Just a Little Taste...

I knew that the wingnut media would be falling all over itself to try to distance their actions from the Arizona shootings. But their protest tend to sound kind of tinny when you consider this list (from the terrific Skippy the Bush Kangaroo blog):

rush limbaugh: "i tell people don't kill all the liberals. leave enough so we can have two on every campus – living fossils – so we will never forget what these people stood for."
senator phil gramm: "we're going to keep building the party until we're hunting democrats with dogs."
rep. james hansen on bill clinton: get rid of the guy. impreach him, censure him, assassinate him."
john derbyshire intimated in the national review that because chelsea clinton had "the taint," she should "be killed."
ann coulter: "we need to execute people like john walker in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed, too."
ann coulter: "my only regret with timothy mcveigh is he did not go to the new york times building."
bill o'reilly: "if those clowns over at the liberal radio network, we could incarcerate them immediately. will you have that done, please? send over the fbi and just put them in chains."
radio host glenn beck said he was "thinking about killing michael moore" and pondered whether "i could kill him myself, or if i would need to hire somebody to do it," before concluding: "no, i think i could. i think he could be looking me in the eye, you know, and i could just be choking the life out -- is this wrong?"
fresno city council member jerry duncan in 2003 wrote in an email that police should "cap" members of the human relations commission and wrote, "if i had one dirty bomb and i could eliminate all the liberals in fresno at once."

Still want to believe the wingnut denials that they have any responsibility at all in this tragic shooting? Try the extensive list at Orcinus from back in 2007.

When is Terrorism Not Terrorism?

When is terrorism not terrorism? That's today's pop quiz.

Here are just a few names to give you a hint: Timothy McVeigh, Eric Rudolph, Scott Roeder, Byron Williams, Jared Loughner.

The answer, as far as the media is concerned, as far as the Teabaggers are concerned, as far as the spewing blowholes over at Clusterfox "News" and wingnut radio are concerned, terrorism is not terrorism unless Muslims are behind it. "Normal" people, i.e. "white" people, don't do terrorism. They do "isolated incidents" of personal violence... Like blowing up buildings, killing abortion providers and shooting members of congress.

As much as they are in denial over the fact, the hate-filled rhetoric of the vicious pundits of the plutocracy has had an effect.

They have been falling all over themselves for the last 24 hours or so trying to take the heat and the focus and the spotlight off of them. Bullshit! They are as culpable as they would have been if they had physically superglued the Glock into Loughner's hand, curled his finger around the trigger and shoved him towards the crowd.

That said, I don't know what can be done about it. We still do have free speech in this country (sort of) and I'm not comfortable with the government trying to silence them... But maybe if they got a little of their own medicine, it might give them a wakeup call.

No, I am not advocating violence against them. That would be wrong. But I will admit that I have a serious moral failing in that I would unavoidably experience just a bit of schadenfreude if someone kneecapped Glenn Beck, if someone curbstoned Rush Limbaugh...

I'm just sayin'...

Open Season on Democrats?

I got home tonight to the news that Arizona Democratic Congressional Representative Gabrielle Giffords had been shot in the head at a public event.

Apparently she is going to survive (I don't know how...being shot in the head seems like a pretty serious thing), but that's not true for six others at the scene, including a Federal judge.

There is apparently no proof yet that the shooting was political, according to authorities, but come on...

I'm willing to bet my next paycheck that this asshole is an avid listener to the Glenn Beck program. If not him, then Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, etc etc etc. And I'm also willing to bet that he watches Clusterfox "News". Tragically, the loudmouths of the right have lowered the bar on reasonable political discourse so fucking much that it seems a rational course of action to kill a politician if s/he doesn't agree with the Unholy Trio.

The wingnut media have created such an atmosphere of hate in this country that I am afraid that this is not the last attempt on the life of a Democratic office holder.

After all, Sarah Palin had Giffords in the crosshairs during last fall's election. In the crosshairs. Everybody knows what that means, and just because the Killa from Wasilla now says that the shooting is "tragic", she's the one who put Giffords in the crosshairs in the first place. Maybe Sarah thinks that the phrase is a metaphor, but she has to know that her base is firmly planted in the knuckledragging set who wouldn't know a metaphor if it, metaphorically, slapped them in the face.

I used to live in Cochise County, Arizona, and if I still lived there, I would have actively campaigned for Gifford. Would that have put me in the crosshairs as well?

Maybe. But for sure this shooting -- and killing -- will create a chilling effect on the next election. After all, who is going to want to run for office knowing that if you are a liberal, you are 1,000 times more likely to be assassinated than if you run as a Teabagger.

When was the last time you learned that a political assassin was a "liberal"?

And there's an additional sad note to this, and that is Giffords isn't all that liberal. She is, in fact, a "blue dog" Democrat. Not that I blame her much for that -- it was probably the only way she could get elected in that largely conservative district.

The Four Freedoms 70 Years Later

Today is the 70th anniversary of Franklin D. Roosevelt's Four Freedoms speech:

I wonder what old Frank D. would have to say about the current crop of Crypto-Fascist Rethugs in Congress.

Plenty, I'll bet, and none of it good.

That's in the Constitution?

Today the House of Representatives is reading aloud the Constitution of the United States.

Of course it is political stuntery of the first order, but maybe ... just maybe ... they will learn something during the course of it. Most of them probably have never even seen it, let alone read it, and I can imagine the shocked faces when some of its provisions are vocalized:

Preamble:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Promote the general welfare? Is that why the wingnuttery is squeezing its butt cheeks together over the "unconstitutionality" of the Health Care Law? Is that why they want to get rid of government regulation, the environmental and consumer protection laws, etc etc etc?

Article I Section 8
The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States...
To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water...
To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.

Congress is the entity with the power to declare war. That means that our misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan are being done illegally. As was our losing proposition to "bring democracy" to Vietnam. And they are supposed to be making all laws about stuff, not the president making "signing statements" (are you listening, Baby Doc Bush?) that, in essence and in practice, "make" laws.

Article I Section 9
The privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.

Tell that to the several hundred prisoners still wasting away in places like Guantánamo. Tell that to the other "enemy noncombatants" who are existing outside the bounds of civilized government. We might have been attacked, but we were certainly not "invaded".

Article II Section 1
[Duties of the President] Before he enter on the Execution of his Office, he shall take the following Oath or Affirmation:
"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

Note there is no "so help me god" at the end of that oath or affirmation. That was added by unwritten convention due to political pandering to the 18th Century equivalent of the Religious Right.

Article V Section 3
Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.
The Congress shall have power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted.

It's easy for the wingnuttery to throw around "The T Word" when discussing Obama or various members of the administration or Democrats in Congress, but here's the strict definition.

Article VI
The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.

Got that, congressman? No religious test. That's as clear a statement of the Original Intent of the Founders on whether or not this is a "Christian Nation" and that we do have a wall of separation between church and state.

Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

See above. Wall of separation. Period. You can also legally show up at a political rally for Bush wearing an anti-Bush t-shirt. Supposedly.

Amendment IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

No wiretaps of citizens' phones, no snooping into our personal lives, no arbitrary actions on the part of the cops who are notorious in certain geographical areas for pulling innocent people over on suspicion of DWB (Driving While Black).

Amendment VI
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.

Again, tell that to the Guantánamo detainees. Tell that to Wikileaker Bradley Manning. Tell that to Muslim former Army chaplain James Yee.

So if the members of the House of Representatives can pull themselves away from their cell phones and keep from sexting the teenage House pages long enough to actually listen, they might learn something.

But I doubt it. These people mostly claim to have read their holy bible, and they seem to ignore completely all of that loosey-goosey "love thy neighbor" "turn the other cheek" neo-hippie garbage spewing from the mouth of their actual living god incarnate (i.e., Joshua bar-Joseph, aka "Jesus Christ").

So I take it back. It won't do them any good, and it's just a waste of time that could be better spent by the Rethugs doing what they do best, "The People's Work": Rolling back health care reform, cutting Social Security, and impeaching Barack Obama.

Michelle Bachmann? Really?

Just what we need, another batshit crazy presidential candidate:

“Rep. Michele Bachmann is beginning to consider a presidential run, according to close congressional aides,” the Minneapolis Star Tribune writes. “As part of that effort, the Minnesota Republican is traveling to the early caucus state of Iowa on Jan. 21 to confer with state GOP leaders and address a group of conservative tax activists… While Bachmann has made no firm decision about a White House bid in 2012, ‘nothing is off the table,’ press aide Sergio Gor told the Star Tribune Wednesday, confirming an earlier ABC News report.

When someone from your own staff acts all coy like this about your plans to run for president, you just know that she is going to be running.

Good.

Finally, some much-needed if unintentional humor injected into the presidential race. I can't wait for her and Half-governor Palin to start yapping at each other during the first primary debate.

In the words of several characters in a memorable episode of Seinfeld, "Mmmmm, cat fight!"

When it's all over and they are shown up for the moron losers that they really are, maybe they can enter the Witless Protection program. Neither of them should have the slightest problem getting in.

New: The Day Count & a Bumpersticker

If you look in the right-hand column, you'll see a new feature, the Day Count.

I used to be a propeller head/computer geek when I was gainfully employed (before I retired and became an elderly shut-in on a fixed income) and the other day I was looking through some old JavaScript stuff that I wrote when I was working.

This count-up/count-down script caught my eye, and while I wrote it originally for something else entirely (having to do with Unemployment Insurance), I immediately realized that I could adapt it to another purpose.

Which is what I did. Every day you will see a couple of new numbers, one showing the number of days that John Boner Boehner has been Speaker of the House, and asking the rhetorical question, "Where are all of the jobs?"; the other showing the number of days until the next general election, when we will all concentrate on getting out The Base to vote out the Rethug bastards and put the reins of government back in the hands of Liberals.

Towards that end, I also created a new bumpersticker:


Feel free to make one of your own and use it yourself, but I disclaim any responsibility for whatever might happen to you as a result. People don't fuck with me, generally, because they know I am possibly-crazy Vietnam veteran wearing on his Jeep another bumper sticker that tends to keep them at bay.

Milestone?

Today is some kind of milestone:

The approximate circumference of this planet in miles? 24,000

The number of days that I have been living on it? 24,000

So this means that if I could have walked just one mile a day in the same direction for my whole life, I would have ended up right back where I started.

I don't know why I even know this, or why I think it's so cool to proclaim it like this.

Maybe I need to work on this in therapy.

And BTW, there are 24 hours in a day and 24 bottles of beer in a full case.

Coincidence? I don't think so...

Homeless Guy With a Million-Dollar Voice

You really can't judge a book by it's cover. Just take a listen to this guy:

If he doesn't get a boatload of radio-voice job offers, then there really is something wrong with this country.

Study Shows I'm a Liberal Because of My Brain

Here's some interesting news. A recent study has found that there are some very basic structural and information processing differences between the brains of liberals and conservatives:

In recent years, researchers have been trying to determine whether our political opinions—pro-life or pro-choice? Republican or Democrat?—are guided by fundamental differences between the minds of conservatives and liberals. A number of studies suggest that conservatives think in more structured and stable ways, while liberals reason more flexibly, changing their beliefs as they take new experiences into account.
. . .
The authors conclude that the liberals’ brains were more sensitive to how accurate their ongoing responses were, and were more likely to adapt to changing demands. Conservatives’ brains, on the other hand, might be better equipped for tasks that require a more fixed response style. It remains unclear whether this difference in brain activity is the cause or a consequence of liberal vs. conservative thinking. That is, scientists don’t know whether these brain differences are innate or develop through years of thinking in a certain way. So far, researchers have found no relationship between political orientation and a variety of heritable traits, suggesting that liberalism and conservatism may not be genetically determined.

I was raised in a politically liberal and religiously secular family, and we came by it naturally: On my father's side there were Agrarian Socialists from the sharecropper dirt farms of Oklahoma, and on my mother's side there were Wobblies from the logging camps of the Great Northwest. Neither of my parents would ever be caught dead voting Republican, but aside from voting in every election, they weren't politically active and downplayed by reticence as much as they could the radical past of their families -- but who could blame them, really, since we are talking about the early 1950s, the heyday of the House Unamerican Activities Committee, McCarthyism and witch hunts.

The topic of the unlikely existence of a mythically ethereal being sometimes known as "god" never came up.

So when it came time for me to rebel, I started positing myself as a self-described Republican, pretty much just to piss them off.

In my own defense, however, this was the age of the "Liberal Republican" -- people such as Tom McCall, Mark Hatfield, Charles Percy and Nelson Rockefeller, none of whom would be welcome in today's Rethug party -- so I didn't have to swerve so far to the right as to support the 1964 pre-enlightened version of Barry Goldwater.

About that time I also found myself a member of a religious cult. It's a long and disgusting story, and a part of my life I'd just as soon forget about. None of my closest friends -- except for those lifelong buddies who know about it and accept me anyway -- even know about it, and I'd like to keep it that way. I won't name the cult (you would recognize it immediately) and I managed to work my way out of it in about a year, but I still look back on it with embarrassment.

The only time I am willing to talk about it is when I happen to run into another former member of the cult, and even then I'm a little circumspect about discussing it. But they, like me, experienced the attempted humiliation, the discomfort, the shunning, the alienation of being "churched" (which actually ought to be called "un-churched" or "dis-churched"; it happens when you leave the cult and you are consequently anathema to your former "friends" still in the cult because you are now in thrall to Satan and have embraced your new status as a Son of Perdition).

So where I am going with all of this? Even though I was a professed Republican and a member of a religious cult, all the while it just didn't feel right. It just wasn't who I was -- and not who I am now.

I'm reminded of the Seinfeld episode in which George Constanza gets back together with his ex-girlfriend who became, briefly, a lesbian. When Jerry asked him about it, George said, "it didn't take."

And that was it for me. It just didn't take. And that's because my brain was hard-wired to be a liberal.

This study shows that this is true.

Filibuster Reform Petition

Like most other reality-based carbon-based life forms in this country, I want to see some reform of the US Senate filibuster rules.

The Rethugs have filibustered a record number of times (203 since 2007) but you'd never know how obstructionist they really have been because all they've had to do is threaten to do it. No more of the Jimmy Stewart-like thespian tour de force we saw in Mister Smith Goes to Washington.

Well, that needs to change. When someone is filibustering, the American people need know that. They need to be able to switch on C-SPAN and watch them making a fool of themselves. Can you imagine what weak-assed bumbling arguments they could try to articulate concerning, for example, their opposition to the bill to help First Responders?

To that end, please consider signing the petition over at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Yeah, after you sign you'll be pleaded with to send in some campaign cash, but hey, after the Citizens United decision, you already know that until we finally get publicly-financed campaigns, politics isn't gonna be cheap.

I Miss Alan Grayson Already

Here, in case you didn't see it the first thousand times it went viral, is his speech on the floor of Congress in which he explains the Rethug Health Care Plan:

I really hope that we haven't seen the last of Alan Grayson. And I have a sneaking suspicion that we haven't. We need a lot more straight-shooting take-no-prisoners bona fide liberals in the public arena, and I don't think Grayson is one to hide his light under a bushel.

Snarlin' Arlen's Valedictory Address

I have never been a fan of Arlen Spector, what with his life-long Republicanism until he had that cynical "deathbed conversion" to the Dems when it was obvious that he couldn't win the 2010 Republican primary.

In case we forget, he was also, as counsel for the Warren Commission, the primary author of and chief cheerleader for the infamous -- and impossible -- Single Bullet Theory that held, against all of the evidence, that one single bullet, allegedly fired by Lee Harvey Oswald from a defective weapon, traveled right through JFK apparently without resistance, and then went on to a second career, driving through the chest and several body parts of Texas governor John Connolly, causing numerous wounds, and finally ending up lodged in his thigh. And that it somehow miraculously remained in an almost-pristine and visibly undamaged condition, even though the bullet fragments in Connolly's thigh were proof -- buried under Big John's skin -- that this was impossible.

Nevertheless, here is his complete farewell address (in two parts) -- which he stresses is not a farewell address -- in which among other things he slams both his erstwhile Rethug colleagues and the rightwing mouthbreathing Rethug knuckledraggers on the Supreme Court.

So Arlen, exactly where was all this honesty and doubt and criticism over the last half-century -- and especially the last decade -- when you had every opportunity to voice these concerns?

Nevertheless, here's Snarlin' Arlen at his best:

President Palin? Don't Scoff -- It's Possible

As much fun as it is to contemplate the political curb-stomping that Barack Obama would likely administer to Half-Governor Sarah Palin if she became the Rethug nominee, it could turn out to be one of those "be careful what you ask for because you just might get it" things.

I'm as eager as anyone else with half a brain to see Palin get her ass kicked in a general election, but we anticipate that particular matchup at our peril.

If she actually managed to claw and snarl and lie her way to the top of the heap to become Obama's opponent in the 2012 general election, she just might pull it off and take all the marbles.

Anything can happen: All it would take would be another Iranian-hostage-type situation like the one that destroyed Jimmy Carter's presidency and ushered Saint Ronald into the Offal Office. Or the Rethugs, with the enabling tactics of their sycophantic lackeys and servile toadies in the CPM/SCLM*, could manufacture out of whole cloth some "scandal" -- Obama is a child molester, Obama is a rapist, Obama is a ________ (fill in the blank with your own heinous crime) -- that would sway enough of the Moron-American voting bloc to vote against Obama and for her.

Keep in mind that a December poll pitting her against Obama was, in the grand scheme of things, pretty shocking: A full 40% supported her, vs. only 48% for Obama. That seems like a landslide, but if I have my math right, a shift of only 5% from Obama to Palin would hand her the presidency on a meat platter.

And if that happens, I really do have to get out. I'm way too visible on the left side of the spectrum, what with my membership on the National Advisory Council of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, my long-time membership in the ACLU and my left-wing political and anti-war activism. And of course, this blog.

If I am not already on a new Rethug "enemies list", it's not for lack of trying.

----

[* CPM/SCLM = Capitalist Pig Media/So Called Liberal Media]

Book of the Month: The Grapes of Wrath

Most of the members of my father's extended family were Oklahoma sharecroppers for several generations, until the deadly combination of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl devastation of the 1930s drove them off the land and to the west, where they would face a new brand of poverty, humiliation and starvation in California, Oregon and Washington.

My new book of the month is The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, which tells in harrowing detail the plight of "Okie" Dust Bowl refugees in their flight to what they hopefully but erroneously thought would be greener pastures, oranges free for the picking off of trees, high wages and lots of work.

Reading it, for me, is like reading a biography of my own family. But the book is far more than that, and it's a necessary reminder of the kind of society that the Teabaggers and the everything-for-the-rich Republicans want to take us back to. It's not a pretty sight, but I think periodically the rest of us need to be reminded of those "good old days" that they want to see come around again.

No one can read this book without getting pissed off at a country that would allow this kind of thing to happen.

BONUS: While you are reading The Grapes of Wrath, I recommend popping this great Woody Guthrie CD into your player and listening to it. It's Dust Bowl Ballads, a terrific compilation of songs that also describe the hell that was the 1930s flight of the Dust Bowl Refugees.

Both John Steinbeck and Woody Guthrie made the trip west along with the migrant worker "Okies" they wrote about, which is why both of these works have that distinctive ring of truth about them that you just can't make up. I am a writer--trust me on this.

Since my father had been untimely ripped from his childhood, the draw of Oklahoma was strong in him, as it often is in those who suffer from a sudden dislocation in their youth. So in 1950 he moved back to NE Oklahoma, dragging me and my mother along with him. We spent five years on a dairy farm near Bristow, until the draconian agricultural policies of Ezra Taft Benson, Dwight Eisenhower's secretary of agriculture (who was later elevated to the lofty perch of "Prophet, Seer and Revelator" of the Moron Mormon Church), drove us into poverty once more and we were forced to again abandon the land and move west. While it wasn't close to the great migration of the 30s, it was personally disruptive to me, as it had once been to my father.

With I think the same motivations that once drove my father back to the state of his birth and childhood, I managed to make several trips back over the years. But I never even considered moving back there. Oklahoma had changed, and so had I. In a state that in the first two decades of the 20th Century had elected a huge number of Agrarian Socialists to office, Oklahoma managed to drive itself as far to the right as it could, ridiculously culminating in this year's ballot initiative that amended the state constitution to prohibit the establishment of Sharia Law(!) in the state. As if that was a problem. But what can you expect from a voting public -- part of the Moron-American Voting Bloc --that is willing to elect a professional dickhead and crypto-Fascist like Tom Coburn to the US Senate?

Anyway, The Grapes of Wrath and Dust Bowl Ballads: Get them, read one and listen to the other. You will not be sorry.

My Anthem for the Next Two Years

Here's Leonard Cohen's stirring Democracy:

(You can read the lyrics here.)

This song ought to be required listening for every politician, instead of that stupid-ass lame-brain teabagger stunt to read the US Constitution aloud before every session of Congress.

BTW, why do we have to rely on Canadian singer-songwriters for progressive/radical commentary songs (Bruce Cockburn is another one) to get our blood running? I'm just wondering...

Holiday Stress

I get it every year, but for some reason it's worse this year than it ever has been.

Maybe it's the bullshit that's happening in Washington DC, maybe something else, but I'm just going to shut down until after the holidays.

I'd like to just disappear into the desert until the New Year, but we don't have a warm desert anywhere nearby, and it's too far to drive to get to the Mojave and The Slabs.

Last year we escaped to Hawaii for a couple of weeks, but we spent all of our traveling money on our trip to France, and now we are stuck in the wet winter of western Washington.

Everybody, have a great holiday and I'll see you after the New Year.

--The F Man

Anybody Get the "I'm Tired" Email Yet?

As I've said before, I'm on some pretty oddball mailing lists, and one of the things that came to me last week was what is apparently a viral email essay written by a guy named Robert Hall (and no, it's not the actor from CSI, even though it purports to be) who is allegedly a Marine Corps veteran and five-term Massachusetts state senator.

It starts out with the title "I'm 63 and I'm Tired", and then it gets into the nitty-gritty:

I'm 63. Except for one semester in college when jobs were scarce and a six-month period when I was between jobs, but job-hunting every day, I've worked hard since I was 18. Despite some health challenges, I still put in 50-hour weeks, and haven't called in sick in seven or eight years. I make a good salary, but I didn't inherit my job or my income, and I worked to get where I am. Given the economy, there's no retirement in sight, and I'm tired. Very tired.
I'm tired of being told that I have to "spread the wealth" to people who don't have my work ethic. I'm tired of being told the government will take the money I earned, by force if necessary, and give it to people too lazy to earn it.
I'm tired of being told that I have to pay more taxes to "keep people in their homes." Sure, if they lost their jobs or got sick, I'm willing to help. But if they bought Mc Mansions at three times the price of our paid-off, $250,000 condo, on one-third of my salary, then let the left-wing Congress-critters who passed Fannie and Freddie and the Community Reinvestment Act that created the bubble help them with their own money.

And it goes on and on with anti-Islamic and racist screeds and a bunch of phony-assed I-pulled-myself-up-by-my-own-bootstraps kind of crap.

You may, if you wish, see the whole thing over at Snopes, whose take on it is that it is true (that Robert Hall said it) but that it was sometimes wrongly attributed to the actor guy Robert Hall who plays the coroner on CSI.

The list that this was sent to is mostly Vietnam veterans of the Rethug-Asshole stripe, but there are a couple of liberals besides me on it and one of them responded to this crap with his own lambaste of the Glenn Beck/Bill Orally/Faux News gobbling morons who believe this shit.

Which, of course, then prompted a flurry of "If you don't like it here why don't you get out you fucking commie!" responses, with North Korea pretty much heading the list of potential new homelands for us commie-nazi-socialist-atheist-pinko liberals.

Naturally I couldn't just sit by and do nothing (but you knew that already). Here is my response to the list:

I have a simple question: Why does this joker claims that the economy is so bad he can't retire, if he's worked every day of his life and owns outright a condo worth 250k?
A lot of people, me among them, have retired and are doing fine on what I suspect is a lot less retirement income than this Robert Hall has available to him.
I suspect that this whole piece of raving is a little long on exaggeration and a little short on actual facts.
But what you can expect from a former politician (he was a Massachusetts state senator) whose political party is not given but which I would bet good money is Republican?
In Glennbeckistan, though (as Winston Churchill so famously said under different circumstances), facts are such precious and fragile things that they must constantly be protected with a bodyguard of lies...
And those of you who are parroting the "if you don't like it here, get out" line: It appears that you are the ones who don't like it here, since you are doing all the complaining. Why don't YOU get out? May I suggest the Ayn-Rand-Libertarian paradise of Somalia as a potential new home base for you, where there are no taxes and no government intervention in your life because there is ... no government.
Just what you want...

I know, it's too easy. It's like shooting fish in a barrel. But so what? It's still fun.

A Lost Generation

A lost generation. That's what it seems like to me, with Obama giving up without a fight and giving the rich motherfuckers their two-year tax cut extension, and the spineless Democrats are going to go right along with it. I really can't see Obama attempting to run for reelection now and trying to gin up that whole "hopey-changey" thing again in two years. I know a lot of people who will not vote for him again because he's Republican-Lite.

I'm particularly pissed off since I worked so hard to get him elected. That whole Hopey Changey Thing isn't working out for me, or anyone I know. When I voted for Obama, I wanted another FDR and instead I it looks like got another Clinton (who, to be fair, was the best Republican president of the 20th Century)

All the Dems have done is kick the problem down the road two years, so the tax cuts will expire in an election year. Can you imagine the Democrats trying to do anything with it when they are in an election cycle? No, I didn't think so, and in the meantime the deficit that could have been partially plugged by that tax income will just get bigger and bigger.

It's a missed opportunity, and a HUGE one. Now it'll be a cold day in hell when those two-percenters have to pay anything resembling their fair share of taxes in this country, and in the meantime we'll have a country coming apart at the seams and the only tailors who can sew it back together are Chinese...

And the Rethugs will finally have their way, a government so small that they can drown it in a bathtub.

I'm seriously thinking about getting out. The only problem with that is that there is no reasonable way to actually get off the planet...

Ironically this news came on the very day that I was being sworn in as the Democratic Party Precinct Committee Officer in my local party.

Oh, the humanity...

The Mormons and the Constitution

It's an article of faith -- or a "prophecy" from one or another of the old "prophet, seer and regulator revelator" guys at the top of the Mormon hierarchy -- that one day the US Constitution will "hang by a thread" and it will be up to a Mormon to save it.

Could it be we've already found our boy? Newly-elected Teabagger senator from Utah, Mike Lee, a scion of "Mormon royalty"-- he is a direct descendant of John D. Lee, infamous for being Brigham Young's scapegoat for the savage Mountain Meadows Massacre of white settlers who had the gall to cross Mormon land -- says that the Constitution is "divinely inspired" and he personally knows ('cause god told him, presumably) how to interpret it.

Here's Buzzflash's Mark Karlin:

What is the difference between religious fundamentalists and so-called "strict constructionists"? Actually, they are two sides of the same coin.
First, they both believe that the Constitution and the Bible are divinely granted documents. Secondly, they believe that there is a literal interpretation to both, and that they are the ones who know what that is. Thirdly, anyone who disagrees with them is either a heretic or un-American, or both.
The New York Times makes note of one newly elected Tea Party Republican senator:
Mike Lee, a 39-year-old Republican from Utah, has the most impeccable establishment legal credentials: the son of Rex Lee, a solicitor general under President Reagan, he attended law school at Brigham Young and later clerked for Samuel Alito on the U.S. Court of Appeals and then the Supreme Court. But on the campaign trail, especially during his heated primary battle with the three-term Republican incumbent Bob Bennett, Lee offered glimpses of a truly radical vision of the U.S. Constitution, one that sees the document as divinely inspired and views much of what the federal government currently does as unconstitutional.
This radical viewpoint is what characterizes the "Repeal Amendment" movement, which I wrote about yesterday. It is the fanatical, cultist viewpoint of those who believe that only they have the divine knowledge to understand "God's word" in the Bible and in the Constitution.
For these extremists, the Constitution is not a document of men and women that threw off the shackles of a Europe still governed by the claim of divinely sanctioned royalty, but rather, like the Ten Commandments (an apt analogy), a manifestation of the will of God - and an exclusive Christian God at that.
"As your U.S. senator," Lee promised during the campaign, according to the Times, "I will not vote for a single bill that I can't justify based on the text and the original understanding of the Constitution, no matter what the court says you can do."

Of course Lee is just the one, having labored in the august halls of the SCOTUS as a clerk for Scalito, to know exactly (and rather smugly I might add) just what the Constitution allows.

BTW, be sure to read that inner link to How Radical Is the Republican Leadership in Congress? Very.:

How radical is the Republican leadership in Congress? Let's just say that some of them make anarchists look like "centrists."
Eric Cantor, who was elected incoming house majority leader by the GOP caucus, is backing a plan, according to Talking Points Memo (TPM), "to blow up the Constitutional system and replace it with one that would give state governments veto power over federal laws."
A few years back, such an anti-constitutional notion would have been considered the province of unbalanced individuals and extreme, right-wing cultists. Now, the notion of states overriding the Constitution and federal law has apparently become mainstream for the Republican Party.
Of course, it would take an amendment to the Constitution, called the "Repeal Amendment," to eviscerate the founding document of our nation and our legal system. Cantor, for his part, thinks that this is a good idea, saying: "The Repeal Amendment would provide a check on the ever-expanding federal government, protect against Congressional overreach, and get the government working for the people again, not the other way around. In order to return America to opportunity, responsibility, and success, we must reverse course and the Repeal Amendment is a step in that direction."
According to TPM, one of the main goals of the Repeal Amendment is to overturn the 17th Amendment, which allows for the popular election of senators. This is an objective both the Tea Party and Antonin Scalia share, as BuzzFlash pointed out in a recent commentary. This fits in well with the perplexing notion that the "rabble of democracy" is a danger to the Republic!

So back to little Mikey Lee. He probably believes -- truly believes -- in the kind of crap he's spewing, and since he's already part of Mormon royalty, how hard can it be for him to already think he's The One who will save the Constitution?