Putzpourri

Neither Snow Nor Rant Nor Heat Nor Gloom Of Night Stays The Stupid
From The Swift Completion Of Their Pointed Heads

Everywhere, USA
February 15, 2013

The United States Postal Service was explicitly authorized by the Constitution probably because it democratized the ability of all citizens to send and receive messages regardless of economic status or geographic circumstances while ensuring the privacy of said correspondence. Like everything else in those days it didn’t do much for blacks or Indians but, hey nobody’s perfect. Benjamin Franklin was America’s first Postmaster General, a post which became a cabinet-level position in 1792. I like Ben. Maybe that’s why I like the Postal Service so much.

Personally I think our postal service is one of the most amazing things going, especially now that even blacks and Indians can use it. You can send a letter anywhere in the United States for under fifty cents - not that anyone does, but you could if you wanted to. You can send packages anywhere in the States for a very reasonable price and they deliver anything you want right to your door. Sure they do what they do because the Constitution mandates it, but I’m pretty sure no private concern will ever perform like the USPS. They would simply tell people who live in inconvenient locales to take a hike…literally - these people will have to take a hike to get to a place convenient to whatever greed-based-corporate-blood-sucker oozes in to replace the USPS - to get their mail if we lose our current delivery system.

USPS couldn’t do anything without asking Congress until 2006. They couldn’t change the price of stamps, their hours of operation, close post offices in poorly accessible rural areas or stop delivering mail because of snow, rain, heat or gloom of night or because it’s Saturday, without Congress saying so.

Like so many other things in America and throughout the world, the USPS was put on a path-to-destruction, i.e. privatization during the George W. Bush outbreak whose Republican’t majority congress caused USPS to fund its pension seventy-five years into the future. No other business, public or private has to do anything even vaguely resembling this. No business could stay afloat under such conditions and strangely enough, the USPS keeps losing money. Thanks to this misanthropy the USPS is currently $20 billion in debt instead of having a $1.2 billion surplus, which it would have had if the deranged Republican’t law hadn’t been passed. Yet the USPS is entirely self-funded and takes no tax money to operate.

Truth be told, many hugely profitable private businesses simply trashed their workers’ pensions in the past decade or so, and the only ones who lost any sleep over it were those very workers. Speaking of workers, the USPS is one of the largest employers in the country and eliminating Saturday delivery will eliminate at least 25,000 jobs. The Republican’t congress in 2006, with no complaint from George W, made the Postal Service live under impossible conditions while the “president” and his know-nothing congress put two wars – one of which was illegal – on the nation’s credit card for eight years and made the country go broke. This asshat wasn’t willing or able to fund the actions he was taking while he was taking them but he thought it would be okay to make the Post Office fund pensions for three-quarters-of-a-century.

I think it says something about Americans that so many will fight tooth and nail for their guns, claiming it’s important to honor the Constitution, technically only a small section of one Amendment, but throwing a Constitutionally created and sanctioned, totally awesome and totally job-creating US Postal Service under the bus - no biggie.

Never content with merely destroying just one time-honored institution that makes life easier for every American, Tea Brains are pushing Congress to vote against reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act, claiming it provides too much protection for women. Ya gotta love these big palookas, at least they say what’s up their asses on their minds. Do any of these geniuses have wives or girlfriends? If they were legitimate public servants we’d have a way of shutting their whole thing down. Republican’t State of the Union rebutter, Marco Rubio voted against reauthorizing VAWA just hours before delivering his State of the Useless tirade. Please continue Senator.

Rubio lunging for his water bottle midway through his inane SOTU response

Lastly, Barack Obama just got one of the most powerful endorsements for his new cabinet picks he could ever hope for - Dick Cheney. Yes, Dick Cheney, the man who shot his friend in the face, mistaking him for a flightless bird, and stole a dead girl’s heart, emerged from his death bed to spew more bile into the air whose oxygen and nitrogen (and minute amounts of other gases) he continues to consume and violate for no discernible useful purpose. Cheney is dead-set against all of Obama’s picks, one can only assume on grounds that they are not sufficiently filled with greed and loathing.

The Least Popular Political Figure in America (perhaps in all of American history), Cheney knows quality when he sees it. After all, following an exhaustive search of his entire bathroom he finally found the running mate George W. Bush sent him to unearth. Nobody could have anticipated that person would be right there in Cheney’s mirror. Even more surprising, who could have guessed that Cheney had a reflection? And speaking of high-quality appointments, Cheney had the good fortune to serve with the great Donald Rumsfeld, the unforgettable Secretary of Defense - the job Chuck Hagel wants - and the ever-misunderestimated Condoleezza Rice as Secretary of State - John Kerry’s new job. In a recent interview Cheney rattled off answers to a series of questions, but when asked what his main fault was he paused and looked down at what I assume was the gun in his lap, finally answering, "my main fault. I don't spend a lot of time thinking about my faults, I guess, would be the answer." Guess again you lying, murderous reptile.

Needless to say, Cheney’s latest caterwaul was not greeted as liberating. I think he is in the last throes, if you will, of his insurgency.

I. Mangrey reporting.
Thanks for listening. Responsible disdain for Cheney invited.

Walk Softly And Carry A Huge Purse

Weapon Of Choice
Choice Of Weapon

Capitol Offense Hill
January 31, 2013

You can't make this stuff up folks. Gayle Trotter, Senior Fellow at the Independent Women's Forum, insists on a woman's right to choose. You might want to know that the right to choose Ms. Trotter is so vigorously fighting for is the right for a woman to choose what weapon she wants to wield in order to protect herself from a horror-movie-like attack inside her own home. Trotter explained during her Senate testimony that, "Young women are speaking out as to why AR-15 weapons are their weapon of choice. The guns are accurate. They have good handling. They're light. They're easy for women to hold." And as we've learned over and over again, they're also easy for kids to take to school for Show-and-Kill.

Gayle Trotter, Gun Violence Lover
Placing a call to God

She is dead-set against a woman's right to choose what to do with her own body of course. In fact last year she even opposed the Violence Against Women Act, which gives women the right to choose to be beaten, raped and abused less often or at least to choose to see their attacker brought to justice. This is naturally something that Republican'ts feel could set dangerous precedents for men who need to perpetrate violence against women or worse yet, for their God who occasionally needs to watch women bear their rapist's child. There are some things a woman just shouldn't be allowed to choose.

Trotter, rather than present salient facts supporting everywoman's right to pump forty or eighty rounds into any would-be intruder - say a wayward teen who accidentally pulled into her driveway as a result of an errant GPS - instead chose to paint a Texas-Chainsaw-Massacre-esque tableau during her Senate testimony. The Senate Mice, just looking for a good excuse to back away from creating sensible gun legislation, were treated to a brain-rending story of a young mother opening her front door to a band of hardened criminals "as she’s facing three, four, five violent attackers, intruders in her home with her children screaming in the background, the peace of mind that she has knowing that she has a scary looking gun gives her more courage when she’s fighting hardened violent criminals." Where the hell does this woman live? Yemen? Texas? Maybe she should have a peephole installed to avoid opening the door to three, four, five men of unknown intent, especially if her babies are back there screaming and unarmed in the background. Do the words psychotic hypocrite ring a bell?

Interestingly, she and her merry band of armed loonies produced not one single case of an assault-style weapon or Rambo-sized magazine being used for defense purposes during their tortured testimony. All actual examples presented, mouth-watering fantasy-attack scenarios aside, were normal guns with normal capacities being successfully wielded in self-defense. Speaking of Rambo, even Stallone himself has come out in favor of banning assault weapons, "I know people get (upset) and go, 'They're going to take away the assault weapon.' Who ... needs an assault weapon? Like really, unless you're carrying out an assault. ... You can't hunt with it. ... Who's going to attack your house, a (expletive) army?" Apparently Mr. Stallone has never spent a weekend at the Krueger Trotter house.

I. Mangrey reporting.
Thanks for listening. Reprehensible comment invited.