Tag Archives: Republicans

What Is In Their Tea, Anyway?

I know the mid-term elections are over, but this is the best breakdown I’ve seen of the Tea Party and all the Republicans who passively co-sign their “ideals” and let them run rampant, so it deserves to be shared even post-election.

By the way, before anyone mentions crazy liberals, let’s remember that the Democrats actually remain a largely centrist party and the whack-jobs on the left don’t drive the direction of the Dems nor end up getting such a voice in party policy. So far, the Dems know how to contain their crazies, while the GOP elevates theirs to star status.

Double Talk from Elephants

While at a community event recently…a carnival-style event recently, really…I was enjoying a bean supper with my family.

OK, enjoying is a bit extreme. The beans needed some seasoning, half of the hot dogs (which were all sliced up) were something pale and anemic and more tasteless than mild bratwurst, the bread was white bread that made Wonder Bread look gourmet, and…I’m sorry, I digress.

Anyway, there is a candidate for Senate who is working his way through the crowd, glad-handing and trying to drum up voter support.

Cool. More power to him.

But as he approaches one guy, the potential voter asks, as he shakes the politician’s hand, “What party are you?”

“Republican,” Mr. I-Want-To-Be-Senator responds happily.

“Well, I won’t hold it against you,” Potential-Voter-Man replies amiably.

“You know,” says Mr. I-Want-To-Be-Senator, adopting a professorial tone of knowledge, wisdom and authority, “my opponent isn’t really a Democrat. She’s a Progressive.”

Naturally, as I eavesdrop on all this, you can imagine the startled gasp in my head. You mean that the woman I was leaning toward voting for isn’t a Democrat? She’s secretly a Progressive?

Dear God help us. Thank you for sending this honest Bible-loving family man who apparently has all the answers to the U.S. recovering fiscally (which no doubt involves heavy military funding and slashing all social services).

I mean, his line about his opponent pissed me off more than any other double-talk, means-nothing piece of drivel I’ve heard in a long time.

What is a Progressive, anyway?

Typically these days, it’s a certain flavor of liberal.

Am I supposed to be surprised that a Democrat might trend toward liberal ideology?

And yet, Mr. I-Want-To-Be-Senator has in the tone of his voice a note of warning. She’s a sneak. A traitor. A liar. She’s not what she claims to be.

I mean, if there were actually an active Progressive Party and you were telling me that she was really a member of that, and riding on the coattails of the Dems, I might give you some credit. Much like someone if someone were to theoretically tell me that Mr. I-Want-To-Be-Senator was really a Libertarian or Tea Party member and not a Republican.

But as near as I can tell in the United States, there hasn’t been an organized  political party called the Progressive Party since the 1940s, and of the three versions of the Progressive Party that have existed since the nation was founded, at least one of them was an offshoot from a schism in the Republican Party.

It’s the kind of double-talk that I’m finding tiresome among many Republicans, most particularly the hard-core conservative ones, who seem to like to plant labels on people that all seem to be code for “un-American.” As if the only true Americans are those who go to a Christian church, vote Republican across the board, cheer when abortion doctors are murdered and are in line waiting to date Sarah Palin should her husband suddenly drop dead (the men, at least).

Dear God, my Democratic candidate for Senate is a Progressive. Shocking.

Next thing you’ll tell me is that she isn’t really a woman…she’s a feminist.

Squandering the Presidency

While I might not be quite as hard on Barack Obama as this writer was, I substantially agree (sad to say.)

Click here to see what I’m talking about: “How to Squander the Presidency in One Year”

Even sadder to say, my biggest quibble with the article is that the writer compares Obama to Conan O’Brien.

Conan, for his part, didn’t ruin anything, and is entitled to at least a year, and perhaps several. As Jay Leno was allowed several years to find his range and pull in the big numbers. TV and the presidency aren’t the same. O’Brien was a victim of executive impatience and market whims. Obama is, however, shaping up to be a huge failure (aside from breaking the color barrier in the Oval Office) if he doesn’t do something. The presidency is a place for boldness and conviction. Not patience and waffling. Four years go by real fast.

Obama. Do something. Something very right. Something very, very soon.

Typical Monkey Business

I saw the New York Post editorial cartoon the other day that had two cops over the bullet-ridden corpse of a chimp, with the dialogue: “They’ll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill” coming out of one officer’s mouth.

It offended me on so many levels with its utter lack of regard for taste or logic. At the same time, it didn’t surprise me one bit. I won’t go into that here, though. Other bloggers, both black and white, have done a good job of that already. Go to these places to get a flavor of that:

Raving Black Lunatic
Deus Ex Malcontent
Huffington Post
The Field Negro

What I want to get into in this post is the ridiculousness of those who would defend this cartoon and its treatment of the current adminstration and, by extension, the way they defend the most idiotic monetary policies of the Republicans.

First, there are many that have the notion that the cartoon is OK, because it’s a political cartoon, and George W. Bush was sometimes compared to a chimp in such cartoons. Oh, now it’s OK to suggest violence against a sitting president? Because these defenders are likely the same people who would have screamed for investigations, sanctions and maybe arrests if any Bush-Chimp item suggested for a moment that any kind of harm was due to the president (and they didn’t from anything I recall). That’s hypocrisy, and it makes arguments that there is nothing racist about the cartoon fall flat.

But second, and perhaps more intense for me, is the wider issue here about the stimulus package and the fact that there are plenty of poor, working class and middle class Republicans who would simply nod their heads at this cartoon and say, “Yeah, the stimulus package was just that bad.”

I’m frankly sick and damn tired of this. I understand that many Republicans in the middle class and below it don’t like the lack of moral and family values that they perceive all Democrats, and especially liberals, to possess. And you know what, while I disagree with that, I respect that viewpoint. If you think the moral, law-and-order, marriage/sex/homosexuality views of the Republicans are superior, and that is your priority in a politician, great.

But stop defending their economic policies. I’m tired of Republicans who aren’t rich, and are getting screwed as badly as us Democrats of modest means, saying that the Republicans have been on the right track with handling our money. They don’t say word one about throwing trillions in the direction of Iraq to pay for a war we started under the pretense of fighting global terror, and they don’t get all that mad about throwing $800 billion at the finance industry and letting them do whatever they want with it…but oh, try to repair our nation’s infrastucture or reduce teen pregnancies or generate actual direct jobs for the working class, and then you’ve gone too far!

Christian Republicans in particular need to get up off this bullcrap. Christianity has never been about amassing wealth and pushing down the working class. Much of what Jesus promoted was very socialist, actually, when you get right down to it. He wasn’t about power and prestige and money and he didn’t want us to be either.

So stop defending the party that has elevated greed and bailouts for the rich to an art form. If you like them better for their social and moral stances, then just stick to that. Stop lying to yourselves that they are better for your pocketbook, because all they want is your damn money. And you can say that the Democrats want the same thing, but at least they seem to try to spend in on our own damn country and trying to make people’s lives here a bit better, instead of throwing our weight around and lining the pockets of people who don’t need a leg up.

And if I haven’t made myself clear enough how I feel, here’s a little something from Deus Ex Malcontent. A post I made there. First, though, the context. Chez posted a quote from JP Morgan Chase spokesman Thomas Kelly, who was being very evasive in explaining how the company was using the $25 billion it got from the late-2008 bailout the Bush Administration managed to push through for the folks on Wall Street. It went like this:

“We’ve lent some of it. We’ve not lent some of it. We’ve not given any accounting of, ‘Here’s how we’re doing it. We have not disclosed that to the public. We’re declining to.”

In my comment to that post, I imagined what the head of JP Morgan might say if he had decided to come forward and be honest about things. It contained more than my usual amount of foul-mouthed behavior, so be warned:

You cuntbags want to know how we spent “your” motherfucking money?

I’ll tell you. I don’t need that weasel-flak Thomas Kelly to speak for me anymore.

For starters, everyone at JP Morgan Chase from executive vice president on up is now debt-fucking-free.

Oh, and I bought us a goddamn island in the South Pacific to relocate to if any of you decide to try that guillotine shit that’s been bandied about.

We’ve got 90% of the members of both house of Congress on our dicks full-time, now, too. Lifetime thralldom from a congressman or senator doesn’t come cheap.

As for me personally? Shit, I’ll tell you how I spent “your” money…

…I’ve been using $100 bills as rolling paper for the finest weed you can buy in this solar system.

…I’ve been washing the taste of that pot out of my mouth with Perrier-Jouet champagne. I’ve been drinking it like water. Oh, that didn’t sting enough? How about the fucking champagne flute I’ve been guzzling it out of, which I had laser-carved from a single fucking perfect diamond the size of your shin.

…I also rented out the goddamn Four Seasons Hotel ballroom and hired a hooker from every conceivable racial background to do a mass fucking lap dance just for moi. And before they left, I let them head out with as many $100 bills as they could stuff in their cunnies.

And that’s just this fucking week. Just want ’til you hear what I do with “your” money for New Year’s.

Suck on that, bitches.

Cordially,
James L. Dimon, President, Chairman and CEO, JP Morgan Chase & Co.

My more right-leaning brethren, the current stimulus package, while it may not solve much, isn’t your enemy. It’s actually the closest thing we’ve seen to a step in the right direction for a long time. So, if you’re going to defend the cartoon I mentioned at the start, or if you’re going to support the Republicans, stop doing so on the basis of fiscal policy.

Unless you’re rich.

Two-fer (Late)Tuesday: WTF?

Gonna just toss the two of us into one post today…tonight…whatever. 😉

Deacon Blue

My WTF moment recently has got to be the one-two punch of the GOP steadfastly trying to deep-six President Obama’s plans just to be pissy, along with the folks on the other side who insist that the president should just screw over the GOP like the Repulicans screwed over the Democrats and the entire nation for the previous eight years.

First, as for the GOP douchebags:  Just because y’all have your nice congressional pensions to fall back on and wonderful healthcare coverage is no reason to try to make Obama fail just because you desperately want and need him to so that you can get the White House back soon. The country is hurting. Your constituents are hurting. You protecting your ideological interests and your contributors who are still rich is not the priority here. Trying somehow to fix the country is. Your economic policies for eight years sucked. They tanked our economy. They didn’t work. Trickle-down economic theory is a lie. Tax breaks for the well-to-do don’t stimulate the economy. Encouraging Americans to consume more doesn’t help the economy. You failed. Be grown men (and women) and deal with that. Get on board with fixing shit, or get the fuck out of the country. I mean that sincerely.

As for the lefties and even more moderate Democrat types who are feeling their oats and want to just beat on the Republicans: Grow the hell up. This is not a schoolyard. Returning the pain isn’t going to solve anything. It doesn’t matter if the GOP doesn’t want to work with you nicely. That’s no reason to try to rip them all new assholes. Haven’t you noticed what eye-for-eye strategies have done in the Middle East? What now, 7,000 years of animosity between Arabs and Jews? Be willing to rise above the fray. Defend yourselves if and when you need to, but stop calling for revenge tactics. They don’t pay long-term dividends that any of us want to collect on.

Miz Pink

WTF? What the fudge? Oh what a topic! I’m melting, I’m melting…

Okay my WTF thang right now is that octuplet chick. Six kids already, one or two of whom have serious issues. Unemployed. Unmarried. Living with mom. On the dole. Getting plastic surgery to look like Angelina Jolie. Spending her sustantial savings on said surgery and on getting 8 embryos implanted in her when she already has 6 kids she can’t afford to raise. Getting a publicist. Acting like this is normal.

Woman needs some mental healthcare counseling clearly. Needed it before she went to add 8 more kids to her brood. The fertility doc needs some investigating and removal of his license AFAIC.

When God said be fruitful and multiply, it was to Adam and Eve, NOT to the whole lot of us. Sure, in Pslams it talks about a quiverful of kids being a blessing and stuff, but that doesn’t mean we just push out kids we can’t take care of. We’re not supposed to be baby factories, us women.

Back in the old days, you needed plenty of warm bodies to hunt or work the fields or whatever. People died younger. There was a lot more room to expand becasue we didn’t have 6 bazillion or 8 catillion or however the heck many folks we have on the planet now.

In this economy going for a huge family and expecting society to foot your bill for you. That’s not godly. Thats bad judgement and bad stewardship and bad parenting. The original 6 get to suffer more thanks to a decision to have 8 more that was a decision born out of mental illness and poor judgement and wasn’t shot down by the people and professionals around her who should have nipped this in the butt to begin with.

The Unpatriotic GOP Faithful?

I just read a comment at Monroe Anderson’s blog, and I’ll just post a little snippet here to give you a taste.

I find it to be somewhat perplexing for those who profess to adhere to the Judeo-Christian values on which this country was founded to condemn the concept of “sharing the wealth.” I also find it somewhat puzzling for those who are seeking the highest elective offices in the land to view paying taxes as a punitive practice and not a patriotic privilege.

I highly recommend you click here and read Dr. Woods’ comment in its entirety.

And let me add my “Amen!” to the chorus.