Is There a Party There?

I have to wonder if the GOP is still actually a viable party?  The fringe radicals on the right own the party now, and any moderates who still think of themselves as Republican should be rethinking that label. This is not a party of equals. If you are a moderate who actually wants to work in elected office to improve the American way of life for your constituents, this isn’t your party.  The leadership of the GOP is made up of a bunch of whiney babies who never learned to share their toys, never learned that when their playmates decided on what game to play, that all saying no would get them would be ejection from the game. Any moderates left in the Grand Old Elephant are out shouted and have to duck and hide, lest they be found out as not toeing the radical line of appeasing the corporate interests, paying back the rich and fooling the ignorant poor upon whom that faction of conservatives feeds.  I try to think the best of most people and I even understand that not everyone is brave enough to face down a howling mob, but come on true Republicans, Grow a Pair!  Tell these idiots calling for the denial of one group’s First Amendment Rights that if they do that, they threaten their own rights.  Tell them that NO, Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh are not the face of conservatism, nor of your party.  Tell them that they need to crawl back under the rocks that they left so that real people, people who understand that we have to work together and not just at odds all the time; real American patriots understand that cooperation and compromise are tools to use to benefit your real bosses, the people of this nation.  Stop pandering to these idiots and fools and racists and secessionists and ranting blathering corporate apologists who can’t imagine making some criminal organizations who call themselves businesses do what they should do so they don’t threaten our coast lines and our lives.  Grow a Pair because and retake your party. If you don’t the GOP will never be grand again and will become irrelevant and the sounding board of the do-nothing, know-nothing crowd. Like the mugwups long gone and forgotten except for their name, the GOP will only be remembered for the elephant and mostly because of what that elephant left behind.

Hmmm.

A pale horseman by name, Glenn Beck,

Yelled we all should be hitting the deck!

This thing's going viral!

Up, up in a spiral,

But it fizzled, so what the heck?! 

What If They Held a Rally and No One Paid Any Attention?

Hopefully I’ll follow my own advice and this will be the last thing I write about this.  Saturday (yesterday) there was a rally at the Lincoln Memorial for something.  According to the few news reports I saw, there was a good sized crowd, although I didn’t hear any numbers.  At least two people who are recognized on a national level spoke and everything was calm and peaceful.  I did hear a few seconds of sound bites and what the topic appeared to be was taking back something they felt had been lost.  What they felt had been lost was not clear. 

I’m glad they were able to hold such a peaceful rally.  I do not think there was the miracle that the promoter of the rally prophesied.  But I also think that even though it was declared to be a non-political event, there was politics there.  The theme of taking back and restoring is a political issue.  You only want to do those things when you feel they have been lost.  I think that there are some things that we as Americans are missing that we had in the past, but I also believe that we have gained a lot of insight, compassion and understanding that we lacked in the past.  What makes this political is that you cannot speak in generalities, nor can you invite speakers from a single perspective and expect it not to be political.  If this had truly been non-political, then there would have been a wide variety of people would have spoken.  You also cannot speak in generalities about lack, lost and winning back without getting into specifics and when you do get to specifics, you get political. 

More On HealthCare

I find it incredibly interesting that there is still so much grumbling about health care reform even as the changes are just being phased in.  Most of the grumbling comes from people who think they are going to have to pay more for health care than they currently are now.  Well, the first thing I say to that is that your costs for health care had at least tripled in the last 10 years without reform. If all the reform does is slow that increase down, you’re going to be ahead on that.  Another thing I have to ask; does this mean your against affordable health care for everyone?  How do you feel about affordable health care for children with pre-existing conditions? How about the same for adults with pre-existing conditions?  The Health Care Insurance industry is spreading word that they expect that their rates will triple because of the reforms that have been passed.  WTF?  Are they going to triple because you will have to provide coverage to people you refused to cover in the past?  You mean your profits might suffer because you have to provide what you should have been providing all along?  You’ll have to prove that, since your forecasts have not been so reliable in the past, and you have a really strong reason to see these reforms reversed from greedy point of view.   Health Care like education is a common need and should not be just another commodity.  Health Care should be something that everyone has access to.  Your old system prevented large numbers of people from having access. Be part of the solution or get out of town!

The other side of things is I hear people on the left complaining that the reforms didn’t go far enough and that Congress and the President failed us.  I tend to see that the was a very powerful lobby (read Health Care Insurers) and their minions in the Congress (read republicans (small r because of the small mindedness)) that threw up every roadblock they could in the way.  What the Democrats and the President did was to get things rolling. Something, that if you know your recent history, has not been done before.  We have a beginning and something in this case was better than nothing.  We have some things we needed, while there are other things that still need to be done.  You can’t get everything you want or you turn out to be BP CEO who wants his life back after screwing up Mother Nature and the Gulf Coast.  Take what you have, and build on that.  Progress is not instantaneous and sometimes moves very slowly.  It took millennia for us to progress from using dray animals for transportation to the age of the automobile.  Healthcare reform hopefully won’t take that long.  

If I Thought He was Sincere…

I have a few friends that are aghast that liberals are so upset with Glenn Beck’s “beckoning” (?) or is it the “Gathering” or maybe it’s the “reckoning” (?)….. They think that we are trampling on his First Amendment rights and don’t want him to be able to talk to his audience.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  He’s welcome to talk, but so are we.  He’s welcome to criticize, and so are we.   No one has said that he cannot have his moment in the summertime. No on has said that he has to stop.  But many have called out his hypocrisy and his lies and his twisting of facts and his general insane interpretation and rewriting of history.  That’s not trampling on his rights, it’s exercising ours.

If I thought for a second that Glenn Beck actually believe even half the crap he puts out, I might actually have less of a problem with his “beckoning.”  But I don’t believe he believes any of it. In fact, Glenn Beck is the ultimate sell out to corporate greed and self interest.  Everything he says is intended to build his own or his corporate bosses pile up.  Look who his sponsor is… Goldline; a company being investigated for defrauding people of the value of their gold… Although, anyone stupid enough to put their gold jewelry into a bag and mail it off to someone they don’t know, probably deserves what they get for being incredibly stupid.  But perhaps we should be charitable to the stupid and blame the messenger in this case: Mr. Beck.  He certainly would not be stupid enough to send his gold to Goldline, but he’s absolutely willing to tell you to do it.  As Mr. Beck himself has famously said, anyone who believes half of what he says on his program is an idiot.

Boehner’s Boner

No , not talking about orange popsicles or anything dirty.  I’m talking about saying that Federal Bureaucrats out earn their private peers and that the US Government is wasting all this money on Federal Employees.  This from a man who earns $193,000 in salary, has a private pension plan from his years in Congress that is the envy of everyone and who has a healthcare program that anyone would want…. All paid for by your taxes.  Maybe it’s time to make our Representatives pass lie detector tests before they can make such ridiculous pronouncements.  Or maybe the Democrats should pounce on this idiot and tell it like it is.

First, Boehner and his party have no new ideas to give the public and the ones they spent the years 2000-2009 foisting on we the people are failures.  So Boehner has to manufacture an issue.  During a time when there are so many people out of work it looks like Boehner is maneuvering to see that more join that crowd.  Good shepherd that he is, he really is looking out for us…. NOT! Third, Boehner’s numbers are a complete fabrication. I doubt that he got them from a reliable source, probably one of his CEO golf buddies.  The Office of Congressional Information states that in fact when you compare levels of experience and responsibility across the board, Federal Employees earn something in the neighborhood of 22% less than their Private Industry Peers.  Perhaps the location where Mr. Boehner pulled his figures from might be described as somewhere around the location of his golf glove.

The problem is Mr. Boehner spouts this crap and the people who are calling BS on it and pointing him out to be a liar are also being too diplomatic about it.  The man lies, has lied and will continue to lie.  Maybe that’s why he’s orange, all that untruth is affecting his skin color like Pinochio’s Nose grew on him.

Of Glen Beck, Propaganda and Who Really is Your Friend

I cannot afford to be on the Mall on Saturday for Glenn Becks “Look at me!” show.  I do not regret that I cannot be there, except that I can send him a message by being there and refusing to face him or the others on his agenda.  I wish I could go and organize enough people to just simply turn their backs on him and Sarah Palin and anyone else who is planning to speak.

Why? Well, Beck’s not doing this because he wants to help you or make your life better or to save the nation or any other altruistic, no matter how perverted, reason. He’s doing it because he can and it feeds his ego.  It also supports the forces who support him. But those are not the average person in theis country, no matter what their politics. It is the large corporations whose only goal is to make more money and to accumulate even more money.  Glenn Beck claims to be a Christian, but he’s sold his soul to big business who don’t want to follow any rules and to cut corners so that their profit margins can be higher and higher yet again.  Glenn Beck could even be seen as the anti-Christ, if you believe in that. His tactics, twisting thoughts and ideals to make a radical proposal sound sane, when it is indeed perverse.  He hides behind what he calls the “Truth” but fails to recognize that his “Truth” leaves no room for people who do not agree of kowtow to his rhetoric.  Glenn Beck is not your friend, nor mine, nor anyone’s, except Glenn Beck’s. 

Take some time to look at what you are listening to, whether from the left or the right.  Propaganda fills the airways and it is your job as a clear thinking, patriotic American to sift through the noise and find the kernel of truth that resides there.  I don’t really care if you believe me, or believe anything I say, but please do take the effort to investigate for yourself what is being said and by whom!  Don’t run off shouting that the Sky is Falling, just because some person or organization proclaims it when it is in their best interest to do so.  Don’t be lazy and not think things through. Make the effort.  And if you honestly come to a different conclusion than I do or someone else, that’s OK.  That’s what makes a horse race!  Just don’t let the liars get away with their lies, nor allow them to lie about their lying and then lie again about lying about their lying.

Let’s Vote On it!?

There are some things and times when letting the people vote on an issue is the right thing to do and there are other times when it isn’t.  To those of you who think it is a good idea to vote on everything, let me ask you if you have the time to spend every day of your life researching and voting on everything? No? I thought not. This is why we have a representative form of government and not a true democracy  (that for the Neo-Cons who all seem to have missed their High School Civics Classes. Probably out back of the cafeteria smoking rope materials).

But that’s only one reason why we shouldn’t vote on everything.  Another good reason is known as the right of the minority to be free from the oppression of the majority.  A good example of this is the Mosque in NYC.  Some people are now saying that we should let the people of NYC vote on whether the Mosque be allowed to be built.  Beyond the fact that the Mosque is more of a community center than anything else, we should not be allowed to vote on this. Just as we shouldn’t be allowed to vote on whether or not Republican Crazies should all be locked up, or whether certain races should or should not be allowed to ride on public transportation.  The matter is one of rights.  The people who want to build this Islamic Community Center have the right to buy property and to build anything they want on it as long as it doesn’t violate zoning laws and follows building codes; QED.  You don’t get to vote on their rights anymore than they get to vote on yours.  So all I can say to those of you who think it’s a good idea to vote on this or who think they should not be allowed to build it is STFU!  You are wrong and if you don’t understand why you are wrong, then you should go back and take a basic US Civics Class and learn why you are wrong! 

Are They Human?

As Mitch McConnell (Bitchie to his friends) and Rush Limbaugh (the big Paw to his) continue to question his birth and his religion, thinking people have to question those two as being part of the human race. Certainly from appearance alone, it would not be possible to tell if either of these two Right Wing Nut icons are human.  Has anyone seen them eat or breathe?  I have seen Rush spouting plumes of smoke which make me think he is probably related to a dragon, but Mitch Mc Cee seems more inclined to flicking his tongue out at flies.  So I have to ask, Gentle, uh, ,men?  Papers Please!

As the GOP moves more and more toward the radical right, where are is the center going? According to the Republican Brain Trust, they are the center, but I find that hard to believe.  Centrist have the ability to decide things for themselves and often will lean liberal on one issue and more conservative on another. I haven’t seen that from the GOP since Romney’s dad. So is it in fact that the GOP is verging right and leaving many of it moderate followers behind or is it radicalizing them and turning them into marching conservative zombies?  I have found that friends who I have known for some time and tend to central or even slightly conservative have dropped out of the GOP, abandoning it to the fringe crazies and are looking for somewhere to land.  I say, come to the Democrats and lean to the left. We have COOKIES!

Admittedly the left has its fringe crazies too. But that’s really one of the biggest differences between what is now the left and what has become of the right.  We on the left have the ability to recognize and admit that there are people who are out there among us and that not all of us think like they do.  So far from the right all I see is a mad scramble to out crazy the craziest of the right wingers.  Oh, we don’t have a total paramilitary movement on the right yet. That would really be out there, but we do have the ignorant proposing the ridiculous to the spineless who go along with it because they want to get re-elected.

OMG! Glenn Beck is a Mormon!  A Mormon! OMG!  That’s the weird group that believed in polygamy and some weird angel who came down and rewrote the Bible and wore beards and funny hats and moved to some great salty lake in the middle of the desert and had to beat off locusts because, as Pat Robertson would say, God was angry!  He may call himself a Christian, but he can’t be any kind of Christian that any good Christian would recognize, like say Jimmy Swaggart or Pat Robertson or any of those holy dudes (tongue firmly in cheek).  Actually I think he belongs to the Church of Hypocrisy.

Let the Leaves Fall Where They May

I decided that this blog can be angry or it can be funny; or it can be angry funny; or it can be funny with a little anger mixed in.  I guess I go with funny with some anger thrown in.  If I were angry all the time, I would tear my leaves off and then you’d have a bald Bonsai…. only good with cypresses.

So let’s start:

There has been a lot of talk about the left doing the same thing that right is doing now and start throwing out exaggerations, what I call miss-truths and out-and –out lies.  But I don’t think so. I don’t want us to stoop to the level of the right.  We call them on their BS and shout it out when they tell things in ways that are not quite correct. But let’s not use lies to make our point.  We are better than that!  BTW, I hear that Brush my Limpaw has a secret room in his cellar where he performs blood rituals involving live chickens and dead pigs.

Back to the NYC Mosque issue…  This is a completely fabricated issue by the right wing nuts and complete BS.  Absolutely it’s a 1^st Amendment issue, the City of New York and the various commissions involved have already approved the project and the fact of the matter is that the project is a good two blocks away from “ground zero” or the continual pit where the twin towers were.  There’s not a lot of backlash from the locals about this and most of the people who actually live in the area are pleased to see someone who wants to build in the area rather than leave. What this is really about is a way for the idiot right to try and hang the “Obama is a Muslim” sign on the President so that their uninformed base and other ignorant fools will think that’s a true and a bad thing - like the woman who told McCain “You know he’s an Arab!”  This is all an attempt by the idiot right to scare grandma and make out like Obama’s not a “real” American.  It’s so much BS that Bitch McCee couldn’t even be honest enough to call it BS when asked about it.  Instead his chinless response was that he guessed he believed the President when he said he was a Christian.  Who the F Cares?  One: what religion a person is should make no difference in your decision to vote for them, unless they are proposing to inflict that religion on you! Two: this is the same BS that the birthers keep trying to get people involved in when they keep claiming that Obama’s not a natural citizen.  Three: shame on any of you who think he’s a Muslim.  Where the F have you been the last 3 years anyway? In a hole in the Utah desert?  Sheesh, first the right is upset because he attended a church where the pastor was a black activist, now they want you to believe he’s Muslim. Shame on your for falling for that crap!  And Bitch, at least McCee had the gonads to tell that woman she was absolutely wrong, that Obama was not an Arab and that he was an American.  Grow a couple, Bitch! And then grow a chin!

The Mosque @ Ground Zero

There is no need for many words about this.  The only words are these:

To those who oppose the mosque.... YOU ARE WRONG, you know in your heart you are wrong and six months from now if you don't feel guilty about this whole non-issue then you should resign from human race.

The worst of them are the politicians promoting this whole issue. They absolutely know better.

SHAME on them, shame on us for even allowing us to get worked up about a mosque anywhere.

Ranting or Raving, Which is Which and Why do I Care?

I don’t really care all that much. I like to rant and at times I prefer to rave.  Ranting is something with anger behind it and raving , to me at least, seems more like getting carried away by what you are doing.

So I will try not to rant too much, and when I rave, I will try to make it as intelligible and fun as possible.

Talking with some friends today, we have decided that when you mix the tea party with the GOP House leadership you get Orange Pekoe.  Yes that is a reference the Hon. John Boehner’s skin color. But since it isn’t an accident of birth and parentage, it’s not racially motivated.  It’s really just motivated by the odd color.  I see on a friend’s Face Book page that they are going off the wall over the “Biggest Tax Increase in American History” article that the Americans for Tax Reform put on their website. 

It’s the knee-jerk reaction that they want when they talk about reversing the tax breaks for the rich from the Bush era.  They want us to believe that these reversions will have a disastrous effect on us. No, calm down, these changes only affect the top 1% of income earners in America, mostly the same CEO’s you have been screaming about getting enormous bonuses for doing practically nothing.  The guys whose income is astronomically more than yours or probably anyone you even know well. With the whole 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon thing, it may be that you know someone who knows someone who knows someone in the top 1%.  Anyway, the odds of it affecting you are minimal, and if it does affect you, then you damn well can afford it!  And, think of all the government services that you use, directly or indirectly to make that enormous income, and it IS about paying your FAIR share.  Greed is bad, people, no matter what Michael Douglas said in that movie.

What is absolutely amazing to me is that the Orange Pekoes can sit around talk about the reversion of the Bush tax breaks as being bad for job growth with a straight face.  Boehner could tell us on Meet the Press how he was going to pay for keeping those breaks when it would bring in needed revenue for programs already on the books and reduce the deficit.  He must have been blushing, but we couldn’t tell, what with the orange color he has from using that sunless tanning stuff.  Beyond that, they want us to believe that letting the rich keep more of their money will stimulate job growth.  Let’s see, the rich have had this tax break for 10 years now, one of the reasons it has to be renewed, we just lost lots of jobs, and are only slowly beginning to see some new jobs being created. In the words of America’s cheerleader, “Yeah, how’s that been working out for you, John?”    

Oh wait, I remember! Reaganomics, trickle down and the “Ronnie the Wizard –  give all your money to the rich magic!” Presto change-O! Jobs are suddenly created!  I knew there was a reason to wake up this morning!  And while you are at it, put all your gold into this mailing bag and I promise to pay what I think it is worth when I melt it down.  Didn’t Bernie Made-off make similar promises? Do we ever learn, or do they just think we are that stupid?

And Yet You Apparently CAN Fool a Fool All the Time!

Greed and the American Way

When did greed completely take over?  It seems like today that everyone expects to be rich, have whatever they want, when they want it and won’t wait for it.  Well not everyone, but a large chunk of the population.  It’s not so much that people want more, or that they are impatient, it’s that this has become to be seen as desirable. 

Our heroes used to be those who sacrificed for the benefit of others.  And for some of us, that’s still true.  It used to be that the guy who was only in it for himself and to exploit it was the villain.  But that seems to have been reversed.  Teachers, who, Lord knows, are not in it for themselves; how could you be at the rate of pay they receive; firemen, police all the public services have become the targets for those who think that business is the answer to everything.  They are targets because instead of opting for large incomes, they decided to serve the rest of us and all they have really asked for that was that we give them a little bit of job security and a retirement when they are too old to continue.

But some people in the business world don’t see it as them doing us all a favor. Some of the CEOs, COOs and other board of directors who bring in half a million or more in income see these public servants as greedy.  “OMG! They want an average income of what! $60K? Greedy bastards!”  Why we might even ask these top earners to pay a little more on their taxes, which, Lord knows, would mean having to cut down on the booze in their booze locker, or have to actually think before they spend all that money on their private planes.  The problem with these guys is that they are Asocial and you can’t even shame them into thinking about how ridiculous their position is.  It makes you wonder where they all came from. 

What is totally amazing is that there are people among us commoners who believe the people like John Boehner about anything. I mean really?  Approving the funds already approved for teacher, police and firemen is irresponsible?  How irresponsible is it, John, to be playing electoral politics at a time when the people of the country need Congress to act so that we might have housing, jobs and food? You’re the one who’s being irresponsible, and if anyone other than your Country Club chums votes for you ever again, then they are among the poorly informed and are foolishly hurting themselves.

On Free Will and Keeping Your Best Interests

I have been watching and listening as people shoot themselves in the foot and continue to vote against their own best interests and I am having a really hard time understanding why.  Why are there people out there with signs like “Keep Big Government Away From My Social Security!”  WTF?  That was a sign I saw passing a Tea Party rally.  To the lady with the sign, your Social Security is coming from your government! Sheesh!

It’s like the wing-nuts on the right are winning the propaganda war.  I sometimes feel like I’m living in he novel Catch 22. “What’s good for [big business} is good for America!”  Well sometimes yes and sometimes no. Just like what’s good for me as an individual is good for America; sometimes yes and sometimes no.  Is that the problem then? The wing-nuts can only see things as “either or” without the ability to see that there are not absolute absolutes? 

I’m sorry, I just don’t get it.  Life is a series of choices in shades of gray.  If you are a thinking person, rather than one who allows others, religion, people or whoever, do their thinking for them, I don’t have a problem with your disagreeing with me or my opinions. But I hope that your opinions are at least as considered as mine are.  If you are taking a position because of your religion, is that thinking for yourself?  Is that what God really wants you to do?  Or does the idea of freewill means that you should think things through, make your decisions, respect the decisions of others and then live with them.

All that is to say, live your life as you want to live it. Use the resources you have at your disposal, but understand that religions, dogma and politics are not absolute and are polluted by the hand of man.  If God speaks to man, look to nature for what he/she is saying.  Don’t look to other men, other than as a guide.  Listen, think, then formulate your own spirituality and belief.  Religions are about control. Spirituality is about learning and searching for meaning. 

Republican Magic?

watching John Boenher on Meet the Press today, I was struck by the thought that when he talked about tax cuts and balancing the budget in the same sentence, what he was really saying was that Ronald Reagan was a wizard and that his economic policies were magic.  That by cutting taxes now, we could balance the budget, even though we would not have enough tax monies coming in to do so. It's just a matter of faith with Republicans, at least with their leadership, apparently. Either that, or they are lying and have other motives in mind, like keeping the top 1% of earners from paying a fair tax rate and getting off the backs of the rest of us, maybe?

It's the same kind of BS screen they threw up around BP and the oil leaking in the Gulf....  How dare we expect a perfectly respectable company to pay for cleaning up the mess they cause.  Why that's down right UnAmerican!  Why it's socialism, is what it is!  Well their position is at least... corporate socialism, anyway.  BTW, BP is NOT a perfectly respectable company. In fact it has a criminal record.  Most of the same people who were defending BP wouldn't pass the time of day with a real person whose past was as spotty as BP's.

Oh, well. No one ever expected the GOP leadership to make sense.  They spent the last Administration proving they were bereft of ideas, clear thinking and even any understanding of American history or the Constitution.

End of Rant