#CertainToLose

Real profile in courage, this one:

She was about to have a rematch against the same candidate who came within 600 votes of beating her in 2022, and back then he had no name recognition. Nothing says "I'm certain I'm going to lose" more than bravely bailing on the constituents in your home district, who first elected you, and then seeking the limelight and a lot of cameras somewhere else. Will she be able to get rehired in a more conservative district? Well, there was that whole "getting-caught-with-her-hands-in-the-boyfriends-pants-and-then-getting-ejected from (I sh** you not) a performance of Beetlejuice: The Musical," . . . uhh . . . kerfluffle. So getting a job in a new and very family values-y district kinda #SeemsDoubtful. Can't wait to see her crash and burn in the churchier district. The sooner trash like this is removed from the Capitol, the better. Get bent, Boebert.

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.

Two years ago . . .

. . . maniacs from the rabid right assaulted the nation's capitol in an effort to end democracy in America, while their hero, the former White House occupant, spent three hours doing absolutely nothing to end the carnage. Five people died, and 140 capitol police officers were injured. Even after a violent insurrection that could have threatened their actual lives, a great majority of the GOP House members, that same night, voted to overturn the election results, on the basis of Absolutely No Evidence That Ever Actually Stood Up In Any Court In the Land.

Today, that same GOoPer House Caucus, after 11 tries, STILL hasn't been able to do the One Damned Thing That Has to Happen First, in order to have a functional House of Representatives - pick a Speaker. So in some ways, the assault on democracy continues. Take a good look USofA - THIS is what the GOP has to offer you: shitshow "democracy" and extreme dysfunction. The January 6th insurrection continues in a different form.

We're soaking in it.

RepubliCon Governance in action: 118th Congress, Speaker of the House edition

Vegging on a day off, watching the House's majority party fail to elect a Speaker on the first ballot, for the first time since (checks Wikipedia) 1923 (100 years ago) - the ONLY time that happened in the 20th Century. The GOP's clown car "governance" is bad for America, but that was already a given . . . mostly today is just a bad day for the GOoPers, and I'm here for it. The GOP is currently at 10 defections from McCarthy, in the first vote.

UPDATE: VOTE THE THIRD

The vote for the Speaker of the House begins AGAIN and for the third time, we're only at the 'B' last names alphabetically, and it's already clear that McCarthy won't get to 218. Force-of-Nature and Brooklyn-based Rep. Hakeem Jefferies (D-NY) will again get the most votes, but "it’s one more election in America where the person with the most votes doesn’t win." Sex Assault Cover-Upper and Obvious Liar Jim Jordan - R-OH is saying he doesn't even want the speakership, and himself voted for McCarthy, but the GOoPer bomb-throwers in the House keep nominating him anyway, because "We'll show that Kevin McCarthy." There's no need to dwell overmuch on the logistical fact that even 203 votes is way closer to 218 than the mere 19 that Jim Jordan, who - again - says he does not want to be speaker, received last go-round. This isn't about governing, or winning elections, or policies or any of that stupid stuff. This is about grandstanding for an exclusively far-right audience. They're not trying to "elect some Speaker of the House," or whatever. Not their bag.

El Drumpfo is now the GOoPers' problem

El Drumpfo has announced for 2024, but it's quite clear that this time Jabba the Hutt is not paying attention to the chain that could easily be wrapped around his neck. El Drumpfo has been demoted from being the humanity's problem and America's problem, to being the GOoPers' problem, and I'm here for it. The RepubliCon elites keep saying "no more Trump" and "it's time to move on," but it really seems A LOT like a decisive chunk of the base isn't listening. I suspect he will be the nominee in 2024. Gee I wonder who would win, El Drumpfo or Biden.

Sure the current GOP will continue to run the board in places like Idaho, and Wyoming, and Mississippi, and probably Florida. But nationally, the party attached itself to El Drumpfo at the nutsack, and it's really hard for me to see how they win elections with him, or without him, unless he actually finally does one bump of meth too many, or eats one cheeseburger too many, and finally does the one duty he can't delay by abusing the courts. This dye was cast in 2016 when they all got in line like good little toadies, afraid that the Orange One would say mean things about them. Since then, it was ALWAYS going to end like this. Cowardly ending for a bunch of cowards, and that's just how it is. The schadenfreude is going to be amazing.

Wake Up to 2022!

Good morning!

If you care about "having a democracy" I hope you are fully aware of where things stand right now. I think Joe Biden is a decent person, but his approvals are in the tank, currently. If the GOoPers take the House and Senate this fall, they have made it abundantly clear that: A GOP Congress Will Never Certify a Democratic Presidential Victory, No Matter How Obviously They Win. The RepubliCons will achieve this through gerrymandering, voter suppression, willful re-imagining of constitutional norms, and their long-term packing of the Supreme Court, which is essentially a finished product.

Do you want to know how a 2024 election with a GOP-led Congress will play out? Watch what happens down in Georgia when Stacey Adams appears to win the Governorship this November. I'd put down my life savings that their over-the-cliff GOP state legislature will "having something to say about that," from the the statehouse. This is it friends. We could very seriously have one-party rule in this country, even if that party is clearly a minority. Are the Democrats perfect? Absolutely not. But we have a much bigger fish to fry in 2022. If you want to know how amazing one-party rule is - check out how well having the PRI in charge for 71 years worked for the good people of Mexico.

Here's a group of folks at Fair Fight - Georgia, who are doing the thing, down in Georgia - right now. They need your support now, not just in October.

It's ON in 2022.

Happy New Year! It's 2022, an election year, and one of my intentions for this new year is to make sure I DON'T wind up thinking to myself, this November: "I should have done more to maintain democracy."

Beyond partisan politics, representative democracy is on the ballot. One party wants to make it easier to vote, while the other wants to make it harder, while giving state legislatures the right to overturn voters' decisions by lying about voting fraud. 2020 was just a dry-run / dress rehearsal. They're authoritarians, and they want govern at will, even though they are likely a permanent minority. I'm not here to argue the politics. If you disagree with me, you can disregard this post and move along. If you agree with me, I ask you to dig in deep this year.

I have a hard job that takes a lot of off-the-clock time, and a toddler, so I can't always volunteer for organizations or campaigns, but what I CAN do, is donate. So I started today with a monthly recurring donation to BLOC - the Black Leaders Organizing Committee. This grass-roots organization based in Milwaukee, WI, that does good work there, to educate and register voters, as well as issue advocacy. This was one group of many that helped bring Wisconsin home in 2020. You get more bang for your buck giving to these types of organizations, as opposed to candidates or political parties, and these groups need the money NOW, not just in late October. By then it's often too late.

Friends we have an uphill climb in 2022, but maintaining or building majorities in Congress would act as a bulwark against Trump-cultists and far-right Evangelical authoritarians further entrenching themselves and making up the law as they go along. Give money if you can. Give time if you got it. Spread the word if that's all you can do. But we need to dig deeply his coming year. Everything is on the line.

So-Called quote "acquittal" unquote

I don't feel good about today's so-called acquittal but I can't act all shocked and surprised. It's a political trial requiring a super-majority way beyond anything like what the Dems have in the Senate. This is nothing like a court of law with a judge, etc. I was a bit shook by the way the prospect of witnesses emerged, and then vanished in a puff of smoke, but it seems like some of the reportage jumped the gun there a little too. One way or another, everyone watching closely knew this day was coming. I fear the Dems may have blown the chance to inflict maximum political damage, in the short run, but the truth is that the midterms are so far away, in political time-scale, that it's really hard to say how anything happening now would truly play out by then.

For now, Trump is the only President to be impeached twice, and the only President to have a bipartisan vote for conviction in the in Senate - twice. He is the only President to lose the popular vote twic.e He has amassed 50% of the impeachment trials ever in American history. Corporate America is fleeing him like he is a the Virus itself. A competent administration rules the White House, the GOP is eating itself alive, and who knows what the future holds? We abide.

Don't even plan on that $600, America-with-COVID, and a near-Depression going on. UPDATED!

UPDATE:

Not sure what it all means yet, but I am $600 worth of pleased (not $2k worth of pleased) to report that this post did not age well. With no real explanations, (but trust me, it will almost certainly amount to "right decision, wrong reasons,") El Drumpfo did indeed sign the pared down, smaller stimulus bill Sunday evening. So I am somewhat pleased to say the rest of this post turns out mostly wrong.

For that $600 to hit your direct deposit account, it would require Trump and Moscow Mitch McConnell, two national leaders of the same party, to come together for the betterment of the country. In any other government this would be an absolute no-brainer, but this the rotting husk of what was once called the GOP, we're talking about. So, no, you can't even have $600, or a moratorium on evictions, or anything like that. Trump is at war with McConnell, with impossible demands that even Moscow Mitch himself couldn't confer on *resident Trump, no matter HOW badly he might wish he could (i.e. - make my "lost the election" problem go away). McConnell can't do it. So therefore, Trump must go to war with all of him. Moscow Mitch is the public enemy of President F**face, and that is what matters now, not whether you can eat next month, or have a roof.

Any 2nd round may not even be coming until February or March now, or maybe never if the GOP holds the Senate. As it stands, nothing will be coming down the pipeline at all, until Mitch finds some way to placate Trump. A recent analysis I read suggests that El Drumpfo really does believe there is some "one weird trick" The SCOTUS, or the GOP Senate, or some swing state Governor or Secretary of State, or legislature or the military could try to pull to eliminate his (as it was humorously put): "nagging problem of having lost the election." McConnell can't fix it. Pence can't do it. The military can't do it. The judiciary couldn't AND wouldn't do it. GOP Governors and Secretaries of State in swing states couldn't do it, and wouldn't! The state legislatures couldn't do it. There is essentially nothing any of these people can do without risking serious jail time, and they're not risking jail time for Trump, and even if they did, it still likely wouldn't work. But El Drumpfo's mind doesn't operate on that plane of reality. "They're not trying hard enough! They're holding out on him! Surely there is *SOMETHING* they can do!" Actually there really isn't, so how is McConnell gonna get Trump on board to sign something? I'm not sure I see it happening.

Cold Civil War

With 17 GOP Attorneys General, and 126 GOP Congressionals joining Texas' insane, ultimately doomed push to overturn The Election That Trump Lost, it's become clear that the Republican Party writ large has descended officially into madness. Trump is either going to destroy it, or democracy, or maybe both. The Electoral College votes Monday. The outcome is pre-ordained. Biden will win that day. The dead-enders - roughly 2/3rd to 4/5ths of the GOP faithful, will surely not admit that: "this means it's over." They never will.

Biden will in all likelihood be sworn in on January 20th, but even that is not a given, when it absolutely should be. Left-leaning progressive Democrats, harder left voters, independents and moderates try to cheer ourselves with: "Oh they're losing all the court cases. They will lose the Electoral College. They have no legal remedy." The Trumpists don't even care, as their goons menace outside elected officials' houses with guns in Michigan, where state troopers will be required to escort electors into the capital, and the GOP Social Media scum in Arizona call for martyrs and armed conflicts against democracy. Trump has spent his entire adult life abusing the court system. Why stop now? They don't give a shit about the law. They never did. They have power. The law is just words on paper, as far as they're concerned.

"Cold Civil War;" in my opinion that about sums up where we appear to be headed. Maybe we've already been in it for years and are just now realizing it. Can a house that is divided against itself really stand? I read a fairly doomy/gloomy article awhile back by a UK based writer/economist, who suggested that things were going to continue to degrade here in this country, and in England. Now, he was probably ROOTING for further degradation, by the overall tone: "just desserts." (Yes empires deserve to fail, and fall.) Some of his conclusions I disagreed with, but he was sure right about something: he said that part of the problem was that "many Americans don't even like each other." I felt called out. It's true.

Anxious times, friends. Hang in there. We are all in this together.

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.

Terrifying Times in Texas

Texas Governor Says ‘Massive’ Virus Outbreak Sweeping the State

Houston On Pace to Exceed Intensive-Care Capacity by Tomorrow Today

From the Freedom-Haters at Bloomberg.com.

Texas is experiencing a “massive outbreak” as Covid-19 cases multiply, Governor Greg Abbott said on Wednesday as hospital systems in the state’s biggest cities strained to handle the influx of patients.

Texas posted its worst day so far for new cases, with a jump of 5,551 to 125,921, according to the state health department. The 4.6% one-day rise exceeded the 3.7% seven-day average. Hospitalizations climbed by 7.3% to 4,389.

If it weren't such a serious life and death matter, it would ALMOST be funny watching Texas’ shit-stain Governor Greg Abbott - who barely shut down the state in the first place and re-opened weeks before others - now realizing how many Texans' deaths are on his hands, furiously backpedal to this week's begging people to stay home, with his serious, "this time we mean it" spurs jangling at his feet. What's that old saying about horses and barn doors?

"Ol’ Bodybags” Abbott will have tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths on his watch, and conscience, due specifically to his policy decisions. I can't crawl inside that scumbag's head, nor would I want to. But unlike the truly clueless-seeming DuhSantis in Floriduh, whose decisions will give Ol' Bodybags a run for his Body Count Bowl trophy, the Texas Governor appears to the casual political media observer, to be experiencing at least some kind of "Oh shit what the fuck have I done?" moment. They should pile up the body bags outside his bedroom window.

UPDATE:

Did I mention Ol' Bodybags' pleadings for everyone to please stay home aren't backed by ANYTHING that resembles a statewide policy with legal teeth? He's still pushing it back on the localities. I'm sure the Good Ol Boys will do as requested.

On Kavanaugh, this guy gets it . . .

Why the hell stick with Kavanaugh anyway?

I think Albert Burneko over at The Concourse gets it:

Brett Kavanaugh Is A Man The Right Can Get Behind

Albert Burneko, The Concourse

. . . Any number of grub-like Yale jurist-ghouls with diamond-edged ‘80s-dad hair and uniformly right-wing ideas about constitutional law could get confirmed to fill the Supreme Court’s vacant ninth seat, and once in that seat could be counted upon to plagiarize Anton Chigurh dialog into incumbent legal precedence for the next three decades. The earth contains no shortage of these. And so, in the aftermath of the discovery that Brett Kavanaugh, the one Donald Trump happened to nominate for the gig, quite likely attempted to rape a 15-year-old girl in the summer of 1982 (and, perhaps less important though no less relevant, almost certainly lied to the Senate about the use of stolen materials to aid George W. Bush’s judicial nominees) and has been living comfortably with this fact about himself for the ensuing 36 years, it should be easy enough to withdraw his nomination and move along to the next crypto-Nazi cottage cheese sculpture in the pipeline. He’d breeze through confirmation, whoever he was: You could pretty much count on the Senate Judiciary Committee’s terminally third-brained centrist Democrats lining up to play themselves. And that would be a success, theoretically: A new, arch-conservative Supreme Court justice, possibly even one not tainted by a credible accusation that he once tried to rape a child.

But that would not be enough. It has to be this guy. It has to be this guy now more than ever. It has to be this guy, now, because he has been accused, credibly, of attempting to rape a 15-year-old girl in 1982—moreover because people believe this should be considered a disqualifying blight on his record. The thing that must happen is that those people must be defeated. That is the whole point. What must be shown to the whole world is that this, even this, cannot stop him.

Aside from the fact that I'm not that familiar with Anton Chigurh, I couldn't have said it any better myself. For the Wrong Wing, it's about "owning the libs." The libs say we can't put a credibly-alleged rapist on the Supreme Court! Eff that! YES WE CAN! We can and we will! Virtually all of RepubliCon public policy in the time of El Drumpfo, (if such a collection of scattered, cockamamie half-notions could be considered a quote "public policy" unquote at all), essentially boils down to: if progressives (and independents these days) are mad, it is good. EVERYTHING, from Obamacare repeal, to gutting the EPA, to this nomination, can be viewed through the four-year old bully's mindset that comes to this, "If those people are upset, than we are happy." They don't actually willfully want dirtier air and water, but they DO want to make libs mad, and if you'll excuse the pun, that trumps everything. Therefore, gut the EPA.

It's mindless. It's devastatingly idiotic, and thoroughly anti-American . . . so you know, quintessentially Republican.

I would actually add here, that if they can confirm this p.o.s. BEFORE the Election, it might actually rile up enough RepubliCon rank and file to seriously mute the effect, electorally, to the point where a little Russian help credibly holds back the so-called “blue wave.” Owning the libs is probably a fairly effective cudgel for these bastards, strategically.

I mean to be certain, there is a parallel between conservative worldview, and the mindset of a rapist. Power is all that matters. Do anything to take it. The agency of those who get in the way should be violently revoked. But I don't think most cons think through things that much, at all.

The point is, the libs are mad. Therefore, it is good.

Banksters to Urban Centers: "Down with jobs. Up with prisons!"

This important article from Les Leopold at Alternet really connects the dots.

How Wall Street Turned America Into Incarceration Nation

Transforming poorer neighborhoods into desirable real estate for the new elites often requires getting rid of the poor: jail becomes the new home for many.

November 25, 2013 | The U.S. leads the world in prisoners with 2.27 million in jail and more than 4.8 million on parole. Minorities have been especially hard hit, forming 39.4% of the prison population, with one in three black men expected to serve time during their lifetimes. How is it that our land, supposedly the beacon of freedom and democracy for the rest of the world, puts so many of its own people into prison? . . .

'Unleashing' Wall Street destroys manufacturing, older urban areas and black America's upward mobility

By the end of the 1970s, our policy establishment embarked upon a new experiment to shock the nation out of stagflation (the crushing combination of high unemployment and high inflation). To do so, neo-liberal economists successfully argued that Wall Street should be deregulated and that taxes on the wealthy should be cut to spur new entrepreneurial activity that would enrich us all. Entrepreneurial activity certainly increased, and with a vengeance. Rather than create new jobs and industries that would promote shared prosperity, a new and invigorated Wall Street set about to devastate American manufacturing. Its goal was, and still is, to make money from money, not to make money by producing tangible goods and services. Wall Street's main product for America is debt. And its profits derive from loading up the country with it, and then collecting compound interest.

Wave after wave of financial corporate raiders (now politely called private equity firms) swooped in to suck the cash flow out of healthy manufacturing facilities. Wall Street, freed from its New Deal shackles, loaded companies up with debt, cut R&D, raided pension funds, slashed wages and benefits, and decimated well-paying jobs in the U.S. while shipping many abroad. The released cash flow was used to pay back the financiers, buy up stock to drive up its price, and pay out dividends. Nearly half the raided companies failed as America's heartland in a few short years turned into the Rust Belt.

Living on the south side of Chicago, and working near Gary, Indiana, I have become intimately familiar with the devastation of the Rust Belt's urban core, and it ain't pretty. Basically, the neo-liberal scumf**x who call the shots in Washington D.C., Springfield, IL, the Mayor's office here in Chicago, etc., have a created an interesting little third-world experiment, right here in the good ol' U.S. of Awesome.

I teach English, not science, but I believe the experimental hypothesis the banksters are operating under is this: "If we wipe out an entire sector of the U.S. economy, and replace it with predatory capitalism specifically designed to bloat our bank accounts to the exclusion of all else, everything will be just peachy, and those newly-jobless urban cores will become like elysian fields of happy, contented, unemployed."

We all know how well THAT'S worked out. You can just ask the good people of Gary, Indiana; Youngstown, Ohio; Detroit, Michigan; or the southside of Chicago, etc. Of course, once they'd shuttered the main engines of the manufacturing sector through sheer, rapine greed, the question for our jaunty neo-liberal overlords became: "What do we do with all these people disposables who have no jobs?"

After all, that real estate still had some residual value, and it's not like they were going to go back on the whole experiment and invest in something to replace the manufacturing sector. Investing costs money, and takes time. The return is so much slower than creating a mega-trillion dollar pseudo-economy based on gambling with derivatives, and other finance-capital parlor tricks. No, they'd already hacked away those jobs like so many overzealous tree-pruners, lopping off barrels-full of apples so they can burn the fragrant wood. No amount of glue can fix those trees, and replanting? I refer you to my earlier remarks regarding the time and money involved in investing. Those jobs were gone forever, so what to do? What to do?

I suppose it must have been a real conundrum for the neo-liberal ha ha "private equity" scumfucks who call the shots. What do you with a whole bunch of unnecessary people disposables who are living eeking out an existence on the land that occupies your next condominium development? Luckily for the ha ha "private equity" vultures, at some point the heavens parted, the light dawned, and that last bump of cocaine brought clarity for a change. Some insightful bankster had a moment of brilliance: "I know what we can do with all those unemployed folks, whose lives, families, and neighborhoods we just served up and gorged upon like succulent marrow. Let's LOCK THEM THE FUCK UP!"

Y voila! Thus were born the mandatory minimum sentencing laws, the War on Drugs, the disparity between sentencing guidelines for crack versus "regular" cocaine, stop-and-frisk . . . . why a whole LITTER of incarceration innovations were veritably shat out the asshole of our asexual, protozoan overlords. Thus was born a New-merica; one in which we proudly boast not only the highest per capita rate of incarceration, (which is quite a feat for the "Land of the Free") but the highest raw NUMBER of people disposables incarcerated; more than much-larger nations like India, and the wonder-tastically freeish nation of CHINA!

Congratulations to our Neoliberal Bankster Overlords. We truly are number one.

'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.

Uh Oh!

From the fine folks at ThinkProgress.org

Gov. Walker Accused Of Over 1,000 Violations Of Campaign Finance Law, Could Face $557,500 Fine

By Scott Keyes on Jan 11, 2012 at 12:00 pm

"Wisconsin law requires gubernatorial campaigns to disclose information about contributors who give more than $100. Again and again, Walker appears to have skirted that requirement.

One Wisconsin Now examined the Walker for Governor’s finance records and found 1,115 instances where the campaign received contributions of more than $100 but did not properly disclose who gave the money. In total, “Walker has improperly reported well over $500,000 in contributions from inside and outside of Wisconsin,” said Scot Ross, One Wisconsin Now Executive Director. According to the group, which has filed a complaint with the state Government Accountability Board, Walker’s violations could result in a fine of $557,500

(bold and italics mine)

Ooopsa daisy! It looks like Wisconsin Governor Scott "Scumbucket" Walker allegedly made a teeny little oversight in reporting his campaign contribution. Okay maybe twice, or three times.

Okay a thousand times.

Okay eleven hundred times.

Plus fifteen.

Luckily these teensy weensy little infractions are surely no big deal, right Governor Scumbucket? What?- YOU never forget to follow campaign law drafted in your home state once or twice a thousand or eleven hundred times? Sheesh!!!!

But so what, really, right Governor Scumbucket? It's just a little bit of unreported campaign income violating state law. So what if its . . . okay it's over half a million dollars.

Still no big deal in my opinion. Hell in the post-Citizens United America, half a million dollars really IS a pretty small amount of money.

Kidding aside, I have no idea if these allegations will "have legs," but if they turn out to be true, and are provable, Governor Scumbucket could be facing $557,000 in fines. YIKES!

No doubt this will make the upcoming recall election even MORE interesting than it already is!

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.

A little jolt of truth:

Darth Cheney to America, the World: Fuck all y'all!

Well, if you've had your eyes open at least twice or thrice in the last ten years, the following headline and lede should come as zero surprise to you:

Cheney: No regrets

By: CNN's Ashley Killough

(CNN) – When talking about his eight years as vice president, Dick Cheney said he had no regrets from his time working as former President George W. Bush's right-hand man.

"And I'm not inclined to make any mea culpas," Cheney told CNN's Wolf Blitzer in an interview to air on the "Situation Room" Tuesday.

Cheney had an instrumental role in the decision to send troops to Iraq nearly two years after 9/11. Widespread doubts emerged about the government's initial reason for going to war: suspicions that the country had links to terrorist cells and was harboring weapons of mass destruction.

When asked if the current fatality count of more than 4,000 troops in Iraq, coupled with the hundreds of billions of dollars spent on the war, made it a worthy endeavor, Cheney said "yes." . . . .

The full blog post is available here.

Jesus Christ.

I wonder if this dingleberry ever sat down with the family of someone who died in Iraq. I rather doubt it.

Look, no one will ever confuse Darth Cheney for the self-reflective "I'm-my-own-worst-critic" type, but even by the standards of someone furiously digging up Satan himself from the deepest trenches of hell, this interview is an even further debasement of unimaginably repugnant proportions. As if to say, "Look what an irredeemable asshole I can be," this pus-filled boil on the taint of humanity gives Wolf Blitzer "the Full Cheney." By that, I mean we are brought into the most fetid, shit-strewn runnels in the deepest crevices of the offal-parts of human existence.

Note that even the uber-corporate toady, Wolf Blitzer (who was practically coming in his pants during the run-up to the War on Iraq, and who STILL MANAGED to fluff the Dark One as a kind of "vintage Cheney" during the write-up, as if that was something that anyone wanted to see) elicited the following remarks, possibly in a likely-to-fail effort to make "news" of the fact that:

"Hey, the former Veep's a real piece o' shit!"

I find it interesting that the headline on Blitzer's more personal blog, which is buried more quickly on CNN's web page, was less forgiving than the headline that was ultimatley frontpaged on the site.

Cheney refuses to admit any mistakes as vice president

For the who are strong of soul, here are a few choice bits of this nauseating interview. Have a mop and bucket ready. You're going to want to puke.

"He strongly defended his record on every single controversial issue I raised with him: the nearly $1 trillion TARP economic bailout package that the Bush administration pushed through Congress during its final weeks; the decision to invade Iraq even though Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11; the failure to kill Osama bin Laden when he was cornered in Tora Bora shortly after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan; and the failure to take any steps in the summer of 2001 when he and President George W. Bush were warned that al Qaeda was planning to attack Americans in the United States."

I'm gonna go hork now. Please give me a minute . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Okay I'm back.

Can you handle some more?

I [Blitzer] pointed out to the former vice president that everyone makes mistakes, and there’s nothing wrong with admitting mistakes. We are, after all, only human. No one is perfect.

But he refused to budge. “I'm proud of the policies we put in place. I think they did the job we intended for them to do. And I'm not inclined to make any mea culpas,”"

You're allowed to both puke and have flaming diarrhea - simultaneously, if necessary - at this point. You're only human after all. Take your time. I'll wait . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . .. . . . . . . . .

Here's some more:

"When I asked him if he had any regrets in Iraq, he said, “I think we made exactly the right decisions.”

Purge it people. Purge it now. It's finger down the throat time, and you know it.

The odd thing here is that, as much as I've wallowed in the shit-strewn sphincters of the discourse with this post, Darth Cheney himself, with his soft, snake-tongued voice and his beady little stare, is actually more offensive than the basest insults I can throw at the guy.

I've always said that I picture Darth Cheney as more of a psychopath than a sociopath, because supposedly sociopaths know that what they're doing is wrong and do it anyway, whereas psychopaths appear to have no awareness of such things, and no remorse. This nauseating interview, and the article to which it lead, only reinforces that belief.

Psychopath Dick Cheney probably sleeps perfectly soundly at night; whereas I suspect that occasionally some really stupid demons may keep George W. awake at night, even as monstrously moronic as they may be.

There was a time in my life when I considered a devil-may-care attitude that rebels against public opinion as worth emulating. I once considered it bold and trend-setting to say: "I don't care what people think." But as Cheney apparently makes crystal-clear in his new book, In My Time "not giving a shit about what all y'all think" ain't exactly what you're looking for in leadership skills for a democracy. Such a perspective may not be such a bad thing from a friend, collaborator, or fellow artist in some cases. But nah, it's not really what you're looking for at the highest levels of an elected leadership . . . they're pretty much supposed to care what giant swaths of the population thinks.

Cheney's book will be coming out soon and it looks like he's going to be crawling out from the lowest depths of Hell's sewer a lot in the next few weeks. If nothing else, it should give us all a healthy reminder of what happens when the rich and powerful are allowed to run amok in a self-aggrandizing binge of war, torture, and greed.

Here's hoping that Darth Cheney's re-emergence from his undisclosed location will remind Americans what the GOoPers are all about, as we sail toward the rough waters of the 2012 elections.

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.