We interrupt our regularly scheduled raving for this special holiday message...

Happy 2^nd 4^th of Amendment July

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

July 4^th, 2014

As we prepare to celebrate our nation’s 238^th birthday a relatively small, armed and dangerous segment of America is wallowing in a grotesque and misguided obsession with the Second Amendment to the Constitution. It’s obvious that these pseudo-patriots have spent little if any time actually reading the Constitution, even the ones who can read. This is obvious because they clearly haven’t even read their beloved Second Amendment. It says, “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” Even the casual reader will notice that the opening phrase refers to the necessity of a well regulated militia. 

The drafters of the Constitution – not plastered, but bronzed (actually they often were

plastered, but clearly less tragically unstable than their modern-era tea-strained wannabe successors)

Militias were our fledgling nation’s only defense against the still very irritated and still well-armed British. It was probably important to defend ourselves against the at least equally annoyed Native Americans we continued to displace and murder as well. In any event we had no police force and no standing army. Hence the need for militias. This of course preceded the Second Amendment, contrary to renowned historian Sarah Palin who shared what can best be described as a Drunk History lesson about Paul Revere:

"And you know, he who warned the British that they weren't going to be taking away our arms, by ringing those bells and making sure, as he is riding his horse through town, to send those warning shots and bells, that we were going to be secure and we were going to be free."

Unfortunately, neither sentence structure nor sensibility is part of Ms. Palin's repertoire, but you get the point. As Keith Olbermann was wont to say from time to time, "That woman, is an idiot."

Not to be out dumbed, Michele Bachmann, during the 2012 Republican't presidential primary, told an audience of students and conservative activists in Manchester, New Hampshire, "You're the state where the shot was heard around the world in Lexington and Concord," clutching a tea bag in her hand. Most of you, and your children, and their children know that the historic moment soon-to-be-ex-congresswoman Bachmann was referring to happened in Concord, Massachusetts, which is a different state than New Hampshire. Apparently nobody told Ms. Bachmann that when she was growing up.

More Second Amendment Fun For The Whole Family

Georgia’s newly enacted Safe Carry Protection Act, commonly referred to as the “Guns Everywhere Bill” makes it legal to carry guns in schools, churches, airports, restaurants and of course bars. Everyone knows that the fact that Dick Cheney was drunk while hunting trapped, flightless birds and shooting Harry Whittington in the face before hiding out for 18 hours while he sobered up in anticipation of his inevitable encounter with the local militia police. How anyone resisted the temptation to purposely combine guns and alcohol this long is simply a mystery. Finally some legislators had the good sense to get plastered and pass a law. Even so, one poll said that 70% of Georgians oppose this crazy law.

No Gun Control, No Birth Control

While it has always been acceptable to conceive a child in the same schools, churches, airports, restaurants and bars in which Georgia now wants you to be armed and derangerous, I imagine that a sizeable majority of pregnancies resulting from such encounters were unwanted. That is why the Supreme Court made abortion safe and legal in 1973. Today the anti-separation-of-church-and-staters in the Supreme(ly Disappointing) Court have just empowered religious zealots to change the way we all live, which after all is precisely what they want. To paraphrase the great (just kidding) Ronald Reagan: Justices Scalia, Thomas, Alito and Roberts - please stop tearing down that wall. It’s not enough that this nation entitles everyone to their religious beliefs. These fanatics will not be satisfied until we live in the theocracy of their choice. The Roberts court has now enabled these freaks to stop people from having easy access to contraceptives. If that’s the way they want it, I believe there’s one other thing that needs to happen…

Come and get it birth-forcers.

All anti-choicers must voluntarily place their names on a list to receive, love and raise as their own the next baby born out of lack-of-choice. In fact once such a child is conceived, since that is when they say life begins, the next lucky duck on the Save Helpless Infants Today list will immediately be responsible for all medical and related expenses. If they think this is unfair I suppose they could opt to terminate the pregnancy.

There are plenty of babies for everyone who wants one.

Just look at this happy couple.

I. Mangrey reporting.

Thanks for listening. I’m so sick of these people I can’t even tell you…oh wait I think I just did.

Science v. America's Got Talent

How Many Morons Can Dance On A Pinhead?

Land of a Thousand Dunces

June 27, 2014

I am not a man of science, but I know one personally. Unlike Republican’t politicians who insist that, because they are not scientists, science does not exist, I am choosing to delve into the world of science, if only of the political variety, to attempt to answer the age-old question: How many morons can dance on a pinhead? Here goes nothing.

One?

“Rarely has a U.S. president been so wrong about so much at the expense of so many.” Who said this and who were they talking about? Here are a few hints. First, it’s two people who said this in an op ed in the Wall Street Journal (owned by gazillionaire and international criminal Rupert Murdoch). One of these people is essentially a nobody who, had it not been for the family name, would be even less consequential than they are now, which wouldn’t be easy. We will, in the name of science, ignore the child and focus on the parent. The father in question told us things like, al Queda and Saddam Hussein are working together and teamed up on 9/11, that Saddam was “amassing [WMD] to use against our friends…and against us," and, in March of 2002, that Hussein was “actively pursuing nuclear weapons.” He later said, "We do know, with absolute certainty, that he is using his procurement system to acquire the equipment he needs in order to enrich uranium to build a nuclear weapon." This bag of hate and lies in human skin also told us, four days before launching the war he had dreamed of for almost fifteen years, "I really do believe that we will be greeted as liberators."

This is the same guy who outed a covert CIA operative, possibly one of this country’s most valuable assets in the Middle East, for revenge against her husband, who simply told the truth about one of the things our Mystery Moron was lying to the American public about to help start the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003. In case you haven’t remembered or guessed yet, it’s none other than Dick “Go F$@k Yourself” Cheney.

Cheney, now just a shadow of his former shadow, casts a loving glance at daughter Liz

Once again he’s rearing his ugly head in an effort to defend all his lying, mayhem and murder. Not to mention is legacy - he wouldn’t want anyone to forget some of his other great deeds: waterboarding, shooting a man in the face for sport, destroying the environment for fun and profit, and killing a little girl for her heart (this has yet to be proven, but he does have her heart). And now Cheney’s dream of endless war, a dream he worked so hard to realize, is in jeopardy. Obama doesn’t seem to have the bloodlust Cheney has and seems unwilling to rush into another invasion of Iraq to clean up Cheney’s mess. According to Bill Clinton, “Mr. Cheney has been incredibly adroit for the last six years or so attacking the [Obama] administration for not doing an adequate job of cleaning up the mess that he made."

Who could blame this Dick for attacking the president at whose inauguration he refused to stand, pretending that he needed to be in a wheelchair? Was it because Obama’s middle name is Hussein? Was it because Cheney is an evil soulless bastard? Was it because he assumed Obama would dry up his take-home pay from Halliburton’s war profiteering? We’ll probably never know.

Everyone knows that Cheney was de facto president from 2001 to 2004 and that this was his war as much as anyone’s. So yes, I would agree that, “Rarely has a U.S. president been so wrong about so much at the expense of so many.” It just should have been said into a mirror in 2003, not in an op ed column in 2014. In Cheney’s defense, he wasn’t technically wrong in the lead up to and execution of the Iraq invasion/war/occupation…he was lying.

Two?

Rep. Lou Barletta (R-PA) said of Obama, “He’s just absolutely ignoring the Constitution, and ignoring the laws, and ignoring the checks and balances. The problem is, you know, what do you do for those that say impeach him for breaking the laws or bypassing the laws. Could that pass in the House? It probably, it probably could.” Although the Republican congressman said impeachment could pass among fellow lawmakers, he didn’t think the public would be in favor of it. This of course is not an issue for Republican’ts. They don’t give a damn what the majority of Americans think.

Three? Four?

Darrell Issa: Asshole and in control

Serial car thief, suspected arsonist and petty tyrant House Oversight Committee chairman, Darrell Issa (yes, he’s all that and a bag of chumps) held a make-believe late-night hearing on this phony IRS scandal last week with all the trimmings - lights, cameras, assholes…the works. The subject of this little charade was a bunch of missing IRS emails. Presidential hopeful Paul Ryan, who is working hard to get himself some badly needed cred as he looks to place himself atop the next losing Republican’t ticket in 2016 saw a great opportunity to make political hay. He waxed apoplectic over the missing IRS emails he just knows are hiding a mysterious plot to overthrow the Tea Party. In fact the emails in question were lost two years prior to the “scandal” in question and were reported at the time. All of this was known to Rep. Issa before his little soiree. 

During the investigation into Dick Cheney’s outing of Valerie Plame some five million emails went missing, during the investigation into the firing of US attorneys scores of emails were lost by the White House even as they were improperly using private email accounts to hide their activities. Many emails went unaccounted for during the torture investigation. No Republican’t made a peep at the time these events transpired. Go figure.

Now I must rest. This science stuff if hard work. My brain hurts.  Could it be that only four morons can dance on a pinhead? Tune in next time for the conclusion of this truly epic, if wholly meaningless scientific foray. Hey, what do I look like? Neil deGrasse Tyson?

I. Mangrey reporting.

Thanks for listening. Neil deGrasse Tyson invited.

Oligarchy 'R' US?

Scientific Study Determines U.S. Is Not a Democracy

May 4, 2014

Letter from the Editor:

This is quite an interesting development though I suspect many of you immediately recognized the fatal flaw in this study. It was scientific. And it's not even a theory. It's just a meticulously carried out investigation of the available facts and figures in the interest of knowledge and truth. It can be said that truth is in the eye of the beholder and that's fair enough. Knowledge however, particularly of the scientific variety, seems relentlessly frowned upon by the vast majority of the American public. This study, to be published in the Fall 2014 issue of the academic journal Perspectives on Politics, was described by some as showing America to be an oligarchy rather than a democracy.

Democracy of course is government by the many. An oligarchy is defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary as "1) government by the few; 2) a government in which a small group exercises control especially for corrupt and selfish purposes. Sound familiar? When a huge majority of the public favors more rigorous gun control laws, meaningful immigration reform, clean air and water, yet our elected officials refuse to entertain such bizarre ideas, you would be excused for wondering what the f*&k is going on around here. You would not however be excused for just continuing to let it happen without at least sticking your head out the window and screaming, "I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore," or something to that effect. 

Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page, the authors of this historically important study titled,

"Testing Theories of American Politics,"  stated that the available data probably under-represents the actual extent to which the super-rich control the U.S. Their exhaustive analysis of the data shows that, “the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.” As we now know, corporations are people my friend, money is speech, and voting is just like slavery. Oh, and it's now illegal not to carry a gun in Georgia.

The study's authors did not use the term oligarchy because, they say, an oligarchy consists of only a very few powerful individuals. Instead, they claim that the number of truly influential actors is more than a few, but considerably less than a majority. I'm guessing it's somewhere around 0.1%. The Supreme Court hopes to enshrine this arrangement and has done everything in its power to see that this happens, first with their Citizens United decision and more recently with McCutcheon. So perhaps we are living in more of a plutocracy, defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary as "1) government by the richest people; 2) a controlling class of the wealthy. 

Over 70% of Americans favor a federal minimum wage, 88% want more effective background checks for gun purchases, 80% favor a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, 90% support a law granting equal pay for women. Unfortunately the 0.1% is opposed to all these measures and it happens to be the 0.1% that counts.

States Also Have The Right To Ignore The Will Of Their Citizens

Oklahoma residents who produce their own energy through solar panels or small wind turbines on their property will now be charged an additional fee. This, thanks to a new bill passed by the state legislature and expected to be signed into law by Republican't Gov. Mary Fallin. The bill was staunchly opposed by renewable energy advocates, environmental groups and the conservative group TUSK, but had the support of Oklahoma's mjor utilities and magically passed with no debate. Kansas lawmakers revived legislation meant to end the state's renewable energy standards, altering it so that it would happen gradually and hopefully without anyone noticing. Ninety-one percent of Kansans said they believe future Kansas energy needs can best be met by greater use of renewable energy sources. This comprises 72% of Republicans, 75% of Independents and 82% of Democrats. Do you even know anyone who is opposed to solar energy? Besides the Koch Brothers I mean. I wonder if Ken Lay is still dead.

Science Marches On

Did you know that originally, the lead additive that was our gasoline for so many years had been developed as a chemical weapon? It was handled as hazardous material when shipped to be added to gasoline for cars. The danger of spewing lead into the atmosphere was exposed in the 1950s and the petroleum industry stopped funding the scientist who discovered the danger lead posed to humans. Scientists employed by the lead industry convinced the public that lead was perfectly safe. It was the federal government that took the science seriously and worked to stop the addition of lead to gasoline. For thousands of years lead has been known to cause brain damage, developmental impairment, violent behavior and death. And there my friends, is the scientific evidence of the birth of the Tea Party.

Ed Venture

Managing Editor, Paying Attention