leaders of both parties from the House and Senate. It came in the aftermath of the November midterm election in which Republicans took control of the House and gained six seats in the Democratic-controlled Senate.

Originally proposed by Obama as a half-day event that could extend into dinner, the meeting was postponed once by Republican leaders and ended up lasting about two hours. Afterward, Obama and Republican leaders said they wanted to work together, but they also made clear that sharp differences exist on major issues."

(Italics/Bold mine)

Oh my god. I mean, just . . . oh my fucking God. Speechless here. How could President Obama possibly, under any circumstances, think that he needed to reach out more to the RepubliCons?

Don't get me wrong. I understand that the President is facing shrieking racism and an army of stupid, hilljack, cracker, ignorant, redneck, inbred, fucking morons with way too much money and media play, in an environment where ANY Democrat was going to be subjugated to a wholly unfair playing field. I get that it's a challenge, okay? But this headline made me want to literally retch my digestive tract, in its entirety, up my esophagus, and out of my mouth.

I mean, he already allowed his signature legislation, the Health Care "Reform" package, to be stripped away of its best ideas, and replaced with corporate-friendly giveaways to insurance companies! The American people don't give two turds in a rat's butt about "bipartisanship" because they're too busy trying to avoid homelessness due to foreclosure and joblessness. The President didn't need to "reach out across the aisle" more. He needed to FIGHT THESE EVIL FUCKS AND SEND THEM WHIMPERING HOME TO MOMMY. Instead, he decided that the thing to do was try to get the GOoPers to be nice to him by fucking over the American people. And look what it got him - a bunch of wild-eyed neanderthals throwing their feces on him and pissing on his shoes (which was always gonna happen anyway) AND the added bonus of a real electoral shellacking.

Reach out more to the RepubliCons?!?!? Are you fucking kidding me? This is basically Barry-O's way of saying:

Well, sure the GOoPers were fucking me in the ass with a spiky dildo . . . but I think problem is that I just wasn't using enough lube.

If someone doesn't get into the President's ear and soon; if this continues to be the pattern from Barry-O, I'm sorry, but we are FUCKED as a country. The 'Cons in Congress are going to do everything they can to continue to block any progress on the so-called Economy, and if people don't have appreciably more jobs in 2012 then Obama is a sure-fire one-termer. Even Sarah Palin could beat the President under the present circumstances, if the President doesn't learn how to man up, take the spiky dildo out of his bunghole, and FIGHT THESE ASSHOLES.

It's time to end the filibuster in the Senate.

The filibuster made sense when there was a rational opposition and a relatively small amount of bills were effectively filibustered.

Now, every single initiative that comes from our elected majority is effectively killed, or grossly emasculated by the threat of the filibuster in our venerated "House of Lords," or "UPPER HOUSE of Congress," the U.S. Senate. The American people have spoken over the last two elections. If the Minority Party cannot look to the filibuster responsibly . . . there is nothing in the Constitution that enshrines their right to it.

The campaign to end the filibuster has begun! Take action by following this link.

Sometimes a good graph says it all.

Next time you hear some ass-wipe blowhard RepubliCon pitching a bitch about the god-damned deficit . . . should be sometime in the next fifteen seconds if you're watching TV, driving down the highway, on the internet, or listening to the radio . . . just think of this graph and picture that ass-wipe blowhard being ruthlessly wedgied and pilloried by a giant Shame-creature. But of course these scum have no shame, so they have no problem trying to cut off unemployment benefits to the poor while defending the Bush-era tax cuts on the wealthiest Americans.

Pathetic.

:-\