November 30, 2010

Computer beatboxing in German

Yeah, I know this is stupid, but I HAVE to share this:

1) Go to Google Translate
2) Select German-> German
3) Copy and past the following: pv zk pv pv zk pv zk kz zk pv pv pv zk pv zk zk pzk pzk pvzkpkzvpvzk kkkkkk bsch
4) Click listen
5) Be amazed.

Welfare Talking Points #1




So after my last video on how to fix the USA’s economy, I saw a lot of ignorant comments in the comments section about WELFARE.

They weren’t NEW ignorant comments, they were the SAME ignorant comments that you hear over and over. Apparently nobody out there is challenging people on their declarations, and allowing the virus of ignorance to spread.

So I wanted to make a list of facts and talking points for progressives when confronted with these conservative... well, let’s call them what they are-- they’re LIES, and stop the spread of ignorance in it’s tracks.

So let’s go down the list, and tackle them one by one, shall we?

1) Welfare spending is the reason our government is in debt.
FALSE.

If you had the choice between giving somebody a dollar and getting back either $1.50 or $0.80, which would you choose? Hold that thought.

According to USGovernmentspending.com The Federal Government is committed by law to spending 557 billion on welfare in the year 2010. Which seems like “Oh my! That’s a lot of money!” Which, for one person, yeah it is. But for our federal government, not so much.

Especially when you compare that to the $895 billion we’re committed to spend, by law on Defense spending. Which doesn’t account for the $711 billion in our discretionary spending on stuff like the War in Iraq and Afghanistan, and useless cold war-era weapons that we don’t even use, and never will.

Next you have to take into account what we get for those dollars spent.
Most economists agree on the following figures, including conservative ones:
Welfare spending has a fiscal multiplier of about 1.5-- while military spending has a fiscal multiplier of 0.8.

To which you might say, “wow, you just said some numbers, but what the hell does that mean? It means that for every dollar our gov’t spends on welfare, we get one dollar and fifty cents back in the form of GDP. With military spending, for every dollar we spend, we get back $0.80.

That seems really stupid. And that’s because it is. Which is why politicians frame their arguments about or disgustingly wasteful military spending as being “patriotic” or “supporting the troops.”
How much support actually goes to our troops? You, know, like after they come back from getting shot at and having their legs blown off?

According to the White House’s own figures, we’re slated to spend $125 billion on veterans affairs. And we all know about staffing shortages and underfunding that goes on in our VA system. So clearly this isn’t about supporting our troops.
For those who don’t care about human lives, and only the hard economics, I want to ask you again: If you had the choice between giving somebody a dollar and getting back either $1.50 or $0.80, which would you choose?
Now for the humanitarians out there, if you had to choose between giving somebody a dollar to feed their family, knowing you’d get back $1.50, or give somebody $1 knowing that your next door neighbor would have his legs blown off and you’ll only get back $0.80, which would you choose?

November 27, 2010

There IS a class war, and the rich are kicking our ass

Bob Herbert in the New York Times had this to say on the Class War : There is a Class War, and the Rich are KICKING OUR ASS!

He goes on, and you should really read the full article, but the part that resonated with me the most is the following paragraph:

"The rich may think that the public won’t ever turn against them. But to hold that belief, you have to ignore the turbulent history of the 1930s."


YES!

Which is why I've started the Kill & Eat the Rich Campaign. I don't know if it will take off or not. It all started with a t-shirt and a fable. I'm really hoping, that like that Green Revolution in Iran, it becomes a viral meme and take on a life all of it's own. Hey, I can dream, right?

November 26, 2010

Rep Todd Akin is either a fucking idiot, or lying

Because he's wrong. Incredibly, wildly, laughably wrong.
He's wrong in the same way that people saying that the moon is made of cheese are wrong.
He's wrong in the same way that people saying that the earth rests on the back of a giant space turtle are wrong.

But what sucks most of all is that it does not matter that he is wrong. It does not matter that he is either saying this because he thinks it's true- making him a complete fucking idiot and the product of horribly failed parenting-- or saying this knowing full well what bullshit it is (which, arguably, still makes him the product of horribly failed parenting.)




The reason that it doesn't matter, is because people on the right wing of our political spectrum in the USA ARE fucking idiots. They don't CARE if he's lying or not. What matters is that what he's saying SOUNDS GOOD TO THEM.

Just like they don't care that there were no WMD's in Iraq.
Just like they don't care that Saddam Hussien had nothing to do with 9-11.
Just like they don't care that removing regulations from the market is what triggered the economic collapse.
Just like they don't care that NAFTA and the WTO have created a vacuum that sucked all the jobs out of the USA.

They don't fucking care at all. In fact, they'll keep voting for people who spout bullshit like this, because they are INCREDIBLY FUCKING STUPID. I would not be surprised if when the GOP cuts all their social services (which poor white people are the biggest recipients of) to our collapsing banana republic, that they throw a big parade for the GOP.

It wouldn't be so bad that they were so incredibly stupid if it weren't for the fact that they're also wrong about everything. And thanks to low voter turnout in 2010, now the gov't represents the fucking stupids in the Tea Party who actually bothered to go out and vote. Great job cynical lefties. Way to "protest" by not voting. Thanks a bunch.

November 24, 2010

What about all the liberal rednecks?

They exist. Why aren't progressives talking to them?

Backstory: So I'm reading the book "No More Prisons" by League Of Pissed Off Voters (aka League of Indy Voters, aka League of Young Voters) founder William Upski Wimsatt.

It's all about hip-hop activism, inner city organizing, etc. And I think that's largely been the model that the league has followed. Which is great- If you live in a city.

I had an epiphany today, which is tied back to my training at the 1st annual Smackdown (aka organizer training session) in Columbus, Ohio back in 2004. After hearing story after story of how hard it is to be poor in a city like New York, I began to feel like, "well damn, I thought I was poor, but I've had it pretty good." But then after talking with the same people, I discovered that they had all sorts of opportunities that I never had, like specialty public schools for the arts, after school programs, they were cultivated for leadership by these like... community unions which served as like a parallel government.

Anyways, I'm not saying that living in a city doesn't suck-- like I said, I heard horror stories too, but I realized when talking with these kids, that rural folks like myself grew up in a different kind of poverty that sucked in different ways. I ate gov't cheese and gov't bologna growing up. Sometimes that and mustard was all we had to eat. My middle school almost folded because our property tax base wasn't enough to support it.
Arts program? Phht. Music program? HA! We barely had a gym program. Hell, we barely had a school.
What would the solution be? Bus us to another school? Where exactly might that school be at? We consolidated already to cut costs...

In the Boy Scouts, parents brought venison they'd hunted, killed, and cleaned themselves, for barbecues. They talked obliquely about factory farms and pollution, and how hunting connects us to the land. Hunters and fishermen are ready and available allies on environmental issues, but we dismiss them as rednecks. To our own peril.

Anyways, the long and the short of it is this:

The next breakthrough that progressives are going to have to make before we can effectively take our country back, is getting a foothold in areas of rural poverty.

The question we need to be asking is, "What about all the liberal rednecks?"

November 21, 2010

If Bush were to go to Europe, he'd be Arrested for War Crimes





It's not hyperbole to call him a war criminal. It's a fact.


Boris Johnson, Tory (Conservative) Mayor of London:
" It is not yet clear whether George W Bush is planning to cross the Atlantic to flog us his memoirs, but if I were his PR people I would urge caution. As book tours go, this one would be an absolute corker. It is not just that every European capital would be brought to a standstill, as book-signings turned into anti-war riots. The real trouble — from the Bush point of view — is that he might never see Texas again.

One moment he might be holding forth to a great perspiring tent at Hay-on-Wye. The next moment, click, some embarrassed member of the Welsh constabulary could walk on stage, place some handcuffs on the former leader of the Free World, and take him away to be charged. Of course, we are told this scenario is unlikely. Dubya is the former leader of a friendly power, with whom this country is determined to have good relations. But that is what torture-authorising Augusto Pinochet thought. And unlike Pinochet, Mr Bush is making no bones about what he has done.

November 20, 2010

Thank you again, Tom Tomorrow



I don't know if Tom Tomorrow gets paid by visits to his Salon.com column space or not. So click the cartoon just to be sure he gets the $0.05 he's due.

November 17, 2010

KILL & EAT THE RICH (your photos)

This one is from Rachel:


CLICK HERE TO GET YER OWN

The Punk Patirot Fixes the USA Economy



With quantitative easing, people are worried about inflation!
If we don’t do anything, the Fed is worried about deflation!
By blaming our shitty economy on people who receive welfare checks, we’re having a big problem with CONFLATION!

I’m the Punk Patriot, and I’m going to fuckin’ fix the economy for you.

I was watching the news the other day, they were doing “man on the street” interviews, and I saw this one person give his thoughts on the economy: “I think thar’s too much people gittin on welfur, and too much of our jobs is bein’ sent overseas.”

Well, you got half of that right. Thanks to NAFTA, CAFTA, and the WTO, our manufacturing jobs have almost all left the country. Manufacturing is important, because it’s a job that takes a low-cost raw material and transforms it into a high-value consumable good. This happens through the MAGIC OF LABOR!

Because people are working on transforming low value materials into high value goods, the product that they create using their skilled labor has more use and therefore more value, than the stuff that they started with. Which means that they are creating wealth. Factories are not just places to create goods, they are places that create wealth. And right now, all our wealth is being created in other countries. Thats why the economy fucking sucks so bad.

I work in a boot factory. I make boots. I transform leather and rubber, both of which are relatively low cost, low value materials, into a high-value, higher-function good-- a boot.
You can’t keep your feet dry and warm with scrap leather and rubber alone. You need it to be crafted into a fucking boot. That takes skilled labor. You’re welcome.

Your retail jobs don’t do this. They simply move a product from one place to another. You will never grow an economy on retail sales, because the margins are slim, and no wealth is created by moving a product from one point to another. An economy based entirely on retail sales-- which is what we’ve pretty much had for the past 30 years, will eat itself alive- which is pretty much what we’re seeing right now.

Now, the address the conflation of “Too much people gettin on welfar”...

For whatever reason, it’s a common misconception that people receiving welfare is bad for the economy. People getting on welfare isn’t the reason you don’t have a job. The reason you don’t have a job is because nobody fucking MAKES anything anymore. Which means that all our wealth has left the country. Which means that nobody has any money to fucking buy anything anymore. Which means that the retail jobs are having to lay people off. Which means that more people have less money to buy things with. Which means that more layoffs are in the works. Which means that more people have less money to spend.

Welfare spending actually reverses this trend. If a person receives welfare spending, what do they spend it on? (DRUGS!) No! Actually they spend it on food and rent. If more people have more money to spend on food and rent, then the grocery stores can hire more people, and the superintendents are better able to afford repairs. Which means that construction and repair workers can stay employed and grocery stores can hire more people, which means that they can buy other things like cars. Which means that more people can get paid to make cars. Or whatever. Money flows in one direction-- from the bottom, up. This is a fundamental truth of capitalism. Fixing the interest rates for all the rich fucks on Wall Street can start doing more derivatives trading again doesn’t do ANYTHING to fix the economy.

Which is why Quantitative Easing is doomed to fail. Capitalism is fundamentally flawed, and supply-side economics, which apparently even Obama has drunk the kool-aid on, is even more so.

You’re not going to fix fundamental flaws by fucking around with interest rates. The problem isn’t our monetary policy, it’s our monetary system, which is biased towards savings, wall street mathematical gymnastics, and scarcity. It’s the fundamental flaws in our entire economy-- that we do NOT RECOGNIZE that the poorest people amongst us are actually the ones who create all wealth in society by providing consumer demand. If it wasn’t for consumer demand, all the pioneers of industry would be wasting their money and time. Which with the economy in recession, it looks like they’re doing.

Rich people don’t create jobs. They don’t create a single fucking job. If labor hadn’t worked their asses off striking and protesting and doing work-slowdowns, and sit-down strikes, and taking police billy clubs to the head, and being shot and killed, so that we could have all the labor laws we take for granted, things like overtime pay, minimum wage, the right to organize, a half hour lunch, 15 minute breaks, OSHA safety requirements, etc etc etc-- we’d be no different than those third world countries that all our jobs have gone to.

If we didn’t have these labor protections mandated by law, we’d be working our fingers off- literally right off our hands, getting them caught in unsafe machinery, or permanently damaged due to repetitive motion injury.
Now Randian regressives who would prefer we live in a pre-Great Depression laissez-faire, free-market system, would have us believe that we should be willing to make ourselves POORER-- by taking cuts in benefits and wages, to make ourselves richer, by having more jobs. We aren’t going to make ourselves richer by making ourselves poorer. That’s so fucking illogical I don’t even know where to begin with debunking that...

You want to fix the fucking economy? I’ll fix it for you.
First thing we need, is a trade policy where we stop importing goods from whoever is fucking over their workers the most, just because it’s cheaper to do so. We can harness the greed and consumption of America to do good work for the rest of the world. Pure free-market economics is like a child with an overactive ID and no superego telling them what’s right and wrong.

What we need is to put in a safeguard to protect us from our own greed and stupidity. If we implement a trade policy in which we only trade with countries who have labor laws and environmental protection laws at least as good as our own, then we force third world countries to give their lower class more protection by their governments, and increase their standards of living, by giving them more labor protections, and higher wages, and more protection from getting poisoned by lazy fucks that we call the “captains of industry”, who pollute because it’s cheap and easy to do so.

Second, we need to implement a MAXIMUM WAGE law. Now there’s been talk about this for a while. Some think we should just cap it arbitrarily. I think that’s wrong. I think that would stifle the GOOD things about capitalism and greed-- the incentive to make the best fucking product you can for the lowest amount of money to the consumer, so that you can make the most money you can. Capitalism works really well for creating amazing consumer goods. Like cellphones and computers. People really wanted to be able to watch YouTube videos and so now you can do it on your fucking PHONE. In fact, some of you are probably watching this on a phone. A FUCKING PHONE! That’s crazy! That couldn’t happen without capitalism responding to consumer demand.

But there’s a problem-- the Average CEO makes 10million dollars a year.
The average worker makes 40,000 a year or less. The average worker spends the majority of their income on meeting their basic needs-- which is all shit that actually makes our economy function.
The average CEO keeps it. This is called “dead money.” That money sits in the bank, or goes to wall street where it does mathematic gymnastics, but doesn’t create a single fucking job.

So what’s the solution? The maximum wage needs to be indexed to the lowest paid employee at any company. Let’s set it at say, 20 times what your lowest paid employee makes-- which is roughly the same ratio that we saw in the 1950s and 1960s, a time when the USA was far more properous. Back in the 1960s, indexed for inflation, we worked half as many hours, got paid the same amount, but the cost of living was a third of what it is now.

Today, CEOs make roughly 300 times as much as their lowest paid employees. That’s fucking absurd. If a company is doing really well, it’s because of EVERYBODY at that fucking company working their ass off, least of which is the CEO. If they have enough money laying around to give themselves bonuses, they have enough money to let everybody share in the wealth. After all, all those poor fucks are the ones who put their labor into making that company successful.. They should share in that wealth. So if a company does well, and the executive board wants to give themselves raises as a pat on the back-- go ahead. But you have to a raise that is proportional to your income-- to everybody else in your company. If you want to give yourself a raise, you have to give EVERYBODY in your company a raise.

This forces more of the wealth downwards into the lowest classes, where it belongs. Because it’s all going to end up back in the pockets of the CEOs anyways. Fixing the economy to work better for the rich and the traders on wall street, is like fixing a tree to work better for a fungal parasite. You’re going to end up killing the tree.

This is the punk patriot, to life, liberty, and pursuit of a less fucked up government.

November 16, 2010

TSA: If you don't let us TOUCH YOUR PENIS, we'll have you arrested

PRE-SHIRT design. Will be a tri-color t-shirt.



For for those of you who don't know, John Tyner said to the TSA when about to be subjected to a full genital pat-down, "If you touch my junk, I'll have you arrested."

Because he, an American citizen with a shred of dignity left, declined to submit to groping or naked photos, the TSA responded, saying something along the lines of, "If you don't let us touch your penis-- or take a photo of it, we'll have you arrested."

That case is pending.








For the ladies:

November 12, 2010

Kill And Eat The Rich Conversation




ZING!

If you're familiar with Etsy's conversation format, you'll notice that the first email should be on the BOTTOM, but it's at the top here.

I put it in photoshop and reordered it to read in the sequence of how the conversation transpired.

Also, if you want to buy this killer shirt, click here

I'm hoping that once people get them, they will post themselves wearing it as their facebook profile picture, sparking a movement like the Green after the Iranian Election.

Hey... I can dream.


November 9, 2010

Defending the Green Party

Monday, November 08, 2010

Defending the Green



From Eric Zorn's Chicago Tribune Column: Change of Subject
Political Science professor William P. Kreml of DePaul University writes to take issue with my view [Eric Zorn's] of the Green Party's performance in the recent election:

I believe I was the largest contributor to the Rich Whitney campaign. I contributed to, and raised money for, the MSNBC television ads that ran from September 20th through November 1st. I also appeared in the ads. Rich [Whitney for Governor] ran as a Green and Eric Zorn of the Tribune has seen fit to castigate the Greens as a party that has contributed little to the public well being. I differ.

A large number of Green Party members are former Democrats. We left for various reasons but I think I capture the core of them when I ask Mr. Zorn to look at the Federal Election Commission contribution reports of recent years and find that, increasingly, the Democratic and Republican Parties are receiving money from the same corporations. The Greens take no money from any corporation. We, like most of the rest of the world, believe that America’s banks, insurance companies, and Wall Street corporations caused the world wide recession.

Why would a political party not want to take money from the corporations? Please recall that our great country was founded as a middle class nation, thus following the admonitions of Aristotle in The Politics, that both political stability and economic justice was best secured within that large body of a population that did reasonably well and thus voluntarily legitimated the existing political order. That middle class ideal was realized in America in the early nineteenth century, and again in the early twentieth century, by having two political parties that differed along the various iterations of the original Hamiltonian/Jeffersonian Divide, balancing the public and the private sectors, as well as tempering the tendency towards exorbitant wealth and wrenching poverty.

In the latter half of the nineteenth century, largely as a result of the Industrial Revolution’s full flowering, and in the latter half, or least one-third, of the twentieth century, when the opposition of the principal parties became far more suspect, both instability and economic injustice reared its head. To return to the Democrats, I ask if there is not a correlation between the beginnings of deregulation under Jimmy Carter (remember the Civil Aeronautics Board?) and the ghastly Clintonian oxymoron of “self-regulation” with the year by year dispersions of income and wealth, along with the increase of both economic instability and governmental debt that have occurred under Republicans and Democrats since the mid-1970s. I think there is.

In short, I suggest there is a correlation between a) the former Federal Reserve Board chairman Alan Greenspan’s admission that “there was something missing in the model” (Greenspan having been reappointed by Clinton after his Reagan appointment) b) Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin’s “I never knew the private sector could go so haywire,” c) former Democratic National Party chair and chair of the Senate Finance Committee Chris Dodd’s VIP home loan with Angelo Mozilo and Countrywide Financial, and d) Senator Joe Lieberman’s quashing of Security and Exchange Commission chair Arthur Leavitt’s 1990s investigation into the insurance industry, and the mess we are in. As good conservatives properly teach, actions have consequences. There are reasons for why our country is enduring the most significant decline relative to other countries in our over two hundred year history.

I ask Mr. Zorn to examine three more things. First, a look at open source CIA Fact Book material reveals that virtually all of the nations of Europe, as well as democratic countries like Australia and Canada, have multi-party political systems. Even with smaller and in almost all cases more homogeneous populations, these countries feel a need for a broader range of political views than a country that has hindered third party entrance into the political arena with high ballot access percentage requirements. Illinois requires a 5% minimum, one of the highest percentages in the nation. A rigidly two party system is semi-democratic, at best; better than North Korea, Cuba, etc. for sure, but not as good as other democracies.

Secondly, I ask Mr. Zorn to examine the history of at least some of the third parties in America. Did not the Liberty Party lead to the Free Soil Party that became part of the Republican Party under Abraham Lincoln?

Did not the Populist Party merge with the Democrats and advance the progressive policies that righted some of the inequities of late nineteenth century America?

And, finally, Mr. Zorn, what of our region, the Upper Midwest, that imported the economic and political balances of Scandinavian, German, Czech, Slovak, and Alsatian peoples into the American mainstream, guaranteeing minimal economic protections to the citizenry? The Greens, the world’s largest political organization with ninety-two national parties, have a different history, and ideology, than that of Democrats like Rep. Melissa Bean. That is why 6.500 Americans voted for the Green candidate for Congress.

Perhaps the Democrats will learn something from this.

From Eric Zorn: My response: As I wrote before, there is precious little evidence that winning or losing candidates have ever taken much notice after the fact of the positions taken by single-digit opponents. But even if they did in this case, what would taking "notice" look like? What positions could Bean have taken that would have won those Green voters and yet not cost her with those who did vote for her?

As I've written before, I'm not opposed to third parties, independent candidacies, fresh ideas in politics or anything else that smacks of rigidity in political thought. But neither am I in favor of futility or symbolism when it comes time to vote in close elections.

I'm in favor of casting votes that stand to make an immediate difference.

I will ask here what I asked in a comment thread: If it were up to you and you alone and you could choose Melissa Bean, Joe Walsh or abstention, thus ceding the choice of U.S. Rep. for the 8th district to someone else, which would you choose?

This hypothetical turned out to be closer to real than we could have known, and those who voted Green for all practical purposes abstained.

November 6, 2010

A note to the Dissafected Non-Voters out there:

The reason our Government sucks, is because nobody participates.

To complain about not being "given" enough choices on the ballot reminds me of the Russian Folk Tale of the Little Red Hen:



Where she worked growing wheat, she could get no help from anyone.
She harvested it, and got no help from anyone.
She ground it to flour, and got no help.
She baked it into bread and got no help from anyone.
They all slept.

To make it a closer analog to our Democracy-- when the Democracy Bread was finally baked, everybody wanted a loaf of their own, and when the Little Red Hen said "no" they all bitched and whined that it wasn't fair. When she ate the bread herself, the Dog, the Cat, and the Mouse used this as an excuse to further justify their lack of participation. So they never got any bread, and were miserable.

The Mouse took up teaching linguistics at MIT, and wrote books about how the Little Red Hen was stupid for working to bake bread when the bread would likely go bad over time, or have small rocks in it from being ground at the miller, and how since the only REAL way to get bread is to plant seeds, nobody should participate in harvesting or grinding flour, and thusly the effort that goes into baking bread is a wasted effort.

The Cat went on to become an anarchist philosopher and would publish books decrying the Little Red Hen as a "slave of the system" and published books saying that bread would make itself all on it's own if we stopped participating in the making of bread.

The Dog muttered, "they're all crooks anyways" and went back to sleep.

The end.

I answer conservative talking point emails

On Sat, Nov 6, 2010 at 2:28 AM, John Doe wrote:
Note To Democrats

You lost. You lost because the country has seen the direction your party is headed and wants no part in it. You suffered your worst losses in Congress for 60 years. The Republicans won not because of their sparkling personalities or inspired policies, but simply because they're not Democrats.

If you're gloating because two or three of the Tea Party candidates didn't win, then at least you're easily pleased, something likely to stand you in good stead in 2012.

Also, you should probably look into cutting California adrift before it drags Nevada or Oregon down with it. Probably best to just tow the entire state out to sea and scuttle it.





A Progressive's Response to Republicans

Hi there Kregaaron. I don't know why you sent this to me.

First, I'm not a Democrat.

Second, the reason why Democrats lost is because the direction that the Democrats are headed in is the same exact direction as the Republicans, and has been since 2006. And the Democratic Party's progressive base finally woke up.

Nancy Pelosi said she was against the war, and when she had the power to end them, she didn't. In fact, she called special emergency sessions to approve additional funding to extend the wars and occupation for years to come-- all on the back of the taxpayer's grandchildren.

When Nancy Pelosi had the power to investigate the Bush Administration for approving torture, illegal wiretapping, black sites, and other nasty and illegal shit-- she chose not to.

When the American people were clamoring for Impeachment hearings against Bush for all the illegal nasty shit he and his administration were doing, she said firmly "NO!" ...along with the rest of the Democratic leadership. And she, like the rest of the Democrats and Republicans, continued to pass bills that gave Bush exactly what he wanted; Bills that gave the Federal Government more power to spy on us, to torture us, to deny is a trial by jury, to read our email, to monitor our purchases, to silence our peaceful protests. More power to lock us up for political reasons. More infringements on freedom and liberty.

Then Obama was elected. We were told by Demcoratic Leadership that this was the sort of change that we needed. We needed 60 votes in the senate, and the House, and the Presidency to get anything done. The American people gave them 60 votes in the senate, a majority in the house, and the presidency. And they did nothing. Mostly they blamed the Republicans for obstructionism, which is absurd.

Then they cowtowed to big business, blaming the Republicans. Then they started to lose seats in the Senate. And so they blamed the Republicans. The the President and his staff attacked his own progressive base, and called them "fucking retarded" for wanting single payer healthcare. They called them "Crazy" for wanting to end the illegal, immoral, and expensive wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Demcoratic base was completely demoralized. The more power that we voted to give the Democrats-- the more they started to sound like Republicans.

And so now the Democrats in DC get exactly what they have always wanted-- to not be in power any more, so that they don't have to make up excuses for why they are cowtowing to big business, so that they can once again sit on the sidelines and promise things to their base that they have no intention of ever delivering on.

Peace,
The Punk Patriot

November 3, 2010

Boehner sure did promise a lot...

Boehner certainly promised a lot in his speech. "Cutting spending," eh? So that means we're ending the 3 trillion dollar wars, right?

"Changing how government works, to make it responsive to the people..."
So that means you're pushing to adopt Mike Gravel's proposed National Referendum, right?

"Shrinking the size of government" are you? "Getting the government off our backs" are you?
So no more roving wiretaps on US citizens? Closing Guantanamo bay? Cutting the Pentagon's budget?

"Putting small businesses back to work" are you? You're doing that? Wouldn't that mean the government would have to intervene? Starting things out by contradicting yourself within the same paragraph: What a great start to the next congress.

PS Did he sound like he was half-in-the-bag drunk to anybody else but me? --Maybe that's why he started crying for no goddamned reason?