Be INFORMED

Saturday, October 29, 2011

Saturday Satire: Fun With The GOP

  There is just way to much material out there in Internet/TV land to put up all of the jokes and pictures that I would like for you to view.

    I usually do this post on Friday, but my Internet had a “ stupid seizure “ for most of the day. it seems to be doing that a lot as of late.

Conan O'Brien: "In a new interview, Rick Perry said it was a mistake for him to participate in the presidential debates. Perry said 'I'm not one of these 'word talkers.'''

"Michele Bachmann said she wants her three daughters to learn to shoot a gun. Mostly so they can put her campaign out of its misery."

"Michele Bachmann's campaign is in a lot of trouble. Five staffers quit her campaign, claiming it was because she treated them like second-class citizens. However, Bachmann said, 'That's not true. At no time did I treat them like gays or Latinos.'"

David Letterman; "Rick Perry is now behind in the polls and he's not taking it well. Today he executed his pollster."

"Rick Perry, started out like a ball of fire from Texas and then he started to drop and now he's retooling. He's adding advisers to his campaign team. This guy had advisers? Really?"

Jay Leno: "Michele Bachmann told reporters that she will lead the nation in prayer if she is elected president. You know if she is elected president, we all better be praying. She doesn’t have to lead us."

"According to polls, Rick Perry has now fallen to fifth place. You know who is in fourth place? Carrot Top."

"We had President Obama on the show last night. I think the president enjoys visiting NBC because we're the only place that has lower numbers than he does."

"Rick Perry unveiled his new tax plan. He says he wants a flat tax. He believes that tax should be flat, just like the earth."

rick-perry-church-sign

homescholers-for-perry

bachmann-minimum-wage

bachmann-stupid-statements

sarah-palin-nightmare

 

A Sad GOP Senator Admits GOP Led Congress Is Bad

  By   roseeriter    Fri Oct 28, 2011     Original

So, some GOPpers know they're wrong, why don't they make things right? Like crying Boehner, Linsey Graham sheds a tear also (see video at link).

Sad-Sack Congresscritters Hate Themselves Almost As Much As Everyone Else Hates Them

Sen. Lindsey Graham is so embarrassed about the 9 percent approval rating — released Tuesday night in a New York Times/CBS poll — that he’s going incognito.
“It’s so bad sometimes I tell people I’m a lawyer,” the South Carolina Republican told POLITICO on Wednesday. “I don’t want to be associated with a body that in the eyes of your fellow citizens seems to be dysfunctional. It matters to me.”

“We’re below sharks and contract killers,” added freshman Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.).

--
While Obama has shaped the early part of his presidential campaign around attacking a dysfunctional Congress, his approval numbers aren’t great either, sitting at a glum 46 percent, with 38 percent approving of his handling of the economy.
But 38 percent believe Obama has a clear plan for job creation, compared to just 20 percent for Hill Republicans.

Compared to Congress, “he’s a rock star,” Graham declared.

[...]

“There’s always been a healthy disdain for political institutions,” Graham said. “But when it becomes unhealthy is when 91 percent of the country believes that the Congress is detached from reality.”

Then SHOUT it out from the highest mountain, Hypocrits!!

Unsign those god forsaken cult-like Pledges, Idiots!

Try to remember when you were  real Americans, Assholes!!

Stop being corporate Prostitutes, Jerks!

Try Truth to power. It feels better.

Also republished by Class Warfare Newsletter: WallStreet VS the Working Class Occupy movement..

Friday, October 28, 2011

Conservative Persecution Complex

   I’ve been away for a few days, so I am playing catch-up as far are current events are concerned.  I’m reading my butt off to see what I’ve missed this week.

    I ran across a post dealing with those Tea Party/Conservative cry babies.

 

Conservative Persecution Complex

by sujigu           Wed Oct 26, 2011

I am the type of person that really likes to understand where the other person is coming from.  I try to figure out other people's world views and try to get a construct of their belief system and how they relate to their outside culture.  It's just a natural inclination.  After hearing about the recent Tea Party threat to not hire new people, and possibly close their own businesses, I reacted as many on the left do, with derisive laughter.  No, it's not nice.  But you have to admit, the irony of your opponent threatening to boycott themselves to spite you is delicious.  Does that make me a big bad liberal elite who thinks his own world view is the only viable one?  Well, to be honest, I've never made that assertion.  I just think that people saying stupid things is funny.  But, it gave me pause to consider what I like to call "Conservative Persecution Complex."  Let's begin our discussion with a quote:

"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."

Great piece of liberalism here.  You can write or say whatever you like without fear that some tyrant is going to throw you in jail or create some law to otherwise damage you for saying/writing something he/she doesn't like.  In fact, to be honest, our country has an excellent track record, all things considered, with maintaining this ideal.  The ACLU has defended the constitutional rights of Neo-Nazis, White Supremacists, and the rest of their ilk.  We have long, drawn-out court battles when this tenet of our society is threatened, even if we might abhor the people we are defending. 

It seems that conservatives like this idea too, but they don't seem to understand that when they say/write whatever they like, other people are completely free to criticize them.  The local Tea Party chapter that put this out were up in arms at how liberals were close minded and hateful.  Liberals only have a single world view that they deem correct, and they destroy all others.  Obama, the evil Kenyan Muslim tyrant that he is, was impinging on their right to free speech.  What I wish they would get is that they say whatever they want on their blogs, in their mailers, on their forums, etc.  They pretty much say some of the most harsh, vitriolic things against the leader of the free world, and they are not throw in jail.  Congress has passed no law that curtails their right to do that.  There are no government troops rapelling through their windows, carting them away to FEMA camps.  They got criticized for their remarks, but in their minds, verbal dissent is equivalent to being waterboarded, at least according to Gov. Brewer.  The act of hearing something that they don't agree with is somehow tyranny. 

This factors into such much I hear from the conservative side of the aisle.  They live in a world of oppression, where all outlets of information, and society itself, is somehow out to get them.  I sometimes hear about Christian persecution.  How are you persecuted?  Churches have millions of dollars, are organized and efficient, and they have charismatic leaders that reach across the entire country.  They have sway over large swathes of the population, are allowed to pray even at legislative hearings, and are free to break off into denominations however they please.  When someone says that you cannot use passages from Leviticus to prevent other people from marrying, that's an "all out assault" on your religious liberty?  What?  Reminding you that the government cannot favor your religion is akin to persecution?  There was a time when Christians were persecuted, but it involved throwing them to the lions. 

Oftentimes when I talk to conservative friends and point out a flaw in their logic, they act like I've killed their parents.  I mean seriously, you get knicked on the arm and you wail that someone's lopped the entire thing off.  It's like a built-in slippery slope.

Another good example is Hollywood.  I was reading about this book that was a "tell all" about the liberal bias of Hollywood.  Did I miss something, or isn't Hollywood a private venture?  I understand not wanting bias in NPR, or publically funded broadcasting stations.  Yet conservatives rail against Hollywood.  I guess because of its stature, it has some sort of responsibility in terms of representing multiple sides of an issue?  However, since it's private, the executives and scriptwriters don't really have to do any of that.  It's their movie, it's their distribution system, it's their business. You don't like it, go form your own Hollywood (which the Tea Party has attempted, only to find out that colonial America based dramas aren't that exciting.)  The fact that this guy "revealed" their bias was meaningless. 

Does anyone else have experience in this regard?  Is my analysis flawed?  Do they not get to say and do whatever they want, however they want, and the only negativity they face is perfectly natural criticism from people that don't agree with them?  Do they not understand the flip-side of free speech, and the responsibilities that come with freedom?  Am I missing something?

Originally posted to sujigu on Wed Oct 26, 2011
Also republished by Community Spotlight.

Thursday, October 27, 2011

Eric Cantor Has No Clue

Sourced From Daily Kos

Eric Cantor on House Republicans: We're not lazy!

by Jed Lewison       Thu Oct 27, 2011

Eric Cantor

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (center) is working hard—on all the wrong things

If this pushback is any indication of what's going on inside House Majority Leader Eric Cantor's mind, then he doesn't have a clue about why public approval of Congress has fallen to an all-time low of 9% since Republicans took control of the House:

In a 1-page “Dear Colleague” letter, Cantor pointed to several numbers that he said indicated a more deliberative and productive House due to the new schedule. For example, through Oct. 14 of this year, the House has taken 800 roll call votes so far, compared to 565 votes by the same time in 2010.

“I believe this year’s calendar, because of its new design, helped improve the legislative culture of the House,” Cantor wrote in the letter released Thursday.

In his letter, Cantor also noted a “boom of activity” in House committees, with 1,276 hearings and 194 mark-ups held so far in 2011. Like this year, votes in the House in 2012 will be held later in the day between 1 p.m. to 7 p.m. – largely to allow committees sufficient time to do their work in the mornings.

Cantor seems to think that the public is pissed off because they don't think Congress is keeping itself busy. But that's not the problem—nobody keeps themselves up at night worrying how many hours per day members of Congress are on the job. What they care about is whether Congress is actually getting something done. And by that measure, Congress has been an absolute failure, and the blame falls squarely on Republicans.

Nobody doubts that Paul Ryan worked very hard to pass his budget plan that called for the end of Medicare as we know it. Nobody doubts that tea partiers spent countless hours plotting the debt ceiling debacle. Nobody questions whether John Boehner and Mitch McConnell have burned the midnight oil to figure out how to block President Obama's jobs agenda.

The problem isn't how hard House Republicans are working. It's that they are working for the wrong things. They've got their priorities upside down. And the only way to solve the problem is to throw them out next November.

Originally posted to The Jed Report on Thu Oct 27, 2011
Also republished by Daily Kos.

Murphy’s Law Strikes Again

   You are all old enough to know what “ Murphy’s Law “ means so I am not going to explain it. I am just going to present the latest incident in order to show you just how crappy things can get in the snap of a finger.

   Here in Tampa, Florida, the jobs prospects are pretty bleak and it does not look as if things will get better any time soon, so I have taken to posting my own ad on Craigslist seeking work. Sometimes this work out pretty good and at other times there are weeks with no work.

   One issue that I have against me is the fact that I have lost my birth certificate so it is impossible for me to get a current Florida driver license, making it impossible for me to fill out any job applications. To make matters even worse, I was born in Germany.

   My father was an American and my mother was German, and I was adopted by both and brought to the United States when I was 3 months old, from what I understand. Trying to wade through all of the red tape for a certificate has been a 3 year pain in the ass, as I have to provide information that I do not have, and am not sure how to get.

   Back to work. I placed an ad on the net seeking work for this past weekend, and I got lucky. A gentleman called needing someone to help with some yard work, such as mowing, weed eating, and some cleanup. I took this job for $8 an hour because I needed the money.

   So, I worked the weekend, which did not include any of the work listed above, and was brought home Sunday night, returning the the job site on Tuesday morning with a $1 an hour raise. That was all well and good and it made my day, as this work was going to continue into the 1st week of November and then other later dates throughout the winter. Things were looking good for a change.  

    Ahhhh, but not so fast!

    I was supposed to work this week from Tuesday through Friday and then be home by 8 or on Friday night.

   My girlfriend, who is an idiot alcoholic, sends me a text on my phone telling me to call her because she has something important to tell me.  When the day is over, I call her only to here that we have an  3-day eviction notice, with the 3 days being up on Friday. Well shit! I can’t work and be in the managers office before he leaves on Friday ( 6 pm ) because I do not get off and back into Tampa before then. The boss gets pissed, I’m already pissed, that I have to leave 2 days early, and I do not drive, so I have to pay to get back to my place. I lose 2.5 days of work, and it costs me $40 to get back into town. All of this over being not even 1 week behind with the rent. I pay by the week ( $100 ) because of the loss of work here, and the thing is that I have been up to 6 weeks behind, one time, and managed to pay the rent all in full. Been living in the same place for a year and a half and up until July of this year, paid by the month and was never late, and now they want to pull this crap?

  My boss did not say as much, but since I was told not to worry about work until next week, it’s a sure bet that the job is lost.

  Probably back to square 1! Murphy’s Law at work.

Monday, October 24, 2011

The Objective End of Republican Anti-Tax Orthodoxy

By    Dante Atkins for Daily Kos      Sun Oct 23, 2011

It's an old adage often used to compare Republican discipline with Democratic disarray: when you ask a million people what Democrats stand for, you'll get a million different answers. But if you ask those same million people what Republicans stand for, you'll often hear the same three things: small government, low taxes and a strong national defense. For anyone who has been paying attention, however, the Republican commitment to these principles has been waning at best. The Republican commitment to small government and local control was swept aside under President George W. Bush's unprecedented arrogation of executive power and evaporated completely when Gov. Rick Snyder of Michigan decided to eliminate the local autonomy of cities in pursuit of his union-busting agenda. The Party's one-time monopoly on issues of national defense has been crushed under the weight of the costly misadventure in Iraq and the increasing lack of success in Afghanistan; President Obama, meanwhile, has more than done his part in eliminating that narrative through his risky decision to strike at Osama bin Laden and his steady hand in navigating the U.S. and NATO through the revolutions of the Arab Spring.

Taxes, however? This was the Republican Party's signature agenda: the idea that tax rates should be low across the board. That it's your money, and you should keep it. The idea that people know how to spend money better than the government goes. Historically, this has been a winning message: most voters will always appreciate the thought of more money in their pockets, especially when they keep on being told that the tax cuts they're getting will actually pay for themselves. But just like their messages on limited government and a strong defense, the Republican commitment to low taxes is beginning to slip—just, not in the area that a decent respect for the opinion of mankind might cause one to expect.

This week's news on Republican perceptions of taxes shows nothing out of the ordinary. It comes as no surprise that the economic injustice that is fueling the Occupy Wall Street movement is also making President Obama's populist policy on tax increases very popular. Obama is pushing aggressively for tax increases on the wealthiest Americans to fund a jobs program that will rebuild American infrastructure and put unemployed Americans back to work. Karl Rove, pursuing his party's rigid anti-tax orthodoxy, is spinning furiously to undermine it.

This is the Republican Party we have all come to expect: the party that will fight against any tax increases, no matter how sensible, no matter how fiscally constrained the budget is, simply as a matter of orthodoxy. But you might have heard another number being bandied about recently: the "fact" that 47 percent of Americans pay no taxes. Now, if we ignored payroll taxes, sales taxes, excise taxes and all other forms of taxes besides federal income taxes, that would be true. But for an anti-tax Republican, the idea that nearly half of all Americans pay no income taxes should be a welcome statistic; it would mean, after all, that we're nearly halfway toward ensuring that no Americans pay federal income taxes at all.

But no. Far from being a source of pride for the party of low taxes and limited government, this is a source of consternation, and the Republican presidential field will not tolerate this sort of injustice. Here's erstwhile frontrunner Gov. Rick Perry:

“We’re approaching nearly half of the United States population that doesn’t pay any income taxes,” he responded. “And I think one of the ways is to let everybody, as many people as possible, let me put it that way, to be able to be helping pay for the government that we have in this country.”

The now-imploded Rep. Michele Bachmann struck up a similar theme:

“Part of the problem is today, only 53% pay any federal income tax at all; 47% pay nothing.” She added, “We need to broaden the base so that everybody pays something, even if it’s a dollar.”

And the likeliest of the Republican presidential candidates, Gov. Mitt Romney, is not exempt from this sudden urge to raise taxes on middle- and lower-class Americans:

“We want to make sure people do pay their fair share. Half the people in this country pay no income tax at all."

The difference with Romney, of course, is that in his next breath, he added that he does not want to raise taxes on the middle class, leading to the inevitable conclusion that either Romney wants to raise taxes on the poor, or he is contradicting himself. But by far the most egregious example of the GOP's breach on taxes comes from pizza mogul Herman Cain.

If any newspaper reporting on the GOP presidential race were looking to fill extra column inches, they would need to look no further than this obscenely long graph that demonstrates the difference in average household tax liability by income bracket under Cain's proposal. The visual from the Tax Policy Center estimates that the bottom 80 percent of Americans would see significant increases in their household tax liability under Cain's plan, while the top tenth of a percent would see decreases in the same that are beyond belief. Cain's proposal, in a nutshell, is to cut taxes for the rich and make the poor pay for it—a plan that falls right in line with his fellow candidates' agreement that more people need to pay taxes, as well as Karl Rove's position that it most certainly won't be the wealthiest who do.

When all four of a party's presidential candidates who have held leads in national polls advocate for raising taxes on the poor and middle class, that party can no longer call itself opposed to taxes, no matter how fervently they try to oppose President Obama's popular proposal to ask more from those who are best off. The Republican Party is no longer the party of lower taxes. Instead, it has transformed itself into a cult of Ayn Rand's objectivism, where so-called "producers" are rewarded with favorable policy outcomes and the "parasites" are punished for their lack of work ethic. In Herman Cain's America, after all, you only have yourself to blame if you're unemployed. And in Mitt Romney's America, the best way to solve the foreclosure crisis is to turn people out of their homes faster so investors can make a quicker profit off of buying them.

Who is John Galt? And more importantly, what has he done with the Republican Party?

A Day In The Life

  I have been pretty quiet over the past 2 days only because I managed to get some much needed work, which in the Tampa Bay area can be a difficult task.

   So, I’ve missed out on the political news and now I am playing catch up, which will take maybe half of this day to do. I will be posting only today because I am off to work for the remainder of the week as this 2 day job has turned into the whole week, with a raise included. Lucky me. I am out in the middle of nowhere when working, so I have no Internet or television. I will be back on Friday evening, if things go according to schedule.

  Right now, it is time to go see what that Republican pizza man ( Herman Cain ) has been up to. I’m pretty sure that he is up to nothing that real humans would like.