F*&%ed And Furious

It Was The Best Of Lies. It Was The Worst Of Lies.

The United States of Corporations

June 30, 2012

Pity the poor Republican’ts.  Their 2012 candidate for president created the template for the lousy Affordable Care Act that their darling Supremes fussed and fought over for months.  The Supreme Court, five of whom appointed their guy George W. Bush as the 43^rd “president,” in 2010 entrenched their huge-money sugar daddies’ ability to buy elections with their inconceivable Shitizens United ruling, shot down equal pay for women and recently went even further to change the law in favor of corporate personhood.  The Republican’ts’ beloved Supreme Court that has given them just about everything they wanted, suddenly disagreed with them for the first time in a decade.  All of a sudden the Tea-Brained psychos on the Republican’t side of the aisle are railing against activist judges.  The usual suspects like Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann crawled out of their padded rooms with the usual hysteria.  Rand Paul (R-Ayn Rand), reproductive spittle of Ron Paul (R-Crazytown), and fifty-one cards shy of a full deck, said, "just because a majority of the Supreme Court declares something to be "constitutional" does not make it so."  So I guess that being elected senator doesn't make you a senator.  Rush Limbaugh said he would move to Costa Rica if this happened - I hope he's got enough Viagra and Oxycontin to last a lifetime.  Maybe this will make them so angry they’ll just hold their breath, turn blue-in-the-face and suffocate themselves into oblivion.

The insurance mandate (a truly horrible idea, whose sole beneficiary is the insurance industry, but seems to be as good as it gets for American health care so far) was originally the brain child of one Richard M. Nixon in 1973, but was short-circuited by a little dust-up known as Watergate; it was revived in the 1980s by the Heritage Foundation a conservative think tank, then again in the 1990s by a host of Republican’ts including future Viagra salesman Bob Dole.  The mandate scam was resuscitated in 2006 as the foundation of the major accomplishment of Willard M. Romney, while pretending to be a liberal governor of Massachusetts.  Massachusetts currently has 98% of its residents covered by medical insurance and today Mr. Romney is more likely to strap another dog onto the roof of his car than admit his affinity for the type of socialized medicine he so proudly enacted as governor.  Perennial, pyrrhic presidential contender Romney now knows better than to let slip even the slightest policy position, lest he be caused to defend any particular viewpoint on any important issue.  He is wise to stick with The Hair as his political raison d'être.

A Governor and a Half: Fat and Furious

Speaking of governors running for president, New Jersey’s governor and newest county, Chris Christie has discharged more toxic emissions from the exhaust valve below his nose.  Christie, is currently fighting for New Jersey to legalize sports betting, which is against federal law.  Crisco Christie said of sports betting, “It's going on everywhere except now it's being handled by criminals who are benefitting from it. If it's going happen, let's make the conduct legal and let's make the people who participate in it comply with certain laws.” "We intend to go forward and allow sports betting to happen," Christie said. "If someone wants to stop us, then let them try to stop us."  It’s interesting that this same titanic governor and many of his colleagues think going against federal law is tantamount to treason when it comes to legalizing marijuana, or allowing already-legal abortion, gay rights and health care.  And if things keep going the way they are, be ready for slavery to make a comeback.  Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

Chris Christie as prophetically portrayed in

Monty Python's The Meaning of Life

Fake and Furious

Meanwhile back in the Main Tent, the Tea Party-paralyzed Congress decided to hold the Attorney General in contempt of Congress for a program  -  Fast And Furious, which their own illegally appointed president began, and which the current administration shut down.  It turns out that the crime they accused Holder of overseeing never even happened.  One whistleblower who exposed the alleged gun-walking scheme was likely the only one who, against orders, allowed untraceable guns to get into the hands of Mexican drug cartels.  The desperate and certifiably insane Republican’ts, never ones to allow the facts to interfere with their witch hunts and yearning for absolute power, just won’t let go.  Now they say they’re upset because the Obama administration was withholding important documents.  Anyone remember Dick Cheney’s energy taskforce?  The one where he shut out environmental groups from discussions about energy policy then refused to hand over any information about his secret meetings?  These assholes are so pathetic they make me want to vote for Obama.

Half of these dimwits are still whining about Obama’s birth certificate when they would be better served taking a first look at The Constitution.  The Constitution that exists in their minds, including one of their biggest brains, Antonin Scalia, is little more than a fantasy of Rich Supremacy, unfettered by the imposition of the needs and rights of average people.  The current Supreme Court, generally bullied into submission by the arrogance and so-called Originalism of Scalia, who believes that he, and he alone, understands the thinking of our Founding Fathers, is merely a rubber stamp for corporate greed and stupidity.

Stay tuned for the Republican’ts offering up a constitutional amendment requiring a minimum six-to-three majority in all future Supreme Court decisions…unless they involve rescinding gay rights, human rights, civil rights, voting rights, union rights, women’s rights or decisions giving corporations more rights than real people.

I. Mangrey reporting.

Thanks for listening. Responsible comment invited.

Gutting Out The Vote

Kill The American Dream Before It Dies

The Voting Booth At The End Of The Universe

June 13, 2012

Republican'ts continue their relentless obsession with stifling the vote. Numerous Republican'ts have publicly proclaimed that they don’t want too many people voting. And who could blame them? CONservative icon Paul Weyrich, co-founder of conservative think-tank the Heritage Foundation who also helped to establish the Moral Majority spoke directly to this issue in the fall of 1980. While I can unfortunately understand the connection between voter suppression and our Heritage, I'm a little less clear about the Moral aspect.

Weyrich bemoaned the fact that “many of our Christians have what I call the ‘Goo-Goo Syndrome.’ Good government. They want everybody to vote. I don’t want everybody to vote…As a matter of fact our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.” At least Mr. Weyrich had the courage, if not the good taste to speak his incredibly un-democratic mind in public. Today, his successors couch their language, hide their contempt for just about everyone and pretend to be looking out for Democracy.

This anti-vote philosophy, spoken or hidden remains at the core of the conservative movement. Conservatives know that higher voter turnout hurts their chances. This will become even more likely as the American citizenry becomes less and less dominated by white people. Not sure, but maybe it's because today’s Republican’ts keep shitting on everyone who's not white, straight, rich and misogynistic.

The number of cases of voter impersonation fraud, is infinitesimal compared to the constant handwringing of conservatives and weighed against the tenacity of their now more and more successful attempts to pass voter ID laws. State after state is pushing to Gut Out The Vote. Finally the Department of Justice has noticed and appears ready to make a stand. I'm not Holdering my breath.

You may recall a while back ACORN was vilified for voter fraud, allegedly submitting phony names on voter registration lists. ACORN was hung out to dry by the Dems while the lunatic fringe mainstream of the Republican'ts hacked them to death. In fact, it was ACORN who discovered some illegitimate signatures on their registration forms and reported their findings to election authorities. After Republican'ts ultimately destroyed them, ACORN was vindicated by a Congressional Research Service. Hurrah. The so-called liberal New York Times buried this story on page twenty-four on Christmas Eve, assuring the story scant notice.

Protecting The Integrity Of The Vote, Assuring The Outcome Of The Election

Most of the latest voter suppression laws are purported to stop people from casting votes using someone else’s name. That should be very easy to stop since it almost never happens. We don’t need to disenfranchise countless legitimate voters to solve a problem that does not exist. The truth is these anti-voting fanatics are after one thing – stop non-conservative voters from casting ballots…by any means necessary. If only they would be as honest as Paul Weyrich was, at least on that one day in 1980.

Take the example of 93 year old Viviette Applewhite, who once marched beside Martin Luther King. Ms. Applewhite was finally allowed to vote in 1960 and has not missed a chance to exercise that right since then. She is proud that her daughter and her daughter’s five college educated children all vote every chance they get. Her pocketbook was stolen. She lives in Pennsylvania with its new anti-voting laws and cannot get photo ID and will, though never shirking her civic duty since 1960, not be permitted to vote. She has made numerous attempts to get the proper identification, but has been declined each time without a reason. Ms. Applewhite told an interviewer, “I just think they’re taking your rights away because there were so many rights we did not have. And now we do have them and this way they take them away from us; we won’t have nothing, be right back where we were before…Voting is important to me because it gives you equal rights to do things.”

The voter ID laws cropping up across the country, all backed by Republican't politicians, Teabag conservatives and secretive big money are clearly designed, despite all the denials, to disenfranchise the poor, the elderly and the non-white – historically non-conservative groups for some reason. One group taking a major role in this massive effort to Gut Out The Vote is the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), an ideologically conservative (like the KKK) group, founded by none other than Paul Weyrich and consisting of business interests and conservative state legislators. ALEC was recently in the news when a number of high-profile corporations including McDonalds, Wendy’s, Coca-Cola, Kraft Foods, Intuit and PepsiCo severed ties with the previously secretive organization after ALEC hit the headlines for supporting various controversial laws across the country, including anti-voting legislation.  ALEC says they are just protecting the integrity of the vote.  MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.

Let us not forget Florida’s then-Secretary of State and co-chair of George W. Bush's Florida election campaign, Katherine Harris who, along with George’s brother Jeb (then Florida’s governor) hired a private firm to create a list of ineligible voters in her state. Ms. Harris managed to purge the rolls of tens of thousands of eligible African American voters just in time for the 2000 presidential election, in which George W. Bush was eventually alleged to have 537 more Florida votes than Al Gore, giving him an Electoral College victory without winning the nation’s popular vote. Of course the Florida votes were never actually counted once the renegade Supreme Court illegally halted the count, preferring instead to appoint the man who would become the Worst President In American History.

Is That Florida In Your Pocket Or Are You Just Glad To Screw Me?

Well, don’t look now but Florida is at it again.  This time Florida has a smorgasbord of voter suppression entrees on the menu.  Laws to limit early voting (favored 2-to-1 by black voters), laws to curtail registering new voters (important for young people) and of course the good old reliable Katherine Harris/Jeb Bush approach of a wanton purge of alleged illegal voters guaranteed to include countless examples of collateral damage, that being thousands of eligible (mostly Hispanic this time) voters being disenfranchised for no reason, other than the fact that they are very likely to vote Democrat.

If anyone truly wanted to stop vote fraud one need look no further than the conniving manufacturers of computerized "voting" machines and those who store them in their garages, closets, etc. It is clear that these machines are at the beck and call of those in power and can create any desired outcome. I guess the only thing keeping it even slightly real is the fact that they haven’t figured out how to flip these machines en masse, but must manipulate them one at a time. But stopping vote fraud is not the mission of these vote fraud frauds.

Though most of us choose not to vote, those who choose to do so should be encouraged, not purged. I have spent time in both camps and even when I was opposed to voting I never tried to interfere with anyone who chose to do so. These weasels will stop at nothing to prevent actual democratic processes from taking place. It's already hard enough to maintain any semblance of democracy in this country, without the already-too-powerful raining on our facade. Stay vigilant and do what you can to stop those with a vested interest from tampering with our right to vote for whomever we feel will best represent our rights and interests. We are a nation that claims to value the right to vote above most others - let’s act like it.

It Can't Happen Here

There have been at least 180 vote-restricting bills introduced in 41 states since January 2011. Fourteen states have already passed laws making voting more difficult. Those 14 states represent almost 70% of the electoral votes needed to "win" the presidency. Naturally these laws were proposed by Republican'ts, passed by Republican't controlled state legislatures and signed into law by Republican't governors. Nobody could have anticipated this kind of thing happening in Nixonland.

OCCUPY THE FUTURE.

I. Mangrey reporting.

Thanks for listening. Responsible comment (and hanging chads) invited.

Presidenta Non Grata

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue

June 5, 2012

George W. Bush, the unelected, unwelcome, unwitting ex-"president" returned to the scene of his eight-year-long crime spree last week.  He dared show his face, yes I believe that was his face, in The People's House because in America we don't hold war criminals accountable for their dirty deeds. Actually, America is to modern-day war criminals what Argentina was to Nazi war criminals.  We are home to a number of international war criminals who were, shall we say no longer welcome in their home lands, not to mention a sizeable number of the homegrown variety who are considered war criminals by other countries.  The likes of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Henry Kissinger, to name a few, enjoy continued freedom here in the Home of The Brave and the Land of The Free War Criminals though they would be unwise to travel abroad, at the risk of being arrested for their crimes.  Remember, if the United States does it then it is not illegal...as long as it is the United States doing it.  If anyone else tries to get in on the fun they will be held accountable...by the United States.

Anyway, good old George still has his peculiar sense of humor.  And by peculiar I don’t mean unique unto himself, I mean peculiar as in strange, annoying and amusing for reasons he did not necessarily intend.  He was invited to the White House by his successor and apparent war criminal wanna-be Barack Obama, who is droning people to death all across the globe, checking off names on (or near) his special Kill List.  Yes he got bin Laden and five or six of al Queda’s seemingly endless supply of Number Twos, but any good Republican’t will tell you Bush deserves all the credit for that.  So now Obama has his own super (now not so) secret Kill List.  He decides who to kill, and anyone near enough to a target apparently deserves to die along with the lucky duck du jour.  Who needs due process when you’ve got a Kill List?  Send in the drones.  There has to be drones.  Don’t bother, he already did…but I digress.

Bush, Jr. was invited because only a very select group of war criminals gets to have their portrait in the White House.  He arrived, heavily medicated wife in tow, as their portraits were unveiled, though not un-viled.  He joked about all the happy people attending his “hanging” and a good time was had by all since not even a whiff of extradition wafted across the room.  Maybe some other time…I’m not holding my breath even though I would still like to see Nixon impeached.

I. Mangrey reporting.

Thanks for listening. Responsible comment (not George W) invited.