Congress don’t raise the debt ceiling!

Congress don’t raise the debt ceiling!

Congress, don’t raise the debt ceiling, seriously let the United States default on our debts, watch the stock market crash, watch more people end up out of work, and watch interest rates rise.  The reason I want this to happen is that people don’t really pay attention to anything unless it hits them in the pocketbook or the wallet. 

Global warming won’t be real until it costs people money, the utter stupidity of a fossil fuel economy didn’t even cross most people’s minds until gasoline hit $4.00 a gallon, a level we’re unfortunately getting very comfortable with.  And so, the debt ceiling won’t mean anything until it goes boom and people are suddenly less able to retire, or their adjustable rate mortgage jumps up a couple of points.

Maybe, if congress lets us down on this issue to the point that our collective and individual bottom lines suffer then maybe, just maybe, we’ll finally understand that in America there is just one political party, the re-election party.  Jokers wearing elephant lapel pins can’t possibly vote for tax increases and jokers with jackass pins can’t possibly cut any entitlements because they are afraid their base will desert them and they won’t get re-elected, which of course is the sole reason they are in office.

I consistently hear politicians, especially conservatives, and idiot commentators like Sean Hannity talk about the debt in terms of personal finance.  They are always saying if you are out of money you can’t print up more, you have to cut back.  Well you damn fools, when people are truly broke they don’t just cut back on spending, they often also go out and get a second job.  You see ordinary everyday people are smart enough to understand that in order to solve a debt problem you have to decrease spending AND raise revenues. 

So the hell with the debt ceiling let it all crash and then maybe just maybe we can finally start getting rid of these bums and actually put somebody from something other than the re-election party into office.

 

Sarah Palin targeted Gabrielle Giffords district with cross-hairs!

Originally I hadn’t planned on blogging about the shooting, to be honest as terrible as it was, in the end it’s just another shooting.  However, a friend posted the transcript below of the eerie statement Congresswoman Giffords made in March about Sarah Palin’s use of gun imagery on her target list.  Let’s hope the idiot that shot her was not acting because of it.

I know the conservative wing of the Republican Party and their talking puppet meat heads, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly and Glenn Beck, think that their rhetoric has no consequences.  But Sarah Palin may have really stepped into it, below is an eerie video clip and the transcript of a statement Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords made upon finding out that her district was on Sarah Palin’s target list, where she used gun sight cross-hair imagery to illustrate her point.

A link to Palin’s list is below:

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/03/sarah-palins-target-list/37918/

Unfortunately since I’m not one of her friends on Facebook I have no access to the imagery.  It’s not that I think Sarah Palin is responsible for a nut job pulling the trigger and shooting a US Congresswoman, but Ms. Palin and the talking meat heads mentioned above need to understand the risk they run using the vitriol they use.

The eerie video:

http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread648803/pg1

The transcript of what she said:

“we’re on Sarah Palin’s targeted list, but the thing is, that the way she has it depicted has the crosshairs of a gun sight over our district and when people do that, they’ve gotta realize there’s consequences to that action.” ~ Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, March 25th, 2010

Sarah Palin, you’re no Reagan

Ed Rollins, the former White House political director for Ronald Reagan frequently annoys me as a talking head on CNN.  He’s undoubtedly and intelligent guy and he’s nowhere near annoying as say, Sean Hannity.  However today on the CNN website he posted a ver interesting post on Sarah Palin’s chances of becoming the president and in it he paraphrased Lloyd Bentsen’s famous remark to Dan Quayle, “Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy.”  He used it in regard to Sarah Palin recently comparing herself to Ronald Reagan, who although I disagreed with him philosophically on a great deal of things, I believe was a good president.

Anyway, here’s the link, it’s a quick easy read, enjoy: 

http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/12/01/rollins.palin/index.html?hpt=T2

The NYC Ground Zero Mosque Issue!

Ok, so I have had it up to my eyeballs over the whole Ground Zero Mosque issue.  First of all, let’s get something straight, the Islamic Cultural Center and Mosque will be two NYC blocks from Ground Zero.  I’m not sure on the orientation but that backs the distance somewhere between a half and two miles from the site.  So let’s stop the whole they are building a mosque on ground zero bullshit, not to mention that there is another mosque I believe four blocks from Ground Zero and that Muslims as well as Christians, Jews, Atheists and probably a Zoroastrian or two died on 9/11.  All of the dead from that horrible day have a claim to be memorialized, not just the ones that look like, or worship like the average American and before you criticize this project, do you know if any Muslim fireman or police died that day?

Honestly given the distance involved I’d like to set up a criterion as to who can actually complain about the mosque, if you can’t sprint the distance from Ground Zero to the mosque without needing oxygen afterword or a rest break during the run, you can’t criticize this project.  Good luck Rush, Hannity, I actually think Palin might have a shot, personally I think it would be a hoot to see all the talking radio/TV heads and republican congressmen running this together, I’d bet we could even boost MSNBC’s ratings for that.

The second and most important point of all in this discussion is geography.  I believe that New York City is located in the United States of America.  Which squarely puts this discussion within the laws of the United States of America.  Please tell me, especially all of you freedom loving conservatives, under what law could we possibly deny this project?  What law will be broken by Americans, acting like good little Capitalists, who have legally purchased property, have cleared the project through the NYC Landmark Preservation Committee, and will have a legal building permit to complete this project?

If the reason we want to deny this project is that we don’t like it, or we don’t agree with it, than tough shit.  In America, as I have often heard conservative talking heads say, we operate under capitalistic principles and under the rule of law supported by the Constitution of the United States of America.  So there it is, ok Beck, Hannity, Limbaugh or any of the other talking heads on Fox News, tell me what law these folks have broken, or is it innocent until proven guilty unless you’re a Muslim or a Hispanic living Arizona?

If you’ve been asleep for the last few weeks here’ s alink to an article about the project:

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2010/06/06/a_mosque_at_ground_zero/

I’m sick of the political expediency of heroes

This week the families of the eleven men who died on the Transocean and BP oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico were invited to the Whitehouse to meet President Barack Obama. Why? There have been almost 5,500 American men and women killed in Iraq and Afghanistan since those conflicts began. Have their families been invited to the Whitehouse? No, of course not, we call them heroes on a weekly basis but we don’t go so far as inviting their families to the Whitehouse, apparently the eleven lives lost in the Gulf of Mexico are more important than our fallen soldiers.

Now before all you conservatives start cheering me on for sticking it to Obama, you might want to read a bit further. We are only bringing those folks to the Whitehouse because it looks good politically. Just like it looks good politically to declare half of the damn country as heroes. These days, if you are a fireman, police officer or soldier you are a hero, if you’re a teacher, a nurse or a Sean Hannity listener you’re not only a hero, you might even be a great American. Bullshit, plain and simple bullshit. Politicians and political commentators use these words to sound good, if they call these people patriots or heroes they sound humble and patriotic, they make you feel good by using these words because let’s face it, who among us doesn’t have a cop, a firefighter or a soldier in our lives?

Now let’s be clear, I have the utmost respect for the police, firemen, nurses, doctors, teachers and particularly soldiers. How can you not have respect and feel indebted to the people who risk their very lives so that we can have the life we have here in America. However that does not make each of them heroes and I do not want the word hero cheapened by political hacks or commentators, often hacks themselves so they shouldn’t feel left out. These people are to be respected and lauded, but I’m sorry, just because some kid from Mississippi didn’t have any other good options in life, enlisted in the army and ended up doing truck repair in Düsseldorf, Germany doesn’t make him a hero. It makes him smart and respectable and hopefully it will help him have a better life, but how do you even start to compare him to a fireman who rushed back into the twin towers on 911, or the soldier standing guard on a fire base tonight in Afghanistan or Iraq?

I’ll even go a step further and this is where a lot of you are really going to get angry at me, just because a soldier dies in a war zone, he’s not a hero. He died in the line of duty and again, that sacrifice is amazing and selfless, but that doesn’t make him or her a hero. There have been many deaths in the war zone from suicide, truck accidents, illness and soldiers who made stupid mistakes. Those deaths are no less poignant, no less tragic for their families, but they are not heroic in any sense of the word. The majority of deaths that have occurred in our two current wars have come from improvised explosive devices (IED). So even a battle casualty may not be heroic, a new kid, just in country driving back from the airport in a Humvee that gets hit with an IED is not a hero.

So what is a hero? A hero is someone, man, woman or child, who engages in a heroic act, who puts the survival of others before their own life, who goes above and beyond what is expected of a person in that role to do something truly special. Those fireman and police officers who charged into those towers on 911 were heros, the soldier who runs out into the middle of a fire fight and drags his buddy to safety is a hero. I am sure on a daily basis in Afghanistan and Iraq, that heroes are not in short demand, so please, I beg of you stop calling so many people heroes, save it for those 911 heroes, for those men and women in the wars who go above and beyond, for the Mother Teresa’s of the world. Don’t cheapen their actions by so carelessly wielding the word hero.

Rush Limbaugh: Traditional Conservative Values

I have made no secret of my raging dislike for conservative blow hards like Rush and Sean Hannity, truth be told not a big fan of liberal blow hards either, basically against blow hards as a species. However, with Rush I have a confession to make. In the early days of his radio show I was working in California and was actually quite amused by Rush Limbaugh’s radio show. He was obviously doing a lot of what he was doing to be outrageous and attract attention and frankly he didn’t seem to take himself all that seriously. He was certainly a conservative commentator and responding to an unfilled niche on the radio. Then the greatest thing in Rush’s life happened, no not oxycodone, but the election of Bill Clinton. Rush rose to huge heights on the wave of absolute hate the right showed for the Clintons. It was during that rise that I began losing the amusement I used to have with Rush, he started to take himself way too seriously. He began in my opinion to believe in the crap he previously only said to build an audience and make money. Rush began to believe in his own press, expanding ego and the wave of love he felt coming back from the dittoheads. How sad that people take pride in a name that actually celebrates the fact that they don’t think for themselves. I know, I know dittos, you constantly, and he constantly say no that’s not what it means, obviously none of you own a dictionary.

However today I read news that may bring my dislike of Rush Limbaugh to new heights. Mr. Conservatism, Mr. Traditional values has gotten married again. In thinking about Mr. Limbaugh’s nuptials it struck me that he and even more so his fans, are a bunch of freakin hypocrites. Were I to approach any of them and tell them I had advice for them from a four-time married drug addict who had a gay man serenade him at his last wedding, singing Elton John songs no less, they would laugh in my face. They are conservatives, they couldn’t possibly take advice from someone who obviously does not share their traditional conservative values. Yet there they are listening to Rush Limbaugh, married for the fourth time, oxycodone drug addict and having Elton John serenade him at his wedding. Fact of the matter is if that’s the new conservatism, I may just have to sign up.

Why conservatives will win!

Once in a martial arts class a fellow student asked my instructor what type of fighter was the most dangerous.  He talked through the obvious skill advantages of karate, kung fu and even classical boxers but in the end he arrived at the conclusion that a street fighter was the most dangerous, simply because he was the most unpredictable.  As a kid who grew up in a tough neighborhood and spent a decent amount of time on the street, I can tell you that the toughest guy was not the biggest guy, it was the crazy guy.  Lots of times this was a skinny little guy but what made him so tough was that he was willing to do anything, for a minor infraction he’d hit you in the head with a brick.  This my friends is why the conservatives will win, because they are the crazy little skinny guy you met on the street.  They believe what they believe and will act disproportionately to the offense they have deemed committed. 

What will they win?  They’ll win power and influence in this country, the ability to control the flow and course of the discussion of information which will allow them to influence the majority of Americans.  The reason they’ll have this influence is because the majority of Americans take what they hear on TV, cable or some half-assed blog to be gospel.  They don’t question why or how a conclusion is reached just that they heard it from a source they’ve deemed credible.   Once they have given that credibility to a source they believe it completely which is why idiots like Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh can gain traction saying the most outrageously stupid things, but don’t worry Sarah Palin can see Russia and Jan Brewer, Governor of Arizona can pick out an illegal alien just by looking at one!

So I have suggested the conservative right is the skinny crazy kid on the block and to substantiate this I have to prove that first they are crazy, and then that they are willing to go over the edge to make their point.  On to the first issue, how nutty are they?  In a recent Harris Interactive online poll, 24% of the respondents who identified themselves as Republicans believe that President Barack Obama is the Antichrist.  Ok, do I really need to go any further on the nutty front!  Additionally, as pointed out by Steve Mirsky in Scientific American, 22% of Republicans in the survey think that President Obama wants the terrorists to win, so that means 2% presumably think he is the Antichrist yet somehow he still wants the terrorists to lose, maybe it’s bad guy envy?  Ok, so we can be fairly confident the conservative right is nuts.

Now, on to the second point do they act disproportionately to the circumstances?  Personally, I would consider the deaths of 8 abortion doctors and multiple clinic bombings over the last couple of decades to qualify as an over reaction to legalized abortion.  This does not even get into discussing how the same people who feared the Teletubbies would turn their children gay, are ok with their children and everyone else’s children seeing horrid giant posters of aborted fetuses that they display for the general public.  A serious and disproportionate over reaction to disagreeing with a law.  It would be the equivalent of anti-logging activists on the left assassinating loggers.

Finally, I think the right in general to be just as hypocritical as the left and politicians in general, when Ronald Reagan or any Bush was in office the slogan was, “America love it or leave it.”  But now with Barack Obama in office you can suddenly hate America and hang out, my how things have changed, or have they?