Why Republicans irk me so bad

So my new friends and newcomers to this page need to know this: I don't like either political party in this country.  Period.  Democrats are as equally worthless as Republicans in running this nation and both parties are responsible for making it so I have no representation in Washington because the only thing, and I mean the only thing, these 2 parties care about are rich people.  That's fine if you think Soviet style governing is what America needs (fucking traitor!) or if you think rich folk are obviously better than the rest of us and should be treated as royalty (stupid douche!) but not fine if you love freedom, equality and liberty.  This nation was once a British colony.  Why isn't it anymore?  Because the English who were here rose up in revolt against the rich people who were absentee landlords and owned and ruled the colonies from England.  Today's Americans have forgotten all that and happily take that oppressive yoke back upon themselves for reasons that just can't be fathomed.  What kind of people say "Freedom is too hard, rule us as kings and oppress us!"  Modern Americans, that's who!

Yet in America today there are 2 different camps fighting for dominance.  The moderate centrists of the Democratic party (who we are told are liberal but you'll have to prove that liberalness to me because I just don't see it and I'm a fucking liberal progressive baby!  I don't have a party or representation) and the right wing radicals of the religious Republican party who have more in common with Caesar than Christ but will get violently angry when you point that shit out to them.  Why are Americans so stupid that they prefer one party over the other?  Who knows?  I certainly don't get it.  In fact, I would be interested if someone could explain it to me.  And here we are.

So, you may be wondering, Mike, why then do I see all these anti-Republican posts and nothing anti-Democrat?  The answer is simple.  Republicans have done more to fuck up my life and world over the last decade or so.  Starting in 2001 when idiot King George Bush II allowed 9/11 to happen through today, it's been one cluster fuck after another with these assholes!  Like when that doctor fucked me up and I couldn't sue his ass.  Why couldn't I sue him?  Because Michigan Republicans got tort reform passed in Michigan which means any doctor can fuck you up bad and get away with it unless you can prove he did it on purpose.  That's right.  Never mind that I'm not this doctor's first victim or that he was well known by all the lawyers I spoke with while they told me there was nothing I could do and that this butcher still practices medicine at a local hospital.  I'd name him and the hospital but then --haha!-- they could sue me for defamation and libel because I can't prove that bastard did it on purpose.  Is that fair?  Of course not, but it is Republican.

So then these stupid assholes of the GOP decide to go to war with Iraq which they couldn't pay for (they planned, if you recall, to take over Iraqi oil production and use the revenue from that to pay for it which was a viable plan for all of a minute because the Iraqis sabotaged the oil production capability for that country) and between that and their massive deregulation of Wall Street, this led to the financial collapse that led to the Bush bailouts which is why this country is so far in the hole.  Republican solution?  Tax cuts for the wealthy!  Slash funding to social security and medicare!  Poor people don't get us elected!  Well, guess what you worthless sons of bitches, I'm on social security because the doctor you made it impossible to sue took away my ability to work!!!  How am I supposed to survive???  See, they don't give a shit about that.  All they care about are more donations to their campaigns from people who can give them in a second what I won't make in a year.  Is that equal?  Of course not but it is Republican.

Now let's look at my state where they rammed right to work laws and privatizing education down our throats in spite of the majority of folks being against these actions.  But Republicans don't give a shit because they, like the old Soviets, practice the Golden Rule: he with the gold rules.  Our state also passed medical marijuana yet the state attorney general, a radical right wing Chrtistian, has moral objections so in spite of 65% of the state saying they want it, the tyrant that is our AG has waged and won his crusade against what the people want.  Why?  Is it just?  No but it is Republican.

Now Democrats aren't off the hook with me.  They enabled these bastards and their abuse of power.  In some cases they've expanded the unconstitutional Patriot Act that Bush rammed down our throats after he fucked up by allowing the 9/11 attacks to happen unmolested.  But they at least are moderates and still attempt to throw us common peons a bone or two now and then.  I seriously don't like the drone program especially as it will now be used on us supposedly free citizens.  But we aren't free, we are their chattel.  They give us barely enough to live off and survive while they give the rich everything they could want or ask for, even a separate justice system because they are just better than the rest of us worthless mouth breathers. 

Anyway, you get the idea.  I could go on but I'm making myself angry.

one of the fun things about living where i do is that you oft times find something useful on the streets the next morning like money or a cigarette.  

today i found something useful and after tinkering with it for a while i began to think and i realized that these were the first real, clear thoughts i've had in weeks.  then i realized that everything that was worrying me and stressing me out was beyond my control and i was twisting myself into knots over the 'what ifs? and 'what nots' the 'could bes' and the 'might not bes' and the wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff.

thanks dave tennant.

 

It's up to us America!

BBC News - Green decline 'may bring irreversible change'

...
For the current edition, researchers assessed progress in 90 important environmental issues.
They concluded that meaningful progress had been made on just four - making petrol lead-free, tackling ozone layer depletion, increasing access to clean water and boosting research on marine pollution.
A further 40 showed some progress, including the establishment of protected habitat for plants and animals on land and slowing the rate of deforestation.
Little or no progress was noted for 24, including tackling climate change, while clear deterioration was found in eight, including the parlous state of coral reefs around the world.
For the remainder, there was too little data to draw firm conclusions.
This is despite more than 700 international agreements designed to tackle specific aspects of environmental decline, and agreements on alleviating poverty and malnutrition such as the Millennium Development Goals.
Among the report's "low-lights" are:

• air pollution indoors and outdoors is probably causing more than six million premature deaths each year
• greenhouse gas emissions are on track to warm the world by at least 3C on average by 2100
• most river basins contain places where drinking water standards are below World Health Organization standards
• only 1.6% of the world's oceans are protected.

A few hours after GEO-5's release, the journal Nature published a review of evidence on environmental change concluding that the biosphere - the part of the planet that supports life - could be heading for rapid, possibly irreversible change...

On the backs of the people do rich men dwell

tumblr_m59639TUT71qguulqo1_500.jpg (JPEG Image, 500 × 328 pixels)

Impressive victory?

Obama Administration Argues No Warrant Required for GPS Tracking of Citizens - informationliberation

The federal government informed an appeals court on Thursday that it has the right and the power to place GPS tracking devices on the privately owned vehicles of citizens without obtaining a warrant. This is in open rebellion to a Supreme Court decision from January that held that such warrantless installation of tracking devices on cars was unconstitutional.

In a case being heard by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the Obama administration argued that since the Supreme Court's ruling didn't specifically mandate the obtaining of a search warrant in all situations, then the justices intended to leave a loophole open -- a loophole large enough to mount a tracking device.

According to the Justice Department's spokesperson, "A warrant is not needed for a GPS search, as the [Supreme] Court ... did not resolve that question." As quoted in an article in the Wall Street Journal, the Justice Department has "advised agents and prosecutors going forward to take the most prudent steps and obtain a warrant for new or ongoing investigations," just in case.

This sort of circular reasoning is commonplace in Washington. The federal government claims that warrants are unnecessary, yet insists that its minions attempt to obtain them. This is precisely the vagueness and doubletalk that creates chaos and throws up a smokescreen behind which the palladium of American civil liberties is destroyed.

This Republican Economy - NYTimes.com

...So the Republican electoral strategy is, in effect, a gigantic con game: it depends on convincing voters that the bad economy is the result of big-spending policies that President Obama hasn’t followed (in large part because the G.O.P. wouldn’t let him), and that our woes can be cured by pursuing more of the same policies that have already failed.

For some reason, however, neither the press nor Mr. Obama’s political team has done a very good job of exposing the con.

What do I mean by saying that this is already a Republican economy? Look first at total government spending — federal, state and local. Adjusted for population growth and inflation, such spending has recently been falling at a rate not seen since the demobilization that followed the Korean War.

How is that possible? Isn’t Mr. Obama a big spender? Actually, no; there was a brief burst of spending in late 2009 and early 2010 as the stimulus kicked in, but that boost is long behind us. Since then it has been all downhill. Cash-strapped state and local governments have laid off teachers, firefighters and police officers; meanwhile, unemployment benefits have been trailing off even though unemployment remains extremely high.

Over all, the picture for America in 2012 bears a stunning resemblance to the great mistake of 1937, when F.D.R. prematurely slashed spending, sending the U.S. economy — which had actually been recovering fairly fast until that point — into the second leg of the Great Depression. In F.D.R.’s case, however, this was an unforced error, since he had a solidly Democratic Congress. In President Obama’s case, much though not all of the responsibility for the policy wrong turn lies with a completely obstructionist Republican majority in the House.

That same obstructionist House majority effectively blackmailed the president into continuing all the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, so that federal taxes as a share of G.D.P. are near historic lows — much lower, in particular, than at any point during Ronald Reagan’s presidency.

 As I said, for all practical purposes this is already a Republican economy...

In the grand scheme of things, Wisconsin and it's erstwhile governor don't really matter much.  Yet today I read that yesterday's recall vote in that state is a death knell for unions (it isn't) and an affirmation of the GOP ideology (it wasn't) and that Democrats are sore losers (both parties are).

What the recall did show was that rich folk nationwide would stop at nothing to influence an election, even one as small and insignificant as this one.  In fact Gov. Walker's defense of his realm racked up an incredible $30M!  As the Washington Post notes:

"As of Monday, more than $63 million has been spent on the recall fight with Walker and his conservative allies vastly outspending Barrett and other Democratic-aligned groups.
Walker himself had raised in excess of $30 million for the recall campaign while Barrett collected just under $4 million.
Being outspent 10-1 (or worse) is never a recipe for success in a race. Democrats cried foul over Walker’s exploitation of a loophole that allowed him to collect unlimited contributions prior to the official announcement of the recall in late March."

So what good is our democracy now that it is manipulated by rich folk?  The sad truth is that our notion of democracy is dead.  Well, dead to us little people.  Our voice is drowned under an unending stream of $10s and $20s.  Luckily the rich had 10 years of tax breaks to throw at Wisconsin eh?

But that's not what people will talk about today because we have such worthless news outlets nowadays.  But that's what the discussion we as a nation ought to be having.

100 years from now, Walker, who will be as dead as I am, won't matter to anyone.  Citizens United will be alive and well, fostering the oligarchy it helped create.

No worries?

Ron Paul Delegates Arrested As They Win a Majority at Louisiana GOP Convention

“I’m handicapped! I need a doctor!” “Sir, this is the chairman!” The Louisiana State Republican Convention descended into chaos Saturday morning, with several delegates being arrested and the convention chairman being thrown to the ground by police. Sources report that state party officials panicked when it became clear that Ron Paul delegates commanded a decisive majority of the delegates on the floor – at least 111 of 180 (62%)....

Further proof that the fix is in for November.  

How a secret memo justifies a kill list.

Reality (unfortunately)

The Austerity Agenda - NYTimes.com

...

So the austerity drive in Britain isn’t really about debt and deficits at all; it’s about using deficit panic as an excuse to dismantle social programs. And this is, of course, exactly the same thing that has been happening in America.

In fairness to Britain’s conservatives, they aren’t quite as crude as their American counterparts. They don’t rail against the evils of deficits in one breath, then demand huge tax cuts for the wealthy in the next (although the Cameron government has, in fact, significantly cut the top tax rate). And, in general, they seem less determined than America’s right to aid the rich and punish the poor. Still, the direction of policy is the same — and so is the fundamental insincerity of the calls for austerity...

Here we go again

The many uses of police drones

Broken Promises: Romney's Massachusetts Record

Victory for voting rights groups as judge blocks key sections of new Florida law | World news | guardian.co.uk

Voting rights groups are celebrating a significant victory against what they claim is the pernicious spread of anti-democratic legislation across America after a federal judge in Florida blocked key sections of a new state law that discourages voter registration drives.

Judge Robert Hinkle slapped down two of the most hotly contested elements of the new law, HB 1355, which he condemned in scathing terms (pdf). He said that a requirement to deliver voter registration applications to a state office within 48 hours was "harsh and impractical".

Hinkle also heavily criticised Florida's imposition of a new form that warns volunteers seeking to register new voters that they face five years in prison if they submit applications including any false information. The judge pointed out that the warning was legally incorrect and concluded that it could only be an attempt on the part of the state of Florida to "discourage voluntary participation in legitimate, indeed constitutionally protected, activities".

Florida is considered to be the ground zero of attempts to restrict voting rights in the US. The state has a long history of such measures, which are made all the more poignant given the exceptionally competitive nature of presidential elections there, not to mention the wrangling over the result in 2000 that brought George W Bush to the White House.

Florida also has a substantial population of older voters, students and African American and Hispanic voters – demographic groups that are disproportionately impacted by restrictions on voter access. In 2008, more than 100,000 Floridians were given the vote as a result of voter registration drives.

Yet several local voter registration groups, including the Florida League of Women Voters and Rock the Vote, had to shut down their operations because of the onerous burdens imposed by HB 1355.

"This is a huge win and sends a strong signal to officials in Florida and other states that if you erect barriers to registering voters, we will fight back," said Rock the Vote's president, Heather Smith.

Deirdre Macnab of the League of Women Voters said they would restart their efforts across Florida as soon as they had confirmed that the court's preliminary injunction on HB 1355 had removed the legal risks to which the group's volunteers were being subjected.

The Brennan Center for Justice, which represented the Florida voter registration groups in the federal lawsuit that led to the injunction, has calculated that millions of Americans could be denied their electoral rights as a result of laws creeping across the country. The centre's report, Voting Law Changes in 2012, identifies 20 laws that have passed in 15 states in the passed year, with a further 12 bills pending.

"Those voting law changes are radical and completely unnecessary," said Lee Rowland, a lawyer with the Brennan Center who worked on the Florida case. "They especially hurt those who have been historically locked out of our electoral system – minorities, poor people, and students. Often they seem precisely targeted to exclude certain voters."

In a presidential election year that promises a tight race, any move to whittle down the size of the electorate is certain to be controversial. That is particularly the case as most of the efforts are coming from Republican-held state legislatures, while most of those potentially disenfranchised come from demographic groups that lean towards the Democrats.

This is the danger of the sore losers and whiners of the rabid, radical right.  If the people refuse to vote for them, they'll rig the elections.  Our Republic doesn't matter to them, our way of life doesn't matter to them.  All that matters is their 19th century ideology!

My Profound Disgust

Droney!