Et Tu Brits

Socialists On Parade

Wake Up And Smell The Marxists

London, USSR

July 28, 2012

There are many threats to America across the globe.  I’m not sure but I think there’s still an Axis of Evil out there somewhere and they probably still have WMD.  Super genius Alan West warned us about all those communists in Congress who hate America.  Michelle Bachmann and other brave Republican’ts are still beating the drum desperately trying to alert us to the Muslim Brotherhood infiltration of the federal government, starting with the radical-Muslim-Kenyan-socialist-usurper at the top just waiting to take all our guns and hand America over to his Ayatollah.  Fortunately we do have some friends out there, like Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, 20% of Afghanistan and twelve people in Iraq…oh, and let’s not forget Poland –they’re still our friend, right?

But now, one of our most special friends, Great Britain has stabbed us right in the back – on international television.  Judas, Brutus, Benedict Arnold, Prescott Bush move over.  There’s a new ex-friend in town.  The whole world must know how hard we are fighting to avoid falling victim to socialized medicine in this country.  We are practically the only civilized nation left who hasn’t destroyed their entire social structure by providing decent health care to all our citizens and we’re insanely (literally) proud of our unflagging resolve on this issue.  But somebody out there seems to forget who the boss around here is.  Those queen-loving, foreign socialists, The Brits had the nerve to celebrate their national health care service in front of the entire world during the opening ceremony of the 2012 Summer Olympics.  Like it’s something to be proud of.  What a bunch of wankers.  And I thought we had such a Special Relationship.  Not even the dreaded Chinese tried to pull a stunt like that when we let them have the Olympics.  And they own us.  From now on, nobody else gets the Olympics until they learn how to behave.

Luckily, Willard Romney went in there and showed them who’s boss.  Romney, who is in the vanguard for recognizing the immediate and dire threat to American security posed by the Soviet Union, will not roll over for anyone…with the possible exception of the NRA, the Tea Party, the Birthers, the 1%, the Swiss banks, the Cayman Islands, Donald Trump and the Chinese.  First The Mighty Mitt insulted the Prime Minister, the Mayor of London and the entire United Kingdom by doubting their level of preparedness for the 2012 Olympics, set to begin the day after Willard’s slagging of the Brits.  Then he waxed ignorant about his secret meeting with the head of Britain’s very secret intelligence agency MI6.  The first rule of MI6?  You don’t talk about MI6.  You may not know this, I certainly didn’t, but we’re not running for president of the United States…again.  MI6 is barely acknowledged by the British government (its very existence only admitted in 1994), and one just does not go around bragging about meeting with them.  That is, unless one is Willard Romney, and your country has just slapped us in our grossly uninsured face. 

Needless to say, the British Press was none too impressed with our soon-to-be-defeated presidential candidate.  One British tabloid editor tweeted: “Serious dismay in Whitehall at Romney debut. ‘Worse than Sarah Palin.’ ‘Total car crash.’ Two of the kinder verdicts.”  Others wondered if they were looking at another George W. Bush.  A Romney spokesmonkey wasted no time in defending the hair candidate, “You better believe it you limey bastards.  Americans are no dummies.  That’s why we fought so hard to throw off your socialist rule back in…back in the day a hundred or whatever years ago.  You and those French commies that forced us to have slaves.  We know that the best way to pull ourselves up by our own economic bootstraps is 1) lower taxes on the richest job creators, 2) kill Obamacare, 3) start a couple more wars with, I don’t know maybe Iran or Syria or China or, yeah I’m going there – the Soviet Union and 4) elect us a whi…a real Anglo-Saxon type American who grew up rich and knows how to hide money from the government's socialist paws.  That’s all I’m gonna say.  If you want more info just follow me on the Tweeter.”

In other news, I can’t wait until those loser climate scientists finally give up their pathetic global climate change hoax.  Maybe then the brutal drought devastating our nation and burning up huge tracts of land across the globe will pack up and leave.

I. Mangrey reporting.

Thanks for listening. Responsible comment (and real socialism) invited.

Beck-mann

Bach-Mann:The Dim Wit Rises

Oh, Brother(hood) Who Art Thou?

Land of Make Believe

July 20, 2012

Now we have protesters in Egypt, pelting Hillary Clinton’s motorcade with shoes and tomatoes and screaming “Monica, Monica,” because… hope you sitting down…they’re watching too much Glen Beck.  These Egyptians, paying us back for The Bangles by walking like an American –albeit Glen Beck - are angry at America because the Egyptian people elected the Muslim Brotherhood candidate.  The Muslim Brotherhood appears to be about as anti-American as anyone could hope for, with the exception of good old drug-damaged, IQ-challenged Beck, who of course believes that Obama is a radical-Marxist-Muslim himself.  Stay crazy my friend.

The reliably-insane Michelle Bachmann would seem to be trying to one-up Bat-Shit-Beck screeching that Barack Obama’s secret plan for a Muslim take-over of America is being aided and abetted by Hillary Clinton’s deputy chief of staff, Huma Abedin – a Muslim-American, who has surely suffered enough indignity as the wife of former congressman and body-part-texting artiste and fervent Zionist, Anthony Wiener.  Bachmann, who serves on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and four other particularly loony Republican’ts called on inspectors general in the State, Homeland Security, Defense and Justice Departments to investigate "potential Muslim Brotherhood infiltration" of the Obama administration by Abedin, presumably because of her flagrant not-so-whiteness and Muslimness.  Even John McCain couldn’t take any more.  McCain stood up on the floor of the Senate to repudiate Bachmann’s "specious and degrading attacks," adding, "These attacks have no logic, no basis and no merit. And they need to stop. They need to stop now."

House Speaker John Boehner, for once not moved to tears, was forced to respond to questions about Bachmann’s attack on Abedin with, “I think accusations like this being thrown around are pretty dangerous.”  However, when asked if this unhinged, McCarthyesque behavior should result in Bachmann being removed from the intelligence committee (and probably anything else with the word intelligence in it) Boehner said, "I don’t know that that’s related at all."  Huh?

There is no other explanation for this obvious misdirection but to assume that Beck and Bachmann have a secret cadre of buffoons planted in Egypt.  It is clear that Beck, Bachmann and their fellow travelers intend to turn the Egyptians still fighting for secular democracy into the Tea Party.  George W. Bush said that American democracy was God’s gift to humanity; apparently he was, as always, wrong.  It seems God’s gift to humanity was stupidity.  We are Dumb All Over*.

In other news, America is once again shocked and saddened by the weekly senseless slaughter of innocent people by a whack-job with a gun.  Luckily the president took swift, meaningful action; he courageously called for a “day of prayer and reflection” and ordered flags to be lowered to half-mast.  That should finally put a stop to all the tragic gun violence in America.  As always, Second Amendment jihadists insist that the important lesson to take from this horrifying calamity is that, thanks to our one unassailable freedom, another unstable white guy was able to exercise his god-given right to have firearms.  Can I get an Amen…or maybe a WTF.

I. Mangrey reporting.

Thanks for listening. Responsible comment (and stupidity at half mast) invited.

*Frank Zappa

Willard is W-2

Romney’s Bane

On The Campaign Trial

July 18, 2012

I realize the Republican’ts are trying, with every ounce of strength a bunch of lily-livered old white dudes can muster, to unite behind their least-favorite-presidential-candidate-of-all-time, Willard M. Romney, but this latest attempt to prop up the richest, second-most-clueless-man ever to get this close (alright, maybe third if you count Dan Quayle) to the nation’s highest office makes even me, an avowed non-Republican’t, feel uncomfortable.  Don’t get me wrong, I wish the guy’s hair would fall out overnight, scaring off a solid 90% of his voting base, but some things cut across all differences.  After all, we are all just mortal beings, sharing a small planet - albeit in the process of melting, orbiting a mediocre little star in a vast galaxy - much of which is owned by W. Romney - who I call W-2.  All of us, that is, with the possible exception of one Willard M. Romney, whose birth certificate I have yet to inspect for, 1) authenticity, 2) proof he was not born in Mexico where his great-grandfather fled to in order to maintain his Mor(m)on harem, and 3) proof that he actually was born and not manufactured in China.

Poor Willard, he’s fighting to figure out how he feels about so many things, like his time at Bain Capital.  He’s trying to figure out when he left Bain, what he did while he was there, where he hid all his money, how he amassed an IRA that would take normal non-corporate people several lifetimes to build legally.  These are all difficult decisions even for Mr. Etch-a-sketch.  

As if all that wasn’t enough to drive a Mor(m)on to drink, his helpers are not helping so much. Romney surrogate and former chief of staff to George H.W. Bush, John Sununu, clearly not the sharpest crayon in the box, was evidently let off his leash too early, sputtering, “I wish this president would learn how to be an American,” shortly before his head exploded.  Sununu later apologized for “using those words.”  Not, of course for the disgusting sentiments they represented, just the actual words.  Then fellow Republican’t John “I-Lost-Five-Of-Our-Planes-In-Vietnam- and-Can’t-Remember-How-Many-Houses-I-Have” McCain, trying to deflect attention from just about everyone clamoring for Willard’s tax returns insisted he didn’t reject Romney as his running mate in 2008 because of anything to do with dodgy taxes.  McCain said he chose Palin “because we thought that Sarah Palin was the better candidate.”  Just so we’re clear - the McCain team thought that Sarah Palin, the moron’s moron, was a better candidate for vice president than “Mitt” Romney.  Sarah Palin.  McCain declined to speculate on whether or not he still felt that way.  Oh, the humanity.

In other news of the mentally and morally deficient, George W. Bush was interviewed in some basement, by some unknown yahoo for the prestigious network -You Tube, not to be confused with You Tool.  With his signature-style folksy/moronic talking ability, the 43^rd “president” told the unknown interviewer, "Look, eight years was awesome. You know, I was famous and I was powerful, but I have no desire for fame and power anymore."  Thank God for small favors, though not for the eight “awesome” years he allowed this assbag to befoul our White House, or for allowing his dad’s Supreme Court to appoint him.  The ways in which God works seem to get mysteriouser and mysteriouser.  It just figures that America would force a black guy to clean up Bush’s mess and then blame him for making the mess he so desperately is trying to clean up, hindered at every single step by all those who thought the Worst Eight Years in American History were “awesome.”  The horror.  The horror.

I. Mangrey reporting.

Thanks for listening. Responsible comment (and more crappy, stupid presidents) invited.

Money See, Money Do

Money See, Money Do

Global Economy Change

The Land That Brains Forgot

July 11, 2012

Before I go any further I must share a statistic that should be important to 88% of Americans.  I recently read that 12% of Americans apparently disagree with the premise set forth in the Declaration of Independence that a government derives its legitimacy from the people.  I’m not sure where these brainiacs think our government derives its legitimacy.  The King of England?  Funk and Wagnall’s?  God?  The Flying Spaghetti Monster?  Their neighbor’s dog?  The Koch brothers? 

As the Euro Zone collapses beneath the weight of a dissolving world economy and the crushing debt of countries too big to fail but too broke to live, Americans should take pause and look in the mirror.  We have our own rotting fish to fry, bailouts to recoup and states that cannot stand up under their own one-supersize-me-too-many obesity.  Maybe it’s time for the good old U.S. of A to jettison some of our own dead weight.  There are a few states that put much more into the pot than they take out and there are more than a few that simply suck the money, life and brains out of this country.

I mean if EuroWorld can toss out Greece, Spain, Italy, Portugal or whatever, surely we could do without a few states like Mississippi, Alaska, Louisiana, West Virginia, Alabama and the Dakotas.  Each of these Red States takes 1½ -2 dollars for every one they put in.  They all hate big government so maybe we should let them see how they make out on their own, without all those Blue States keeping them simultaneously afloat and under their liberal/gay/black heel.

You may recall the redrawing of the state boundaries in the aftermath of the 2004 presidential election:

Now that the Supreme(ly conservative) Court has put its stump of approval on Mitt Romney’s Obama’s health care reform law it’s up to the states to make it a reality.  Unfortunately several governuts including Bobby Jindal (R-LA), Scott Walker (R-Koch Bros.), Rick Scott (R-Youkiddingme) and, one-time presidential candidate/punchline Rick “I-left-my-brain-in-my-other-pants” Perry (R-Secession) are throwing their best states-rights temper tantrums and refusing to implement the new law.  The governut of Maine, Paul LePage (R-Teabagging), who has a history of professional-level stupidity spewed out some of his patented oral refuse saying that the Affordable Care Act gives Americans no choice but to buy health insurance or "pay the new Gestapo — the IRS."  Heil Asshole.  All this as the Republican't controlled Congress votes for the 33rd time to repeal the ACA.  We’ll see how their soon-to-be-suffering-even-more constituents feel about being left in the lurch.

In other Economic Change news, the socialist/marxist/muslim/kenyan and duly elected usurper Barack Obama is poised to make yet another stand against letting the insane-tax-cuts-for-the-richest-one-percent continue for another year, while at the same time allowing the tax cuts for every non-corporate person making less than $250K a year to continue. 

Speaking of tax cuts, did you know that there is a tax break for companies that create American jobs…in other countries?  I get that there’s a global economy, but must we really make it easier for these Mighty (overseas) Job Creators to outsource our jobs while our unemployment is over 8%? 

I understand that these benevolent douchebags deities believe, in their tiny little hearts, that they are doing all they can to trickle down on us undeserving peons.  They’ve been hard at work trickling on us since St. Ronny graced us with his presidency and his union-busting, anti-regulation giveaways to the already greedy wealthy.  The only problem, other than the fact that, in all these years, not one drop of golden rain has yet to trickle all the way down to the huddled masses and our economy is on the fast track to nowhere and unemployment remains intransigent, is that anything that trickles down immediately evaporates back up to where it started. 

I. Mangrey reporting.

Thanks for listening. Responsible comment (and tax cuts for the poor) invited.

word from Ed Venture

The Romney Uncertainty Principle

Science Beat

July 5, 2012

By Ed Venture

Updating yesterday's Science Beat post, a minor breakthrough of sorts has just been leaked by one group of scientists hunting for an actual stable position attributable to Willard Romney.  An anonymous source today disclosed that a researcher in Pennsylvania has discovered what is being described as the Romney Uncertainty Principle. 

The Romney Shuffle, as the new uncertainty principle is affectionately known, is analogous to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle in quantum physics, which states that it is impossible to simultaneously determine both the exact position and momentum of a particle. 

The Romney Uncertainty Principle states that it is impossible to know both the current and future positions Romney has or will have on any issue.  The size of the Romney Uncertainty constant depends on the number of possible positions available on any given issue.  Unlike most constant values in mathematical equations, the Romney Uncertainty Binary Equivalence (RUBE) has an infinite number of values.  Even when there appear to be only two possible positions available both cannot be simultaneously determined at any point in time.  As of yet there is no increment of time too small for the Romney Uncertainty Principle to hold true.  All of the available data points to this conclusion. 

If this proves to be the case, it is unlikely that the years of challenging and nauseating work of Allyson Wundarland, as reported yesterday, will bear even the smallest fruit.  What seemed so promising yesterday may have to go the way of Al Gore’s Social Security Lock Box, Japan’s totally safe nuclear reactors and BP’s spotless record on the environment.  Stay tuned for further developments.

Higgs Bosons, Big Morons And One Giant Mitt Wit

The Science Beat

July 4, 2012

By Ed Venture

Scientists believe they have finally discovered the long sought after Higgs boson, better known as the God Particle.  The Higgs boson is the last missing piece scientists needed to explain how all matter in the universe has mass under the Standard Model, the most-widely accepted theory of particle physics.  The Higgs boson has been extremely elusive.  The only things more elusive than the Higgs are coherent thoughts by Tea Party politicians and a consistent position on any single issue by Willard Romney.

Political scientists are now busy at work trying to create the proper experimental conditions in which they might observe, even for the briefest moment, the appearance of a coherent utterance or just a fleeting rational thought from anyone in the Tea Party.  They attempted to create what these researchers call a “no-brainer” by pitting the consistently and aggressively insane Joe Walsh (R-ILL) against an opponent – a veteran who lost both legs flying a helicopter in Iraq.  Walsh, who rather than serve his country in the military, and felt it more patriotic to stiff his ex-wife on $177,000 in child support, slammed his opponent as not a “true hero” because she talks about her service on the campaign trail. 

Rep. Alan West (R-FL), always good for a psychotic outburst like saying on the House floor six months ago that government programs supported by Democrats are the “most insidious form of slavery remaining in the world today,” or more recently calling progressive Democrats in Congress “members of the communist party,” is at it again.  Researchers have been following West, an African American veteran, since being elected during the Great 2010 Tea Party Infestation, hoping for that one moment of lucidity that still eludes detection.  Joining his fellow Teabrains in their current hysteria over the Supreme Court’s upholding of Obamacare, West let fly with his latest foray into slavery imagery.  “He [Obama] does not want you to have the self-esteem of getting up and earning and having that title of American. He’d rather you be his slave,” said West.

Meanwhile professional presidential candidate Willard Romney continues his subatomic, somnambulist, sub-intellectual pursuit of our nation’s highest office.  Though Romney seems reluctantly willing to address policies of the past, he has steadfastly refused to describe any policy he might enact if elected.  Scientists remain unwavering in their insistence that Romney’s opinion on some policy can be discerned using the most up-to-date equipment and round-the-clock vigilance or that he can be observed maintaining a position on some issue.  It is hoped that both phenomena will at some point be observed since Romney does appear to be running for president.  One would think that people would be averse to voting for someone who expresses every opinion on every issue while simultaneously refusing to elucidate even a hint of how he would accomplish anything he claims he will do once in office.

Lead researcher, Allyson Wundarland recently generated excitement with what she thought was clear example of Romney holding a position for more than a nanosecond, but it turned out he accidentally reread a statement from his teleprompter.  Wundarland explained, “I’ve been after this for so long and really thought this was the big one.  Willard, I mean Mr. Romney was speaking to a group of mental patients at one of his better attended campaign stops and I was sure this was it.  I admit I was a little sleep deprived; after all I’ve been on Romney’s trail for the better part of a decade and as he’s as good a sedative as there is, but I cannot afford to let him anesthetize me off my game.  There was a point in his presentation where he said that the healthcare mandate was not a tax and then repeated that statement and I almost screamed out in surprise, but I caught myself just in time, not wanting to startle the already tense and unstable crowd.  I quickly returned to my lab with the video only to discover that Romney had quickly reversed himself at the moment I became excited.  I can’t believe I lost my focus and my objectivity like that.  I will not give up though.  If my colleagues at CERN can find the damned Higgs boson anything is possible.  I just know it.  One day Willard Romney will agree with himself.  And I will be there to verify it.”

                                                                                                                       

OCCUPY THE FUTURE

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.