Category: Politics

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Quote of the Day

"The universe has to move forward. Pain and loss, they define us as much as happiness or love. Whether it's a world or a relationship. Everything has its time. And everything ends." ~ Sarah Jane Smith, Doctor Who School Reunion

Sorry for the kind of depressing quote. Just thinking about our country. More than even during the horrific Bush years (when I started blogging) I believe we are witnessing the decline and fall of the United States, and it saddens me to see what we've become.

"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity." ~ William Butler Yeats

We may be able to slow the process down somewhat by making good, progressive choices in November, but I really have no hope that we'll be able to reverse course completely. This is not the dream of the 21st Century that we were presented with as children…

Where is that man in the blue box when you need him?

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Quote of the Day

"The radical religionists have confused 'freedom of religion' with the notion that means they can force everybody else to comply with their own religious tenets and rules.

The Christianists don't just want prayer in schools. They want teachers to lead the kids only in prayers to Jesus the Lord God and Savior and his angry vengeful sky-daddy.

They don't just want their Christmas crèches and Ten Commandments plaques in public spaces. They want those to be the only things allowed.

They don't just want their particular definitions of what is and is not a valid government-recognized marriage or child adoption to be codified into law. They want all other faiths' definitions—including non-religious secularism—to be outlawed.

Once again, it's projection. What they accuse others of advocating—special rights and all that twaddle—is what they themselves want. In short, to make everybody—including those who do not belong to, adhere to, or believe in their religion to have to follow their rules anyway." — Becca Morn, commenting on this post at AMERICAblog.

BRA-VO!

 

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Hypocrisy, Thy Name is NOM


Newt Gingrich would like to remind everybody that that marriage is between one man and one woman whom you abandon riddled with cancer on her hospital bed while you fuck the shit out of your mistress whom you later marry and cheat on with a third woman while screaming with Godly moral outrage about the infidelities of the president.

And NOM's Brian Brown, one of the nation's leading "defenders of marriage," an allegedly devout Catholic for whom divorce is forbidden, is raising money to make Gingrich president. Brian Brown: "Everybody is allowed to fuck anybody they want, married or not, as long as they tell Jeebus: 'My bad!' after every adulterous encounter. But not homos. Definitely not homos. They belong to Satan."

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Quote of the Day

"Newt Gingrich's mind is in love with itself. It has persuaded itself that it is brilliant when it is merely promiscuous. This is not a serious mind. Gingrich is not, to put it mildly, a systematic thinker. His mind is a jumble, an amateurish mess lacking impulse control. He plays air guitar with ideas, producing air ideas. He ejaculates concepts, notions and theories that are as inconsistent as his behavior. He didn't get whiplash being a serial adulterer while impeaching another serial adulterer, a lobbyist for Freddie Mac while attacking Freddie Mac, a self-professed fiscal conservative with a whopping Tiffany's credit line, and an anti-Communist Army brat who supported the Vietnam War but dodged it." – Maureen Dowd

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Hypocrisy, Thy Name is Republican

From Down With Tyranny:

Tiny little North Carolina fascist Patrick McHenry still hasn't been officially outed—even if everyone in DC knows he's a raging closet case. Neither have Trent Franks (R-AZ), Adrian Smith (R-NE), Miss McConnell (R-KY), David Dreier (R-CA), Mark Kirk (R-IL) nor even flamboyant DC men-about-town Lindsay Graham and Aaron Schock… or a dozen other furtive, frightened GOP dick-lovers. Republicans who have been caught red handed and dragged out of the closet, like boy rapist Mark Foley (R-FL), Jim Mcrery (R-LA), Larry Craig (R-ID), Ed Schrock (R-VA), Robert Bauman (R-MD), and Jim Kolbe (R-AZ), have been forced out of Congress and into retirement. But no matter how frequently the media covers these tragic outings of virulently anti-gay right-wing closet case phonies, the cavalcade of clowns never seems to end. This week, stage center moved to Arapahoe County, Colorado. Patrick Sullivan, once a major donor to homophobic fanatic Marilyn Musgrave's political career—and once the "straight as an arrow" fascist sheriff of Arapahoe County who—turns out to be a drug dealing boy chaser, like virtually EVERY Republican who runs around screaming how much they hate gays.

Former Arapahoe County Sheriff Patrick Sullivan's arrest in a meth-for-sex case left longtime law officers at a loss for words Wednesday, though court records paint a picture of a man who has been living a double life.

Sullivan, 68, remained behind bars in a jail that bears his name, accused of trading methamphetamine for sex with a man Tuesday, a transaction monitored by deputies working with a confidential informant. During a brief morning court appearance Wednesday, a judge doubled his bail to $500,000.

The arrest of the married father and grandfather sparked shock– even bewilderment– among longtime law officers.

…Wednesday evening, a man who owns a home in Centennial said Sullivan was a frequent visitor this year to the house, where he would consume drugs and have sex with young men living there.

He said Sullivan intimidated him.

"I couldn't get rid of these guys because this guy named Pat Sullivan said you are going to let them stay for free," Derek Hendrickson said. "He said I said they could stay for free and it would hold up in court, and said, 'Do you know who I am?'"

"He was telling me he has a jail named after him." … A search Tuesday night of Sullivan's home, conducted after both the former sheriff and his wife consented, led to the discovery of "a fairly large amount of adult homosexual pornography."

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Michelle Bachmann: Still a Stupid Cunt

From Alexandra Petri at the Washington Post:

Jane Schmidt, a student at Waverly High School, in Waverly, Iowa, recently asked Michele Bachmann, "Why can't same-sex couples get married?"

"They can get married," Bachmann responded, "but they abide by the same law as everyone else. They can marry a man if they're a woman. Or they can marry a woman if they're a man."

(In Iowa, same-sex marriage is the law, at least for now, but never mind that.)

She later expanded on this in a response to someone else: "Every American citizen has the right to avail themselves to marriage but they have to follow what the laws are. And the laws are you marry a person of the opposite sex."

Really?

This is the sound of a thousand heads hitting a thousand desks.

I'm glad Bachmann wasn't there for history. "Why can't Rosa Parks sit at the front of the bus?"

"She can sit," Bachmann would say. "She can sit at the back of the bus."

I'm glad she isn't my waiter. "Is there a vegetarian option?"

"The vegetarian option is steak," Bachmann would say, not blinking an eye.

"Is there a way for people in wheel chairs to access the sixth floor?"

"There's a way. They can take the stairs," Bachmann would say, still not blinking.

"There doesn't seem to be an option for Republicans to vote."

"Republicans can vote. They can vote Democrat like everyone else," Bachmann would say, blinking a little in confusion.

"I'd like to find a synagogue."

"There's a synagogue right here," Bachmann would say. "It's a church."

"Do you have apples?"

"Yes, I have oranges."

At first Bachmann's remark seemed like a peculiar thing to say, coming on the heels of her sensible remark that, "I think we have forgotten what true tolerance means. True tolerance means allowing people to express themselves and their beliefs."

But then it made sense.

As Bachmann would say, "We allow you to express different beliefs. You can express different beliefs that agree with us."

I'm glad she's here to keep things straight.

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Obama-Clinton 2012?

The Wall Street Journal speculates:

Paul Starr, co-editor of The American Prospect, a liberal-left magazine, has observed that 45 percent of the people who disapprove of Mr. Obama's performance view Mrs. Clinton favorably. It is fair to say that Mrs. Clinton's addition to the ticket would be a substantial gain for President Obama that he badly needs next November, since she is, as Mr. Starr notes, a member of the part of his administration that has the highest approval rating, and more important she has not at all been a part of the disastrous economic policies that have caused the Obama drop in popularity.

Even better for Election Day, she would gain support among older white voters, who did not support Mr. Obama very much in 2008. Mr. Starr also cites a Suffolk University Florida poll that shows that Mrs. Clinton on the Obama ticket would win Florida for the two of them, even if Sen. Marco Rubio is the Republican's vice presidential candidate. One more advantage: With Mrs. Clinton comes her husband, who would very much want to get his wife elected, and also might be interested in a position in the Obama-Clinton administration.

Put me down as a "Yes!"

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Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid.

I have a theory, and may the FSM help us all if it turns out to be right.

Pretty much everyone you speak to agrees that every member of the current crop of Republican wannabe Presidential contenders is unelectable, if not certifiably insane.

The GOP base may be dumber than a box of rocks, but let's face it: the Republican leadership is anything but. They're shrewd, underhanded, and as we have seen time and again, downright fucking evil.  They hate Obama and the ideals of our democracy with a burning passion, and aren't going to put anyone up against him who doesn't have a reasonable chance of winning the presidency in 2012, and none of members of the Republican Clown Car has a chance in hell of pulling that off.

My theory is that they're going to pull an "August Surprise" next year. They're going to roll out their true anointed one during the national convention, someone as ignorant and as malleable as their base, but with an outwardly agreeable personality that will appeal to the masses; someone  guaranteed of giving Obama a real run for his money.

Two names immediately come to mind, and both scare the living crap out of me: Sarah Palin and Jeb Bush. Yeah, yeah, neither one is supposedly interested in the job, but that doesn't mean shit. Remember Republicans lie. That's all they know how to do. So you can safely ignore what we're seeing now. It's nothing more than a diversion, a freak-filled circus sideshow existing only to make the chosen one all the more appealing to "mainstream" Republican and Independent voters when the time comes.

I hope I'm not right about this, because if it happens, our nation—already teetering on the edge of the the corporate/fascist abyss—will go right over. Hitler didn't have the technology or resources to succeed at this and Orwell's 1984 was 30 years premature. If we end up with another Republican president and Congress, you can kiss everything this country has supposedly stood for over the last 200 years goodbye.

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Enough is Enough!

There is a HEINOUS bill, House bill H.R. 3035—aka the "Mobile Informational Call Act Of 2011"—making its way through Congress right now, and it's going to affect every cell phone user in this country.  The bill aims to give telemarketers, bill collectors, and similar douchebags complete, unfettered access to your cell phone number.  If you aren't on an unlimited cell phone plan, this means that YOU will be charged for every minute these scum suckers can waste when calling you.

More importantly to the Congressional Vermin Hordes, passage of this bill will allow them to robocall us with "information" about why we should vote for them! How convenient! Hey, forget taxing the pigs on Wall Street a half of a percent more. Forget keeping the air and water in a non-poisonous state. Forget about the economy! To these "people" it's all about finding "new and innovative" ways to destroy the quality of our lives.

The bill was introduced by Republican Congresscretin Lee Terry of Nebraska, and all but one of the nine co-sponsors are also Republicans.  Quelle Surprise! So who, besides our "elected representatives" think this bill is a good idea?  The usual 1% suspects, of course: the Mortgage Bankers Association, the American Banking Association, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

But there is a new way of letting Congress know we've had enough: Reverse Robocall. If these Koch-suckers think that receiving robocalls is so great, perhaps it's time to turn the tables on them.

Tell ya what Mr./Ms. Congresscretin…how about you publish your cell phone numbers so your constituents (you know, the people who elected you to serve as their representative) can call you day and all night with some messages of their own? I know I've got some good ones for you and there's plenty more where those come from. I can't wait until some enterprising individual actually does start doing blast emails of the cell phone numbers of the members of The Amalgamated Asswipes Of Our Government Union, and providing daily updates for those numbers. The twisted morons in Washington would need to have their staffers devoted all their time to little more than providing them with a new cell phone number or a temporary cell phone every day. Probably nothing would bring Washington's incessant attacks on us to a screeching halt faster.

What do you think?

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So Much for That First Amendment Thing…

UC Davis Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi thinks this is the appropriate response to a peaceful sit-in.

The cops say they feared for their lives because of the crowd that was gathering around them. Seriously? Look at that photo. Look at this one:

What do you see? A dozen students on the ground looking at their feet, and some onlookers all holding up cameras at a respectable distance – you'll note the other cops aren't looking terribly worried. The cop casually saunters over and pepper sprays the people sitting down, which is odd since supposedly they were afraid of the people who were standing up.

It's obvious they weren't afraid of the crowd.  I mean, look at them!

But for the sake of their argument, let's say they were deathly afraid of all the cell phone cameras behind them, recording this brutality from 20 feet away. If they feared for their safety from the crowd surrounding them, then why didn't you pepper spray the crowd? Why would they turn around and spray a bunch of kids sitting on the ground, doing nothing except looking at their feet?

Here's another shot, taken right before the kids get pepper-sprayed. Notice how the cops are in fear for their lives from the very dangerous children sitting down quietly on the cement, doing absolutely nothing.

And here's another photo. These are the same kids who are being pepper sprayed in the photos above. Look at these kids. This is the scene that caused the police to "fear for their lives" and attack these kids. (Not the terrorist fist jabs.)

These are cops. They're trained in how to use their weapon with precision, and only when necessary. And we're to believe that these cops, in the heat of what appears to not be a very scary moment, accidentally attacked the people who weren't even threatening them? They used their weapon on the wrong crowd of people. This could have been their guns they were using. We've got cops who don't even know how to pick the right crowd of people to fire at. If they're this bad as cops, they should all be fired on the spot.

"If you look at the video you are going to see that there were 200 people in that quad," said UC Davis Police Chief Annette Spicuzza. "Hindsight is 20-20 and based on the situation we were sitting in, ultimately that was the decision that was made."

Spicuzza is a liar and should be fired. And 20/20 is just hindsight, it's about fifteen multi-million dollar lawsuits. And her job.

It is not a happy day at the UC Davis Facebook page.

The cop doing the pepper spraying has been identified:
Lieutenant John Pike
530-752-3989
japikeiii@ucdavis.edu

Feel free to let this neanderthal know how you feel. Twitter is alight with it.

There is clearly no justification for that this uniformed thug did. I wonder how the parents of those students feel after seeing this? Their children were holding a peaceful sit-in and they got pepper-sprayed. How do alumni feel? He's a university cop. UC Davis owns Pike's actions.

I'm sorry, but this has gone too far. This has happened in police department after police department across this country without repercussion. Our police look like the goons in Russia, China, and countries throughout the middle east—you know, the ones we're so intent on bringing democracy capitalism to.

UC Davis staff and administrators reportedly watched and did nothing while the police attacked. They didn't even offer to get medical help for the students afterwards. Take note kids, when you're trying to decide which school to attend, UC Davis probably isn't a good choice. And it's probably not a good place for alumni to donate money to, since money (or the withholding of same) seems to be the only thing that effects change in the world.

UCD paramedics later treated with saline the eyes of 11 protesters; two were taken to Sutter Davis Hospital. Nearby, one young woman sat on her knees, crying with her eyes shut and pink streaks of Pepto-Bismol and water running down her cheeks.

Kristin Koster, a post-doctoral lecturer, used a scarf dipped in another home remedy, Maalox and water, to help Dominic Gutierrez, who was barely able to open his eyes.

He was sprayed, he said, when he tried to shield others with his jacket.

Koster said that she was "horrified" by both the actions of police and the inaction of staff and administrators standing nearby who did not seek medical assistance for those hurt until asked.

UC Davis faculty members are now calling on university Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi to resign. Here's a brief except of the letter (read the entire thing here) that was submitted to the Chancellor by Nathan Brown, Associate Professor of English at UC Davis:

Without any provocation whatsoever, other than the bodies of these students sitting where they were on the ground, with their arms linked, police pepper-sprayed students. Students remained on the ground, now writhing in pain, with their arms linked.

What happened next?

Police used batons to try to push the students apart. Those they could separate, they arrested, kneeling on their bodies and pushing their heads into the ground. Those they could not separate, they pepper-sprayed directly in the face, holding these students as they did so. When students covered their eyes with their clothing, police forced open their mouths and pepper-sprayed down their throats. Several of these students were hospitalized. Others are seriously injured. One of them, forty-five minutes after being pepper-sprayed down his throat, was still coughing up blood.

This is what happened, Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi and Police Chief Annette Spicuzza. You are responsible for it. Lt. John Pike should be summarily fired and you should resign immediately.

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Our Fuck-You System of Government

From Ted Rall:

Anti-Occupy Crackdowns Highlight Lack of Services

Governments are supposed to fulfill the basic needs of their citizens. Ours doesn't pretend to try.

Sick? Too bad.

Can't find a job? Tough.

Broke? Can't afford rent? We don't give a crap.

Forget "e pluribus unum." We need a more accurate motto.

We live under a fuck you system.

Got a problem? The U.S. government has an all-purpose response to whatever ails you: fuck you.

During the '80s I drove a yellow taxi in New York. Then, as now, there were no public restrooms in the city. At 4 in the morning, with few restaurants or bars open, the coffee I drank to stay awake posed a significant challenge.

It was—it is—insane. People pee. People poop. As basic needs go, toilets are as basic as it gets. Yet the City of New York, with the biggest tax base of any municipality in the United States, didn't provide any.

So I did what all taxi drivers did. What they still do. I found a side street and a spot between two parked cars. It went OK until a cop caught me peeing under the old elevated West Side Highway, which later collapsed due to lack of maintenance. Perhaps decades of taxi driver urine corroded the support beams.

"You can't do that here," said the policeman.

"Where am I supposed to go?" I asked him. "There's aren't any restrooms anywhere in town."

"I know," he replied before going to get his summons book from his cruiser.

The old "fuck you." We create the problem, then blame you for the results.

I ran away.

In recent days American mayors have been ordering heavily armed riot police to attack and rob peaceful members of encampments allied with Occupy Wall Street.

Like NYC, which won't provide public restrooms but arrests public urinators, government officials and their media allies use their own refusal to provide basic public services to justify raids against Occupations.

In the middle of the night on November 15th NYPD goons stormed into Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan. They beat and pepper-sprayed members of Occupy Wall Street and destroyed the books in their library. Citing "unsanitary conditions," New York's billionaire mayor, Michael Bloomberg, then told reporters: "I have become increasingly concerned…that the occupation was coming to pose a health and fire safety hazard to the protesters and to the surrounding community."

Four days before the police attack The New York Times had quoted a city health department statement worrying about the possible spread of norovirus, vomiting, diarrhea and tuberculosis: "It should go without saying that lots of people sleeping outside in a park as we head toward winter is not an ideal situation for anyone's health."

So why don't they give the homeless some of the thousands of abandoned apartment units in New York?

Anyway, according to the Times: "Damp laundry and cardboard signs, left in the rain, have provided fertile ground for mold. Some protesters urinate in bottles, or occasionally a water-cooler jug, to avoid the lines at [the few] public restrooms."

Of course, there's an obvious solution: provide adequate bathroom facilities—not just for Occupy but for all New Yorkers. But that's off the table under New York's Fuck you system of government.

Doctors noted a new phenomenon called "Zuccotti cough." Symptoms are similar to those of "Ground Zero cough" suffered by 9/11 first responders.

Zuccotti is 450 feet away from Ground Zero.

Which brings to mind the fact that the collapse of the World Trade Center towers released 400 tons of asbestos into the air. It was never cleaned up properly. Could Occupiers be suffering the results of sleeping in a should-have-been-Superfund site for two months?

We'll never know. As under Bush, Obama's EPA still won't conduct a 9/11 environmental impact study.

Sick? Wanna know why? Fuck you.

One of the authorities' most ironic complaints about the Occupations is that they attract the mentally ill, drug users and habitually homeless.

To listen to the mayors of Portland, Denver and New York, you'd think the Occupiers beamed in bums and nutcases from outer space.

When mentally disabled people seek help from their government, they get the usual answer: Fuck you.

When people addicted to drugs—drugs imported into the U.S. under the watchful eyes of corrupt border enforcement officers—ask their government for help, they are turned away. Fuck you again.

When people who lost their homes because their government said "fuck you" to them rather than help turn to the same government to look for safe shelter, again they are told: "Fuck you."

And then, after days and years and decades of shirking their responsibility to provide us with such staples of human survival as places to urinate and defecate and sleep, and food, and medical care, our "fuck you" government has the amazing audacity to blame us, victims of their negligence and corruption and violence, for messing things up.

Which is why we are finally, at long last, starting to say "fuck you" to them.

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Dear Republicans

From the Great Orange Satan:

Republicans: We need to talk.

I know you and I don't see eye to eye on many things. We hang out with different crowds, we listen to different music, we have different interpretations of pretty much every event that has ever happened from the Big Bang onwards—but I'm worried about you. We, the whole of non-Republican America, are worried about you. Heck, I even know people in other countries that are worried about you.

You can be forgiven for Sarah Palin. I know that was mostly McCain's fault, and you didn't have a lot of say in that. His staff looked around for someone who they thought could better appeal to the base, and that's who they came up with. You should have been insulted by that, but I'll at least grant that it wasn't your decision to make, it was his.

But that was 2008, and this is 2012. And the decisions you've been making this time around are entirely up to you, and, well … let's just say that most of the rest of us are pretty disappointed in you right now.

Your first serious non-Palin flirtation of this election cycle was with Michele Bachmann. Really? You could choose from among the ranks of the entire conservative movement, and you said "yeah, Michele Bachmann, I guess." I don't mean to be cruel, but that's when most of us realized that this little ideological obsession of yours had turned into a full-fledged, self-destructive addiction. You'd gone and cracked, right then and there. I realize that you have to work with the candidates that present themselves, and not the ones you'd actually choose on your own, but Michele Bachmann was already known far and wide as, well, a crazy person. She's Palin, after Palin drank an entire bottle of whiskey and drove her car into the side of a DMV office. She doesn't have political beliefs so much as she has spasms; everything she disagrees with is elevated to the level of America-killing communist apocalypse. There's no volume control on that knob. Her sole area of expertise is in the area of hand-waving panic over things she knows nothing about: Ask her for the barest details and she's dumb as a post.

So fine, that was the first one. First loves are often not well-planned things, though; there's some leeway there. Let's look at the rest of your candidates.

Rick Perry.

No, let's just pause there for a moment. Rick. Effing. Perry.

You're pulling our legs, right?

Let's all remember that it was your punditry, your own establishment figures, that pushed hard to get Rick Perry in the race. This wasn't a case of a candidate foisting themselves upon you, this is a guy you actually picked to represent conservatism. Holy Freaking Hell, Republicans, what is that about? Let's look at the attributes he brings to the campaign trail. First: dumb as a post. I know I just said that about Bachmann, but Perry forced us all to reconsider that, because compared to Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann looks like the freaking Einstein of conservatism. You know, if you folks believed in atoms and such. If Bachmann is as dumb as a post, then Rick Perry is as dumb as the dirt you dug out of the ground to make the hole to put the post in. He has an I.Q. 10 points lower than composted leaves. We're talking about a guy whose convictions run so very deep that, on a good day, he's lucky if he even remembers what they are.

Oh yeah, I'm going there. I don't care how bad a debater you are, if you say that as president the first thing you'll do is abolish these three federal agencies that are wrecking the country, but you can't actually remember what the hell they are, you are stone-cold stupid.

Which brings up the second possibility: That if you can't remember these three things you earnestly believe in, perhaps you don't actually believe anything at all, and are just saying whatever your handlers told you to say. I have to admit, that might make for a better representative of conservatism: It worked out just fine for George W. Bush. Bush never cared about a damn thing, he just left everything to Cheney, or Rumsfeld, or Rove. Economy? Yeah, whatever. War with who? Sure, let's go for it. Freedomz and stuff.

Make no mistake here, I haven't ever forgiven you for Bush. Listening to that dimwit speak for five minutes should have convinced you what a mistake it would be to let that barely functioning manchild play with the entire free world like it was his personal Jenga game, and his first few public appearances were when you and I parted ways for-freaking-ever. But Perry, now? Rick Perry, who is the dumber version of George Bush? The less principled version? The less eloquent version? If that's who your leading pundits wanted in the race, if that's the be-all, end-all conservative savior (emphasis on the end-all, I guess), then who is it going to be after eight more years? A goddamn vase full of geraniums?

It makes you look bad. It makes you look dumb. It makes you look like, well, like a party so thoroughly detached from their mental capacities that they would actually look up to a guy like Rick Perry as being their brain trust.

So Rick Perry launched himself with a fanfare, but was last seen plummeting back through the atmosphere, hair-shield glowing red from the heat, his last words a sheepish "oops." Bold move, there, and so Herman Cain is your next big thing. Let's just skip the whole part about him possibly being a sexual predator. I think you're probably wrong to dismiss those allegations: The list of politicians who have repeatedly denied such-and-such only to be thoroughly disgraced when such-and-such was proven to be true is at this point a very, very long one, and I think your heart is going to be broken on this, but let's talk about something less contentious. Let's talk about "9-9-9" for a minute, shall we?

You know what one of those 9s stands for? A national sales tax. Now, he explicitly points that out during every single goddamn debate, so if you didn't know that, it's time for a whole separate conversation, so I'm going to assume that you, everyone in the Republican base, are fully aware of it.

Let's reflect on that. The one absolute in the modern Republican party, the one and only principle, the single Great Rule of Modern Conservatism that may never be breached, on penalty of dark, unspeakable Cthulhu-administered punishments, is no new taxes. Or old taxes. Or half-new, half-old taxes. No taxes of anything, ever. If you raise taxes, Zombie Reagan will rise up from the grave and punch you straight in the mouth. If you even talk about raising taxes, members of your party will start digging up Zombie Reagan so that he can get a good head start.

So here comes Mr. Pizza Executive Guy, and the lynchpin of his entire brilliant non-functional monster-deficit-creating economic plan is to institute a nine percent national sales tax on every damn thing you buy, ever. From cars to carrots, you're going to pay a new tax of nine cents on every dollar, in addition to all the sales taxes you might pay now. In exchange for that, you get the grand deal of also paying a nine percent income tax no matter what your current tax bracket. (Don't make enough to pay taxes? You do now, suckers.) For everyone but the top of the income scale, it's a huge increase in taxes. And the less you make (are you retired? unemployed? gainfully employed, but simply not rich?), the worse off you are.

Here's my question. How is it that the party that would rather put all of government through a wood chipper than raise taxes one thin dime finds themselves enthralled with a guy proposing the biggest, most regressive, most intrusive possible new tax? Nine percent of every purchase you ever make, you're not only fine with that, but you clap and shout and say "hell yeah, sign all of us small-government, keep-yer-hands-off-our-wallet conservatives up for that!"

What, are you stupid? The current choice you're trying to mull over is between a possible sexual assaulter who wants to institute a nine percent national tax on everything you buy, and a guy so dumb that he'd actually sign onto that tax as a good idea if someone slipped him a little blue notecard telling him so.

That's not a political party. That's a alcohol-fueled dare gone horribly wrong.

More…

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You Might Be a Republican If…

You think doing these things result in a better society:

  • Elimination of EPA
  • Elimination of Education
  • Elimination of Energy Dept
  • Elimination of Commerce Dept.
  • Elimination of Planned Parenthood
  • Elimination of NPR
  • Privatizing Social Security
  • Privatizing Medicare
  • Lower taxes on the rich, raise taxes on the poor
  • Trying to strip Union Worker Rights
  • Trying to criminalize abortion and miscarriages
  • Executive orders to mandate 12 yr old girls take HPV vaccines.
  • Emergency Financial Manager Law that allows the state to fire city elected officials and install a dictator.
  • Running fake democratic candidates in Recalls

Yeah, Republicans sure do run on a platform for creating a better society! /sarcasm.

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Asshat of the Day – Randy Thomasson

From Joe.My.God.

"This is training up an immoral army of soldiers to attack real marriage, the natural family, and to rope more children into sexual darkness. 'Queer studies' teaches you can do anything sexual you want without negative consequences or moral accountability to God, and that you have no ability to choose whether or not to engage in sexual behaviors. This philosophy essentially turns man into an animal, but less than an animal, because beasts follow God's natural order of sexuality." – Save California douchebag Randy Thomasson, saying that Queer Studies courses are nothing more than "gay boot camp."

In the above-linked article, Thomasson goes on to repeat the familiar lie that all gay people were molested as children. Or hate their mothers. Or something.