Right Wing Agenda

The latest Republican / Tea Party sound bite is that they want to have an "adult conversation" about our debt.  They want to reign in our President who they oddly blame for our current financial situation.

So let's have that adult conversation right now.  First off, let's be real about how we ended up in this mess.  We rampaged around the world getting involved in wars in regions we didn't understand, and rather than taxing citizens to pay for these wars, we gave the richest people tax cuts that we claimed were self financing.  Then we borrowed money from China, and at some point they'd like to be paid back with interest.

Obama didn't come to office claiming he wanted to spend a bunch of money, but his first year in office was damage control thanks to all the Bush fuck ups.

Now we hear the clear message from the Republican / Tea Party, that we need small government and lower taxes.  Simple, similar to what the so called Libertarians want.  Except it isn't quite that simple at all.  When asked about health care, they tell us hands off our health care, unless you're a veteran, and then they should get their VA care.  When asked about abortion, they do actually want a large invasive government swooping in and forcing women to have babies they don't want, even though so many of them die because they don't want babies to have free access to health care.

They want low taxes, but seem unwilling to cut military spending from the insane levels we have reached; now over a trillion dollars a year.  Hands off our guns they say, but they still want a police force to show up when one of their friends gets shot.  Prayer in schools?  Sure, why is the government 'interfering' and preventing it?  Illegal immigrants?  We want a nice big government to round up the 12 million illegals and ship them home, and a nice big government patrolling our borders and building massive fences, and lower the taxes!  Gays in the military; let's do a study on it, think about it, ask the soldiers what they think (because we ALWAYS ask soldiers what they think right?).

See the issue I have, since we're having an adult conversation, is the reality that you don't get something for nothing.  If you want a small government, it includes things like the military, border patrol, police force, etc.  You can reduce the size of these organizations to lower tax, but if anything the Right seems to want to increase the size and scope of the military and defense spending, or at least keep the status quo.

It also seems interesting to me that the demands for "small government" are based around every liberal concept of social justice such as social security, health care for seniors or children, tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires based up on the failed principles of trickle down Reaganomics.  Yet when it comes to real issues like our trillion dollar military spending, there is no interest in making necessary cuts.

In fact, as best as I can see it, the concept they are promoting is that they would like to simply de-fund anything they don't like, and fund everything they want.  They are not really talking about small government at all, merely shuffling the same money we don't have into all their pet projects, while simultaneously cutting taxes.  And this is the agenda that makes no sense to a person with a brain.  If you want the government to pay for things, then the government has to collect tax to pay for it.  It's that simple.

So how about we really have an adult conversation about our economic situation rather than a fake one?  Or would that merely uncover the Tea Party for what they are; racist bigots who don't have the balls to join the KKK, and are really just mad that a black man is in the White House.  Shame on the Republicans for so easily getting in bed with these assholes.

Regular As Clockwork

A few weeks ago I remember reading in the news about Reverend Cedric Miller of New Jersey who made the news after abusing his power.  He informed his staff of 50 or so that they had a simple choice; they could delete their Facebook accounts or they could resign.  He then explained his actions with a rant about how Facebook is evil, leads to nothing but adulterous affairs, and told his congregation that they too should log off the site.

Now let's face facts; asshole religious leaders are nothing new, but I remember thinking at the time of the story how odd it was that his attacks were so impassioned, and that he was willing to make the national media over his decision.

Well, the truth came out today.  Like so many extremist holy men that like to preach fire and brimstone, he is a corrupt hypocritical asshole, and had his own sexual issues he was dealing with, not to mention issues of faith.

Apparently this autocratic preacher was fucking the wife of one of his staff members, and sometimes doing it with her husband present too.  These three and four way sexual encounters took place with the pastor's own wife right after Bible study on Thursday and also after Sunday church service.

I wonder if his Bible study classes included Leviticus (20:10):

And the man that committeth adultery with another man's wife, even he that committeth adultery with his neighbour's wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death.

Oops!

I guess I'm just taking it out of context, or the passage is negated by John 8:3-8.  Whatever.  I'm not actually calling for this man to be executed, but I do believe that the resignation he has offered should be accepted post haste.

I get that some people feel the need to spend their lives preaching about the magic invisible man in the sky, and I have no problem with that.  But here is yet another example of some extremist jerk telling his congregation of 1,100 people how to live their lives, and further abusing his position over the 50 staff members he was responsible for to impose his own agenda, all while going against everything he claimed to stand for.

There are hundreds of examples of religious men abusing their position of trust over the course of history.  If you must go to church, at least try not to be naive about it.

Stupid Americans

I read with interest this evening that 53% of Americans want the tax cuts of George Bush to continue, even if this means giving a tax break to people making more than $250,000 a year.

My question is simply this:  How can anyone reconcile our current economic reality with the belief that we should continue to cut taxes?  I mean, sure, no one likes paying taxes, but we want to educate our kids, have police arrest the bad guys, have troops stationed in 150+ countries around the world, spend stupid amounts of money on defense, and at some point pay back communist China all the money George Bush borrowed for his stupid wars.  And all this costs money, and that money needs to be raised from taxes.

When I watch the news these days a few things are beginning to scare me.  Not so scared I get a bunker survival kit and an assault rifle, but still I feel like I am watching the American political system disintigrate before my very eyes.

The Tea Party are becoming a potent political force in America, managing to push some really useless candidates into politics on the platform of smaller government and lower taxes.  Yet the reality is they are almost universally supporting Republicans who were part of the machine that increased the size and scope of the government almost exponentially under George Bush.

At the same time they seem to be campaigning for the millionaire and billionaire tax cuts that benefit about 1% of Americans.  Their logic being that if we keep giving these rich assholes money, eventually it will 'trickle down' to ordinary people.  There's no actual logic or evidence to support this concept, but it is still presented as a good idea.

All that said, I'd like to say something to Americans that no politician seems to want to fess up and say:  George Bush spent all our money.  And when he was done spending a bunch of money we didn't have and increasing the size of our government, he borrowed money from communist China to further his goals.  Now at some point we need to pay off our debt.  So we have to make some hard choices.  We need to increase taxes, or radically decrease spending, which in real terms means slashing pensions for old people or significantly scaling back the military and our ability to invade countries at whim and stay there for years.

I just want to know when the majority of Americans will understand this simple reality and stop talking about tax cuts and evil Obamacare and other nonsense.

The elephant in the room here in America is our stupidly big defense budget, and our love of the idea that we can have our cake and eat it too.  If we are going to station our troops in 150+ countries, wage war, have thousands of nuclear weapons, build special border fences to keep out the immigrants, and actively oppose gay marriage and abortion all while prosecuting the pointless and futile war on drugs, we have to RAISE taxes for everyone; especially the wealthy.

Sadly though, no one seems to want to talk about it.  The GOP just spout stupid sound bites about efficiency, spending cuts, and fiscal responsibility.  But they won't have the intellectual honesty to be real with us and tell us that the only way out of our hole is to raise taxes.  And worse, they won't admit it is their irresponsible and failed policies that left us needing this discussion in the first place.

Jennifer Aniston New Movie Shocker

When I woke up to check my email this morning, I noticed that Yahoo! was reporting that Jennifer Aniston was trending.  Whenever I see a celebrity name trending, I often click just to see what news has caused the celebrity in question to suddenly trend.

To my shock and surprise I found out that Jennifer Aniston has been cast as a quirky and slightly unlikely love interest in a romantic comedy staring Adam Sandler.  Astonishing.

Further research surprised me even more when I discovered that Hugh Grant is also going to be in a romantic comedy where he plays a witty bumbling Englishman who can't seem to catch a break.

I tell you, it's little wonder these celebrities make so much money.  The time, effort and preparation these people have to go to for their craft puts the rest of us to shame.

Dead Babies?

I just had a conversation with a friend of mine about abortion, and it made me realize that it's been a while (almost two years) since I've visited the latest figures on infant mortality.  [See previous article]

Without rehashing the past, and repeating myself, my stance on abortion in America is very simple.  Our infant mortality rate is so shameful and embarrassing in this country, we have no right to force women to have a baby they don't want.  If we can't keep our babies alive from the age of 0 to 1, why should we be even talking about a fetus?

So I checked on the latest figures (from the CIA, not some left wing think tank), and it seems that just like last year, we have slipped yet again, we are now 46th in the world for infant mortality.

Not only were our figures embarrassing when I first wrote about this in 2006, but year on year our figures have been deteriorating.  In 2006 we were an unimpressive 32nd in the world.  By 2009 (the most recent figures available at time of writing) we are now at 46th.  Now I concede that some additional countries may now being reported that has affected our ranking, but which ever way you look at it; it's a disgrace.  The richest nation on the planet, and we can't provide health care that keeps our children alive?  It's not like we're Cuba, oh wait, Cuba is one of the 45 countries kicking our ass in infant mortality statistics, oops.

I'm sure with the outcome of the midterms as they are, Republicans are going to start an aggressive bid for the White House in 2012.  And as usual they will trot out the political wedge issues like flag burning, gay marriage and abortion.  But the hypocrisy to be 'pro-life' while simultaneously legislating to not give children free and unfettered access to health care is astonishing, and our children are paying with their lives.

Who knows, when the 2010 numbers come out for infant mortality, will America even be in the top 50?  Just how far will we slide, and how many babies will die as we 'debate' health care and abortion?

If you are pro-life, you need to support free access to health care for all children, or you are in fact not pro-life at all.  You are a hypocrite and an idiot.

Obama's Trip to India

This morning as I read some sites around the Internet, I see that the latest right wing gripe is that our President is going to be spending 200 million dollars a day on his four day trip to India.  This figure has been talked about on Rush Limbaugh's radio show, and on various right wing blogs and forums.  In fact I've even seen the trip inflated to $2Bn or 'billions.'

First off, FactCheck.org have proven that there is no evidence whatsoever that the trip will cost this much.  The White House has explained that the figures are wildly exaggerated.  Yet all around the Internet (and I'm guessing on Fox News at some point), people keep repeating the same lies.

Now I have two issues with this (actually I have more, but two is all I'm prepared to write about).  First off, President Obama didn't invent the infrastructure of Presidential visits.  Airforce One, the Secret Service, all that stuff was put in place decades ago.  So let's not get all sanctimonious about how much it costs for a President to visit a foreign country.

Secondly, what I want to know is why Obama's opponents have to lie to spread dislike for the President?  First they told us he did nothing, next they told us he was doing too much.  He's been likened to Hitler and various other evil people.  We've been told by his detractors that he should be impeached, that he isn't even American, that he's a Muslim and all that other garbage.  But my question is this:  If Barrack Hussein Obama is indeed such a terrible President, and is hurting our country so much, why don't you present me with FACTS about his wrongdoing?  Tell me WHY I should hate this man.  Tell me why I should vote against him in the next election.

Seriously, if Obama is as bad as Hitler, shouldn't we have some real dirt on him by now?  If he is a Muslim, don't we have some pictures of him praying to Mecca?  If the best you can do is make up lies about how much a Presidential trip abroad is costing, doesn't is show an inherent weakness to your argument?  Or could it be that you are just a racist fucktard and you don't really have a case to make at all?  Just a thought.

Hi, I'm A Tea-Partier

Win For Retards

Well the results are in.  The stupidest fucktards in America went out and voted to take back our country.  As a result more Republicans are now in charge of making decisions for us.

If there is one thing that will always surprise me about America it is how an elitist right wing party that panders only to corporations and millionaires, manages to appeal to some of the most stupid, poorest, and ignorant people in our society.

Back in my home country of England, it's almost impossible to find a poor person who votes Conservative (the closest equivalent to Republicans).  Poor people understand that generally the politics of the right wing will do nothing but hurt poor and middle income people.  Yet here in America some people just aren't getting the memo.

When you look back over the record of the Republican government (and I'm not talking ancient history, just the last ten years), it is clear that they are a bunch of fuckers.  They stood by as our nation came under attack.  The Commander in Chief at the time did nothing after he was told we were under attack.  Eventually we entered two wars, with party leadership lying to the American people about this being a short and cheap skirmish, and just to go about their everyday lives.  We racked the trillion dollar cost of this war on our Chinese credit card, and gave tax breaks to corporations and the wealthiest 1-2% of Americans.

Then Republicans did nothing after Katrina except threaten to shoot black people who were 'looting' for food and water to survive.  In fact to this day whole neighborhoods are still in ruin.

As Bush's reign of terror came to an end the Republicans steered our country into the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, and jumped ship.

Then as President Obama tried desperately to fix the mess they had left, Republicans tried to block him at every turn, refusing to allow him to appoint key government workers, and blocking just about every law change they could, including voting against Republican policies.

In the meantime the Tea Party sprang up, wanting to take their country back, whatever the fuck that means.  Back into a depression?  Back into unfinanced wars?  Back to slavery and segregation?  Back to a time when our President was a fucking idiot?

Finally in the midterms they took back the House, ensuring that President Obama will get even less done in the next two years.  The very people who will be hurt by this, helped vote them into office.

Around the world, America has a reputation for having many stupid people living on its shores, and with an outcome like this, it certainly leaves a lot of people scratching their heads.

America is heading down a very dark road, that leads to a very bad place.  We seem to be shunning intelligence, education, science and facts, and in their place we are embracing stupidity, ignorance, religious fanaticism, and radicalism.  If you want to see where we are headed, take a trip to Iran or Afghanistan.

If there is one lesson we can take from last night it is never underestimate the power of the stupid.  But unless we fix our education system our society will continue to dumb itself down and people will happily vote against their own self interests, because they are just too ignorant to know better.

It's a sad day in America today.

Yes Peta

It's not often I find myself agreeing with Peta.  Sadly while their message may be quite right much of the time, there is an extremist faction within the organization that agrees with throwing paint on fur coats and other crazy radical bullshit that alienates normal people.

However, when it comes to making pretty celebrities strip for their beliefs, I can certainly support that.  In this ad Olivia Munn gets naked for a very good cause; boycotting the circus.

There are two opposing arguments here; one that a circus can educate kids and make them more likely to demand protections for animals.  The other argument is that forcing caged animals to do tricks is abusive and essentially involves significant animal cruelty for the entertainment of humans.

I have to go with the latter here.  Elephants are highly intelligent social creatures, and keeping them in little cages and making them do tricks is wholly unacceptable.

Whatever you think of Peta, or Olivia Munn in the nude, I think this cause is one we should all support.