And let's not forget the St. Louis Cardinals RALLY SQUIRREL that started IT:
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Saturday, October 29, 2011
Friday, October 28, 2011
Is Game 7 Just A Formality?
I'm not a St. Louis or Texas (sign of the cross) fan, but last night's World Series Game 6 was a banquet, a feast, a festival for a baseball fan's sports fan's senses; one for the ages. Twice St. Louis were one strike away from elimination and they kept on coming. They wouldn't give up. This team's character is a tribute not only to the players, obviously, but to their manager, Tony La Russa. Whatever his magic (was it tossing those obnoxious Mafia shades that hid his eyes even on night games?) they should bottle it. La Russa harbors so many superstitions that he may be the obsessive-compulsive reality baseball version of Monk, the quirky TV detective whose detail-oriented neurosis is the source of his strength. He solves the puzzle by seeing things other people miss. In last night's battle of the managers, La Russa didn't make many game-changing moves, except to display Zen-like patience in the face of every reversal and a quiet confidence that rubbed off on his never-say-die players. In contrast, Ron Washington, the Texas manager, made (in my sports fan's opinion) some critical blunders that cost them the game and quite likely the Series.
I don't want to jinx St. Louis fans, because while I only dislike the Cardinals I hate Texas — you know, that whole scene with Nolan Ryan, George W. Bush, and its reality TV version of "Dallas" is obnoxious beyond words. And of course, I have to dive for the remote mute button before a single note of that hideous "God Bless America" is played and sung. Blame it on Major League Baseball for ramming faux patriotic religion down our throats, when we just want to enjoy the game with peanuts, Crackerjack, and a cold beer. And that goes for those "Athletes for Jesus Freaks" who credit J.C. for every goal, touchdown, or home run scored with that characteristic index fingers and eyes to the sky celebration. Sports and religious music don't mix. Period. (Much less politics. Are you listening, Albert Pujols, you jerk?)
Moving on, despite the best wingnut efforts to ruin it, the game between the lines can still be sublime, as it was last night. For all of St. Louis's moxie, Texas blew it. Ron Washington blew it. If your All-Star closer, Feliz, is on the mound and has a shaky outing, allowing two runs, a tied game, and extra innings after the Cardinals had gone 1-for-15 against him — what should the manager do? Answer: He sends his best right back out there. Well, if you hadn't scored to get those two runs back at the top of the 10th inning, you might bring in a journeyman veteran like Oliver. You figure he'll give you a couple of innings and your closer is on ice. But if you go ahead, you give the ball right back to your All-Star closer, no matter how shaky he was the previous inning. That's what he gets the big bucks for. What, is he supposed to pitch again today? You tell Feliz, "This is your lucky day. You have another chance to win this Series and be the hero, with a two-run cushion. Go back out there and get those last three outs."
Instead, and very predictably (I knew before Oliver threw his first pitch) southpaw veteran Darren Oliver promptly gave up back-to-back singles to the first two left-handed batters up for the Cardinals. The "percentages" game may work on paper, but not when you anger the stadium gods. The 41-year-old Oliver who was on the losing end of Division Series as a starter for Texas against the Yankees back in the 90s, had one save in 2010 and two in 2011 — stellar stats. But the bottom line is, you don't win a World Series with a journeyman pitcher on the mound by yanking your star closer before regaining the lead with a two-run cushion. It's a violation of stadium gods etiquette. It disrespects your adversary, and they'll let you know about it; it stiffens their spines.
Then Washington made his second mistake, which has its roots in that idiotic American League rule of the "Designated Hitter." Baseball was originally intended for all nine players to field their positions and bat, including the pitcher. So when the pitcher's s turn came up for Texas (National League rules in a NL stadium) with two outs, nobody on, Washington yanked his best middle reliever, Scott Feldman, who could have kept them in the game through extra innings with a string of scoreless innings pitched. The manager's indecision and impatience to chase a win, with a depleted bench and the premature removal of his star reliever, played itself out with Feldman grabbing a bat, then suddenly being called back in favor of a no-name pinch hitter, who ground out to end the inning. From Washington's perspective, sending his best long reliever up there with little time logged on batting practice, was conceding a bat for a pitcher. Hence the split-second confusion: do I keep him in the game or gamble with a low power/average bench player? Two outs, nobody on. Your call.
Joe Buck and Tim McCarver yucked that they'd take the trade (from the Cardinals' perspective) of Scott Feldman for Mark Lowe any day. The rest is the stuff of baseball lore. Hometown boy David Freese makes good, following his two-run game-tying triple with a game-winning homer against a Texas third-string relief pitcher. The mercilessly cruel, but just, stadium gods were smiling. What a game.
I don't want to jinx St. Louis fans, because while I only dislike the Cardinals I hate Texas — you know, that whole scene with Nolan Ryan, George W. Bush, and its reality TV version of "Dallas" is obnoxious beyond words. And of course, I have to dive for the remote mute button before a single note of that hideous "God Bless America" is played and sung. Blame it on Major League Baseball for ramming faux patriotic religion down our throats, when we just want to enjoy the game with peanuts, Crackerjack, and a cold beer. And that goes for those "Athletes for Jesus Freaks" who credit J.C. for every goal, touchdown, or home run scored with that characteristic index fingers and eyes to the sky celebration. Sports and religious music don't mix. Period. (Much less politics. Are you listening, Albert Pujols, you jerk?)
Moving on, despite the best wingnut efforts to ruin it, the game between the lines can still be sublime, as it was last night. For all of St. Louis's moxie, Texas blew it. Ron Washington blew it. If your All-Star closer, Feliz, is on the mound and has a shaky outing, allowing two runs, a tied game, and extra innings after the Cardinals had gone 1-for-15 against him — what should the manager do? Answer: He sends his best right back out there. Well, if you hadn't scored to get those two runs back at the top of the 10th inning, you might bring in a journeyman veteran like Oliver. You figure he'll give you a couple of innings and your closer is on ice. But if you go ahead, you give the ball right back to your All-Star closer, no matter how shaky he was the previous inning. That's what he gets the big bucks for. What, is he supposed to pitch again today? You tell Feliz, "This is your lucky day. You have another chance to win this Series and be the hero, with a two-run cushion. Go back out there and get those last three outs."
Instead, and very predictably (I knew before Oliver threw his first pitch) southpaw veteran Darren Oliver promptly gave up back-to-back singles to the first two left-handed batters up for the Cardinals. The "percentages" game may work on paper, but not when you anger the stadium gods. The 41-year-old Oliver who was on the losing end of Division Series as a starter for Texas against the Yankees back in the 90s, had one save in 2010 and two in 2011 — stellar stats. But the bottom line is, you don't win a World Series with a journeyman pitcher on the mound by yanking your star closer before regaining the lead with a two-run cushion. It's a violation of stadium gods etiquette. It disrespects your adversary, and they'll let you know about it; it stiffens their spines.
Then Washington made his second mistake, which has its roots in that idiotic American League rule of the "Designated Hitter." Baseball was originally intended for all nine players to field their positions and bat, including the pitcher. So when the pitcher's s turn came up for Texas (National League rules in a NL stadium) with two outs, nobody on, Washington yanked his best middle reliever, Scott Feldman, who could have kept them in the game through extra innings with a string of scoreless innings pitched. The manager's indecision and impatience to chase a win, with a depleted bench and the premature removal of his star reliever, played itself out with Feldman grabbing a bat, then suddenly being called back in favor of a no-name pinch hitter, who ground out to end the inning. From Washington's perspective, sending his best long reliever up there with little time logged on batting practice, was conceding a bat for a pitcher. Hence the split-second confusion: do I keep him in the game or gamble with a low power/average bench player? Two outs, nobody on. Your call.
Joe Buck and Tim McCarver yucked that they'd take the trade (from the Cardinals' perspective) of Scott Feldman for Mark Lowe any day. The rest is the stuff of baseball lore. Hometown boy David Freese makes good, following his two-run game-tying triple with a game-winning homer against a Texas third-string relief pitcher. The mercilessly cruel, but just, stadium gods were smiling. What a game.
Thursday, October 27, 2011
OCCUPY WALL STREET WATCH: DECLARATION OF THE OCCUPATION
The third edition of the impressive Occupied Wall Street Journal has just been released online. It's really worth a read. And for the clueless MSM producers trying to figure out what it's all about, and who to interview, I urge you to read the Occupy Wall Street Journal and seek out any of the eloquent voices within it. What amazes me, in contrast to those pathetic tools in the Tea Party demonstrations, is how eloquent and talented the young people who produced this publication are. That they have so much to offer and cannot find employment in this society equal to their skills is a systemic crime. And when we have a criminal economic and government system that ceases to be responsive to the needs and aspirations of the population, then that system must be replaced with a democratic small "d" government and economy that will.
It's that simple. The Occupy Wall Street movement is an organic revolutionary people's uprising in the great tradition of our own revolutionary beginnings. The only question is whether this will be a revolution from within that shames the nation at large into a 21st century New Deal of wide ranging democratic reforms of our economic and political institutions, or whether it will morph into something else as yet unspoken. But the oligarchs and the ruling elites should understand that this is not a movement that can be managed, absorbed, controlled, or bought. The more they attempt to smear and suppress it, the stronger it will become. The New Deal of the 1930s was a systemic response to revolutionary conditions brought about by the Great Depression. These same conditions exist today. The oligarchs of those days privately, if reluctantly, acknowledged that "that man" as they called FDR, saved American capitalism from chaos and revolution. The right wing Tea Party Republican Congress is so universally reviled by Americans, with an approval rating of 9 percent — the lowest in history — that if the Democratic Party does not step into the political maelstrom and take this bull by the horns, as it did in 1932, then all hell will break loose. With unpredictable consequences. Because the American people, we of the 99 percent, have reached our breaking point. And we shall not be moved.
It's that simple. The Occupy Wall Street movement is an organic revolutionary people's uprising in the great tradition of our own revolutionary beginnings. The only question is whether this will be a revolution from within that shames the nation at large into a 21st century New Deal of wide ranging democratic reforms of our economic and political institutions, or whether it will morph into something else as yet unspoken. But the oligarchs and the ruling elites should understand that this is not a movement that can be managed, absorbed, controlled, or bought. The more they attempt to smear and suppress it, the stronger it will become. The New Deal of the 1930s was a systemic response to revolutionary conditions brought about by the Great Depression. These same conditions exist today. The oligarchs of those days privately, if reluctantly, acknowledged that "that man" as they called FDR, saved American capitalism from chaos and revolution. The right wing Tea Party Republican Congress is so universally reviled by Americans, with an approval rating of 9 percent — the lowest in history — that if the Democratic Party does not step into the political maelstrom and take this bull by the horns, as it did in 1932, then all hell will break loose. With unpredictable consequences. Because the American people, we of the 99 percent, have reached our breaking point. And we shall not be moved.
Declaration of the Occupation
Approved by consensus on Sept. 29, 2011
at the New York City General Assembly
in occupied Liberty Square.
at the New York City General Assembly
in occupied Liberty Square.
As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice, we must not lose sight of what brought us together. We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies.
As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality: that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors; that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power. We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments. We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right, to let these facts be known.
They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage.
They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give Executives exorbitant bonuses.
They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in the workplace based on age, the color of one’s skin, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation.
They have poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the farming system through monopolization.
They have profited off of the torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of countless nonhuman animals, and actively hide these practices.
They have continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate for better pay and safer working conditions.
They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is itself a human right.
They have consistently outsourced labor and used that outsourcing as leverage to cut workers’ healthcare and pay.
They have influenced the courts to achieve the same rights as people, with none of the culpability or responsibility.
They have spent millions of dollars on legal teams that look for ways to get them out of contracts in regards to health insurance.
They have sold our privacy as a commodity.
They have used the military and police force to prevent freedom of the press.
They have deliberately declined to recall faulty products endangering lives in pursuit of profit.
They determine economic policy, despite the catastrophic failures their policies have produced and continue to produce.
They have donated large sums of money to politicians supposed to be regulating them. They continue to block alternate forms of energy to keep us dependent on oil.
They continue to block generic forms of medicine that could save people’s lives in order to protect investments that have already turned a substantive profit.
They have purposely covered up oil spills, accidents, faulty bookkeeping, and inactive ingredients in pursuit of profit.
They purposefully keep people misinformed and fearful through their control of the media.
They have accepted private contracts to murder prisoners even when presented with serious doubts about their guilt.
They have perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad. They have participated in the torture and murder of innocent civilians overseas.
They continue to create weapons of mass destruction in order to receive government contracts. *
To the people of the world,
We, the New York City General Assembly occupying Wall Street in Liberty Square, urge you to assert your power.
Exercise your right to peaceably assemble; occupy public space; create a process to address the problems we face, and generate solutions accessible to everyone.
To all communities that take action and form groups in the spirit of direct democracy, we offer support, documentation, and all of the resources at our disposal.
Join us and make your voices heard!
*These grievances are not all-inclusive.
As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality: that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors; that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power. We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments. We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right, to let these facts be known.
They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage.
They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give Executives exorbitant bonuses.
They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in the workplace based on age, the color of one’s skin, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation.
They have poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the farming system through monopolization.
They have profited off of the torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of countless nonhuman animals, and actively hide these practices.
They have continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate for better pay and safer working conditions.
They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is itself a human right.
They have consistently outsourced labor and used that outsourcing as leverage to cut workers’ healthcare and pay.
They have influenced the courts to achieve the same rights as people, with none of the culpability or responsibility.
They have spent millions of dollars on legal teams that look for ways to get them out of contracts in regards to health insurance.
They have sold our privacy as a commodity.
They have used the military and police force to prevent freedom of the press.
They have deliberately declined to recall faulty products endangering lives in pursuit of profit.
They determine economic policy, despite the catastrophic failures their policies have produced and continue to produce.
They have donated large sums of money to politicians supposed to be regulating them. They continue to block alternate forms of energy to keep us dependent on oil.
They continue to block generic forms of medicine that could save people’s lives in order to protect investments that have already turned a substantive profit.
They have purposely covered up oil spills, accidents, faulty bookkeeping, and inactive ingredients in pursuit of profit.
They purposefully keep people misinformed and fearful through their control of the media.
They have accepted private contracts to murder prisoners even when presented with serious doubts about their guilt.
They have perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad. They have participated in the torture and murder of innocent civilians overseas.
They continue to create weapons of mass destruction in order to receive government contracts. *
To the people of the world,
We, the New York City General Assembly occupying Wall Street in Liberty Square, urge you to assert your power.
Exercise your right to peaceably assemble; occupy public space; create a process to address the problems we face, and generate solutions accessible to everyone.
To all communities that take action and form groups in the spirit of direct democracy, we offer support, documentation, and all of the resources at our disposal.
Join us and make your voices heard!
*These grievances are not all-inclusive.
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
POLITICO Postcript: Chris Rakes John Harris Flunky Over The Coals
Having pointed out to Chris Matthews the obvious re: his precious POLITICO (see previous post), wasn't it fortuitous that he should host a John Harris flunky on the topic of Cuban pretend Castro victim Marco Rubio ... And, wouldn't you know it, the Harris flunky took the bait!
Scripted or not, the POLITICO pretend "journalist" reflexively jumped to Tea Party darling Marco Rubio's defense over the Senator's buffoonish indignation at Wapo's discovery that his privileged status as the son of Cuban émigrés wasn't due to his parents' pretend victimization (according to Rubio in his alternate universes official bio) under the now-retired dictator in the Adidas jumpsuit. Chris jumped the flunky by, in effect, reading him the Riot Act on objective journalism:
JOHN HARRIS FLUNKY: "The most generous interpretation is that he (Marco Rubio) is learning about this along with the rest of us ..."
Chris immediately gets to the heart of the matter, asking the John Harris flunky to explain how Rubio's conversation over the dinner table with his parents never broached the details of their alleged flight from Castro's Cuba?
JOHN HARRIS FLUNKY: (Garbled explanation in which he behaves not as journalist but Rubio's agent, proxy, apologist ...)
CHRIS: "That's not journalism. That's not fact. That is pure, pure nonsensical elliptical thinking."
Gee, I couldn't have described what POLITICO does on a daily basis better than that! Good on Chris.
Scripted or not, the POLITICO pretend "journalist" reflexively jumped to Tea Party darling Marco Rubio's defense over the Senator's buffoonish indignation at Wapo's discovery that his privileged status as the son of Cuban émigrés wasn't due to his parents' pretend victimization (according to Rubio in his alternate universes official bio) under the now-retired dictator in the Adidas jumpsuit. Chris jumped the flunky by, in effect, reading him the Riot Act on objective journalism:
JOHN HARRIS FLUNKY: "The most generous interpretation is that he (Marco Rubio) is learning about this along with the rest of us ..."
Chris immediately gets to the heart of the matter, asking the John Harris flunky to explain how Rubio's conversation over the dinner table with his parents never broached the details of their alleged flight from Castro's Cuba?
JOHN HARRIS FLUNKY: (Garbled explanation in which he behaves not as journalist but Rubio's agent, proxy, apologist ...)
CHRIS: "That's not journalism. That's not fact. That is pure, pure nonsensical elliptical thinking."
Gee, I couldn't have described what POLITICO does on a daily basis better than that! Good on Chris.
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
In Defense of Dylan Ratigan ... Would You Believe It?!
This blog's readers, whether fan or foe, will know that MSNBC's Dylan Ratigan is not among my favorite political pundit-TV hosts. In fact, I find Dylan unwatchable given his parade of reactionary Republican guests and screwed-up (as I see it) politics, which are all over the map and best described as neurotic. My words. Not that Dylan himself is. But his politics are. Just the other day Dylan hilariously described his personal politics as "up-down" instead of "lefty-righty." I can see it now: Dylan Ratigan, working class hero. Yeah, right. That's like saying Chris Matthews is an anarcho-syndicalist.
So given the fact that Dylan loves Ron Paul and Tom Coburn, both reactionary Republicans, both proponents of Big Government when it comes to interfering in a woman's constitutional rights over her reproductive decisions, and both slash-and-burn extreme anti-government wingnuts, exactly what kind of "liberal" does that make him, hmm ... POLITICO? Dylan loves Stephen Colbert who — sorry, brain-addled liberals, don't you know the joke's on you? — is a fellow traveler. And he'll throw in socialist independent Bernie Sanders, for good measure, just to muddy the waters.
So what does all this add up to? The weird political neurotic known as a "libertarian." There are two basic kinds of libertarians: The conservative, small government Ron Paul types, who are essentially Republicans who abhor religious zealotry and most civil liberties infringements — except when it comes to women, where they tend to be sexist, hang out with the 'lovelies' (Dylan's trophy 'power panel'... Jimmy, the ugly "Dem" is the control), and look the other way on abortion. The second type of "libertarian" is the Ayn Rand cultist, like Paul Ryan and Rand Paul (maybe Ron, too) in the political sphere. These elements are downright psychotic politicos. They have plans, budgets, and proposals to prove it. POLITICO, the political "news" outlet of record for the Idiot Punditocracy or, if you prefer, the Beltway Media, takes them very seriously.
People chuckle quite a bit at my incessant claims of inordinate POLITICO influence on the Idiot Punditocracy, to the point that it drives the false conservative narrative of the Idiot Punditocracy/Beltway Media; a narrative that is more in line with Fox propaganda than with MSNBC's presumed news and commentary mission. For all of their combined experience, it's astonishing to me that Andrea Mitchell and Chris Matthews just don't get it. Or maybe they do; they're both millionaires. I always get a kick out of Andrea hosting Rachel Maddow to explain the strange ways and views of liberals and progressives. Chris is easily influenced as well.
MSNBC politicos think my POLITICO descriptor is so much trash talking silliness. At least Rachel gets it. But she happens to be a Rhodes Scholar and has more brain matter than all of them combined. No mystery there. Just this evening, while Chris hosted POLITICO's Editor-in-Chief John Harris, I read another of many POLITICO hit pieces — most are aimed at liberals and progressives — this time targeting Dylan Ratigan and the Occupy Wall Street movement. Matt Taibbi, a known progressive, unlike Dylan, was essentially their "control" to smear Ratigan with false political branding by association.
In a story entitled "New target for OWS critics: Media" POLITICO reports above the side-by-side photos of hate radio host Rush Limbaugh and wingnut hack Andrew Breitbart that "conservatives looking to delegitimize the Occupy Wall Street protests have a new tactic — targeting journalists." Labeling Limbaugh and Breitbart "conservatives" is like, well, calling Dylan Ratigan a "liberal." The story written by Harris flunky Keach Hagey goes on to say "the criticisms are a kind of conservative twofer, allowing them to hit old targets like NPR and The New York Times by raising questions about their objectivity, while at the same time undermining the grass-roots claims of the new protest movement by suggesting it has professional help — or at least professional cheerleaders."
It's all bullshit. The NPR OWS connection was of a person hosting a radio opera show. Please. Essentially it comes down to this: NPR and the New York Times are legitimate news organizations with strict standards and codes of ethics. The wingnut attack dogs, who have no standards at all, and who lie, cheat, and smear at will, take advantage of this. And by the way, POLITICO, where's the faux outrage when Fox was acting as the pro bono media advertising arm of the corporatist TEA PARTY, funded by the Koch brothers, and your corporate bankrollers. It seems, if not for Rachel and Big Eddie, the sound of crickets wafted from the Beltway Media bastions.
On Breitbart's site, one wingnut insinuated that a New York Times freelance reporter, Natasha Lennard, was actually part of the movement and had "concealed her own apparent role in the Occupy protests, implying that her arrest was an abuse of press freedom."
But there's more. The Breitbart site ominously accuses Lennard of participating as "featured speaker" in a discussion "among anarchists, communists, and other radicals as they examine the theory, strategy and tactics of the Occupy protests." If you watch the video (Google it, please — certain sites I do not link to) there are a bunch of peeps crowded into a tiny bookstore, exchanging views about OWS. How this wingnut divined that the people were "anarchists, communists, and other radicals" is an example of when wingnuts profile in which conclusions about a person's political ideology can be drawn simply by looking at them or listening to a few disjointed questions. Liberals and progressives, who live in a world where the truth and the facts rule, will indict wingnuts with their own words and actions. We have a higher standard, that sets us apart — and a higher intellect, to boot.
Here, the Breitbart flunky smears the audience and Lennard by insinuating they're "anarchists and communists" and Lennard's "answer suggests that she identifies with the anarchist faction holed up at Zuccotti Park–and that she identifies with efforts by Occupy activists to conceal their true beliefs and goals."
POLITICO, I will say again and reiterate because, Andrea and Chris, I actually read their conservative, corporatist bias every day — over and above the political rumor-mill that you guys consider "hard news" — here's one more example of their collaborationism. It's insidious and almost as bad as when Chris parrots Bill O'Reilly's "far left" and "hard left" nonsense. Keach Hagey writes: "The cases of Ratigan and Taibbi, two outspoken liberals, are even harder to pin down when it comes to journalistic ethics." Excuse me? Two "outspoken liberals" as in "conservatives" like Limbaugh and Breitbart? Tell you what, Hagey you fucking tool, why don't you borrow some of my adjectives, eh. Got plenty of 'em.
Somehow, I don't think Dylan would object much at all when I correct the record to say he is most definitely not a liberal. Dylan, whose good intentions led him to address the OWS protesters at Zuccotti Park, and who I believe was punked by a bearded individual claiming to be a Teabagger from Texas — c'mon, and you call yourself a Manhattanite, Dylan, with such pathetic "street smarts"? — put his two cents into a couple of e-mails offering innocuous advice to the protesters and to take their concerns to the attention of Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois. Good idea. Hey, it's a free country and last I checked freedom of speech hadn't yet been abridged. Dylan could never influence the movement, no matter how hard he tries. So if it helps his own political development leading, say, to a watchable program, I say it's all good.
Here's more of the Harris flunky: "Taibbi’s leaked email shows, in essence, a boiled down version of his article, “My Advice to the Wall Street Protesters.” Linking Taibbi with Ratigan simply because they share an e-mail listserv — which is classic wingnut peeping tom-ism, hacking into people's private e-mails — along with other "radicals" like Noam Chomsky (interestingly, only three or so "controversial" names appear in the blacked-out wingnut screenshot with many names, possibly conservatives too), is how these wingnut scumbags roll. I'm sure Dylan wouldn't have a problem being associated with the awesome Matt Taibbi, but it's this sick obsession that wingnuts have of trying to smear one person's politics with another's simply because they have a listserv in common that is utterly contemptible. They aren't out to disclose some bigger truth; they're all about trying to ruin people's careers, to get their pound of flesh.
According to the Harris flunky, MSNBC's "embrace" of OWS "echoes the way Fox "News" embraced the early Tea Party protests." Not even close, assholes, and you know it. This video calls the ratbastards out — are you paying attention, Chris and Andrea?
So given the fact that Dylan loves Ron Paul and Tom Coburn, both reactionary Republicans, both proponents of Big Government when it comes to interfering in a woman's constitutional rights over her reproductive decisions, and both slash-and-burn extreme anti-government wingnuts, exactly what kind of "liberal" does that make him, hmm ... POLITICO? Dylan loves Stephen Colbert who — sorry, brain-addled liberals, don't you know the joke's on you? — is a fellow traveler. And he'll throw in socialist independent Bernie Sanders, for good measure, just to muddy the waters.
So what does all this add up to? The weird political neurotic known as a "libertarian." There are two basic kinds of libertarians: The conservative, small government Ron Paul types, who are essentially Republicans who abhor religious zealotry and most civil liberties infringements — except when it comes to women, where they tend to be sexist, hang out with the 'lovelies' (Dylan's trophy 'power panel'... Jimmy, the ugly "Dem" is the control), and look the other way on abortion. The second type of "libertarian" is the Ayn Rand cultist, like Paul Ryan and Rand Paul (maybe Ron, too) in the political sphere. These elements are downright psychotic politicos. They have plans, budgets, and proposals to prove it. POLITICO, the political "news" outlet of record for the Idiot Punditocracy or, if you prefer, the Beltway Media, takes them very seriously.
People chuckle quite a bit at my incessant claims of inordinate POLITICO influence on the Idiot Punditocracy, to the point that it drives the false conservative narrative of the Idiot Punditocracy/Beltway Media; a narrative that is more in line with Fox propaganda than with MSNBC's presumed news and commentary mission. For all of their combined experience, it's astonishing to me that Andrea Mitchell and Chris Matthews just don't get it. Or maybe they do; they're both millionaires. I always get a kick out of Andrea hosting Rachel Maddow to explain the strange ways and views of liberals and progressives. Chris is easily influenced as well.
MSNBC politicos think my POLITICO descriptor is so much trash talking silliness. At least Rachel gets it. But she happens to be a Rhodes Scholar and has more brain matter than all of them combined. No mystery there. Just this evening, while Chris hosted POLITICO's Editor-in-Chief John Harris, I read another of many POLITICO hit pieces — most are aimed at liberals and progressives — this time targeting Dylan Ratigan and the Occupy Wall Street movement. Matt Taibbi, a known progressive, unlike Dylan, was essentially their "control" to smear Ratigan with false political branding by association.
In a story entitled "New target for OWS critics: Media" POLITICO reports above the side-by-side photos of hate radio host Rush Limbaugh and wingnut hack Andrew Breitbart that "conservatives looking to delegitimize the Occupy Wall Street protests have a new tactic — targeting journalists." Labeling Limbaugh and Breitbart "conservatives" is like, well, calling Dylan Ratigan a "liberal." The story written by Harris flunky Keach Hagey goes on to say "the criticisms are a kind of conservative twofer, allowing them to hit old targets like NPR and The New York Times by raising questions about their objectivity, while at the same time undermining the grass-roots claims of the new protest movement by suggesting it has professional help — or at least professional cheerleaders."
It's all bullshit. The NPR OWS connection was of a person hosting a radio opera show. Please. Essentially it comes down to this: NPR and the New York Times are legitimate news organizations with strict standards and codes of ethics. The wingnut attack dogs, who have no standards at all, and who lie, cheat, and smear at will, take advantage of this. And by the way, POLITICO, where's the faux outrage when Fox was acting as the pro bono media advertising arm of the corporatist TEA PARTY, funded by the Koch brothers, and your corporate bankrollers. It seems, if not for Rachel and Big Eddie, the sound of crickets wafted from the Beltway Media bastions.
On Breitbart's site, one wingnut insinuated that a New York Times freelance reporter, Natasha Lennard, was actually part of the movement and had "concealed her own apparent role in the Occupy protests, implying that her arrest was an abuse of press freedom."
Really? This is Ms. Lennard's account in the New York Times excerpted below (emphasis all mine):Lennard, who has also written for Politico and Salon, is identified in the video by the panel’s moderator as a freelancer for the Times, and also as the Times reporter who was arrested along with seven hundred activists on the Brooklyn Bridge on Oct. 1. When Lennard reported on her arrest at the time, she appears to have concealed her own apparent role in the Occupy protests, implying that her arrest was an abuse of press freedom. She used her affiliation with the Times to win her early release.
What we have here, folks, are back-to-back examples of (a) right wing propaganda, above, and (b) Lennard's reporting (both excerpted) to which you can link to read the full account. It's an excellent, first-person report of events as they went down. Can anyone spot the "abuse of press freedom" — perhaps it was the reporter's self-explanatory tweet below? And using one's "affiliation" with the media organization is what reporters do as a matter of course when, e.g., they're arrested!As a reporter covering the march, conducted by the Occupy Wall Street protesters, I was in position to get a close view of some events on the bridge as the arrests began. But as one of those arrested, I was also well-positioned to describe what happened next, at least for a number of those detained. [...]
One by one, people were systematically turned around, handcuffed and lined up along the bridge behind police lines as the drizzle in the air turned into cold rain. I was herded onto a New York City bus with those arrested at the same time.
Among our group — predominantly comprised of twenty-somethings — were college students from Wesleyan, travelers from California who had been camping in Zuccotti Park, unemployed young people and some who sat silently and kept their back stories to themselves. [...]
Handcuffed and complaining of needing the bathroom, a number of people on my bus sang songs (a few too many Beatles songs) to pass the time and keep up spirits. We were kept on the bus for approximately three hours before being taken in to the Midtown North precinct at 54th Street and Ninth Avenue.
As a freelancer, I did not have an official police press pass. I was, however, fortunate enough to be the first to be processed from my bus, with only a disorderly conduct violation summons, in no small measure because of my editors’ contacting Police Headquarters to ensure my swift release.
Here, the Breitbart flunky smears the audience and Lennard by insinuating they're "anarchists and communists" and Lennard's "answer suggests that she identifies with the anarchist faction holed up at Zuccotti Park–and that she identifies with efforts by Occupy activists to conceal their true beliefs and goals."
Well, I listened to the entire segment and watched the Breitbart excerpt. Notice that the Breitbart flunky infers the question directly references "ideological divisions among anarchists and communists" as if those terms were part of the audience member's question. But they weren't. She never mentioned "anarchists and communists" in her question, which asked, simply, how to go about forming a "new society." If I recall my history correctly, that's basically what our Founding Fathers aimed to do. Lennard's reply is objectively true, perhaps too frank for our post-9/11 semi-authoritarian, semi-police state. Hello, are the wingnuts familiar with Ghandi and Martin Luther King's peaceful civil disobedience protests (rhetorical question):For example, at roughly 1:15:15, an audience member asks a question about how to manage the growing ideological divisions among anarchists and communists as they form “a new society” through the Occupy movement. Lennard’s answer suggests that she identifies with the anarchist faction holed up at Zuccotti Park–and that she identifies with efforts by Occupy activists to conceal their true beliefs and goals.
Of course, one of the other "featured guests" said this, by way of a retort: "The idea that representative democracy is somehow authoritarian ... Authoritarian would be if the cops came in and arrested all of us for having this meeting. This is not an authoritarian system we live under." It was never mentioned on Breitbart's "Big (read that, "Fascist") Government." As the video went viral on the wingnut blogosphere, Lennard explained:"The state of the square now…[people] would not speak at the park. Because being an outright anti-authoritarian or an anarchist is not really something that people like to be live streamed around the world with a fucking police pen around you. So there is a silencing that’s sort of gone on without much addressing, because to address it would be to out oneself. So if you’re talking — and this also addresses the question of escalation; it’s like — yes, there are a lot of people talking about many different ideas. Do they all want all of those ideas live streamed to the entire world on the assumption that everything is permitted and legal, when it quite clearly isn’t? So there is already a tendency in the park that means backing away from anti-authoritarian tendencies that don’t fall into pre-existing permitted institutional structures, or that can’t be coded by them. So I think there’s a problem with the way the park operates now that doesn’t allow for this kind of coming together."
So much for the wingnut smears. Here's Natasha firing back on Twitter at the wingnut ratbastards. For the record:“I spoke at the panel independently. It was not an 'organizing meeting'. I have no contract or anything of the sort with the Times. If anything, the misnomer was the moderator describing me as a New York Times freelancer as if there were an ongoing agreement or contract. I had done some freelance work for them in previous weeks -- namely stringing and one firsthand report of Brooklyn Bridge experience.”
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Somehow, I don't think Dylan would object much at all when I correct the record to say he is most definitely not a liberal. Dylan, whose good intentions led him to address the OWS protesters at Zuccotti Park, and who I believe was punked by a bearded individual claiming to be a Teabagger from Texas — c'mon, and you call yourself a Manhattanite, Dylan, with such pathetic "street smarts"? — put his two cents into a couple of e-mails offering innocuous advice to the protesters and to take their concerns to the attention of Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois. Good idea. Hey, it's a free country and last I checked freedom of speech hadn't yet been abridged. Dylan could never influence the movement, no matter how hard he tries. So if it helps his own political development leading, say, to a watchable program, I say it's all good.
Here's more of the Harris flunky: "Taibbi’s leaked email shows, in essence, a boiled down version of his article, “My Advice to the Wall Street Protesters.” Linking Taibbi with Ratigan simply because they share an e-mail listserv — which is classic wingnut peeping tom-ism, hacking into people's private e-mails — along with other "radicals" like Noam Chomsky (interestingly, only three or so "controversial" names appear in the blacked-out wingnut screenshot with many names, possibly conservatives too), is how these wingnut scumbags roll. I'm sure Dylan wouldn't have a problem being associated with the awesome Matt Taibbi, but it's this sick obsession that wingnuts have of trying to smear one person's politics with another's simply because they have a listserv in common that is utterly contemptible. They aren't out to disclose some bigger truth; they're all about trying to ruin people's careers, to get their pound of flesh.
According to the Harris flunky, MSNBC's "embrace" of OWS "echoes the way Fox "News" embraced the early Tea Party protests." Not even close, assholes, and you know it. This video calls the ratbastards out — are you paying attention, Chris and Andrea?
MSNBC has embraced Occupy Wall Street in a way that echoes the way Fox News embraced the early tea party protests, with everyone from Tamron Hall to Ed Schultz anchoring from Zuccotti Park as the protests gained steam. But considering that MSNBC suspended Keith Olbermann for his equally un-shocking donations to Democratic candidates, because of NBC News’s one-size-fits-all ethics policy, it does raise questions about where MSNBC draws the line between opinionated journalist and activist. An MSNBC spokesman could not be reached for comment Monday night.=
Monday, October 24, 2011
And She's A GREAT Goalkeeper, Too ...
Here's HOPE SOLO, USA women's soccer team goalkeeper and MUSE of the recent Women's World Cup, showing her Rumba moves. See, this is an essential part of a goalkeeper's training — flexibility and range. Her partner got a bit overenthused in the end:
Sunday, October 23, 2011
OCCUPY WALL STREET WATCH: Naomi Wolf Storms The Barricades ... Wow!
I know it's hard, folks, but pay attention ... um, because feminist author Naomi Wolf has some very relevant things to say about our First Amendment protections. Good thing I know and, more importantly, understand it better than, say, the Teabaggers, because this video clip can drive one to distraction. Naomi's arrest by the NYPD and the subsequent nefarious involvement of Homeland Security is the stuff police states are made of. And though Naomi likes to describe herself as just a "middle-aged couch potato intellectual" she's truly so much more!
If Occupy Wall Street has a Founding Father, let us nominate Michael Moore for the honor. Michael's been toiling away at this for quite a while now, and the final scene of Capitalism: A love Story seems almost prophetic in light of recent events. Michael, the people HEARD YOU! I think those two Thomases, Paine and Jefferson would be proud of you, too:
If Occupy Wall Street has a Founding Father, let us nominate Michael Moore for the honor. Michael's been toiling away at this for quite a while now, and the final scene of Capitalism: A love Story seems almost prophetic in light of recent events. Michael, the people HEARD YOU! I think those two Thomases, Paine and Jefferson would be proud of you, too:
And thanks be to Keith for shining a light on OWS.
Friday, October 21, 2011
The Hits Just Keep On Coming For President Obama
The troops in Iraq will be home for Christmas. Making good on a campaign promise, President Obama announced today that all American troops will be out of Iraq by the end of this year. This war that cost us dearly in blood and treasure — 4,400 troops killed, 32,000 wounded, and more than $1 trillion spent, for what? — was one of choice that should never have been waged. A Republican president, George W. Bush, is responsible for this monstrous unfolding atrocity. President Obama had the unwelcome task of cleaning up after Bush-Cheney. That he did.
One of Dylan Ratigan's lovelies, Karen Finney, said "see what this President can accomplish without Republican obstructionism." Chris Matthews said this is "mission accomplished without the banner." And Dylan Ratigan said we were "kicked out." Col. Jack Jacobs schooled him by noting the President looked "quite presidential" cutting short our time there once a deal ensuring troop immunity from legal prosecution fell through, saying in essence, "Fine, we're outta here. Good luck." Pay attention, Ratigan: It wasn't this President's war, he opposed it from the start, and made a campaign promise to get us out of there by this time. Can you say, "another promise kept" without gagging? (Hmm ... Get thee to Fox, Dylan, where you'll find the proper climate to be a pretend libertarian "journalist" and Obama hater.)
Meanwhile, Gramps McLittleMac was still reliving his last presidential campaign: "Today marks a harmful and sad setback for the United States in the world. This decision will be viewed as a strategic victory for our enemies in the Middle East, especially the Iranian regime, which has worked relentlessly to ensure a full withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq." Yo Gramps, go reminisce about your "ranch" time with "interesting" dead dictators as time goes by ...
One of Dylan Ratigan's lovelies, Karen Finney, said "see what this President can accomplish without Republican obstructionism." Chris Matthews said this is "mission accomplished without the banner." And Dylan Ratigan said we were "kicked out." Col. Jack Jacobs schooled him by noting the President looked "quite presidential" cutting short our time there once a deal ensuring troop immunity from legal prosecution fell through, saying in essence, "Fine, we're outta here. Good luck." Pay attention, Ratigan: It wasn't this President's war, he opposed it from the start, and made a campaign promise to get us out of there by this time. Can you say, "another promise kept" without gagging? (Hmm ... Get thee to Fox, Dylan, where you'll find the proper climate to be a pretend libertarian "journalist" and Obama hater.)
Meanwhile, Gramps McLittleMac was still reliving his last presidential campaign: "Today marks a harmful and sad setback for the United States in the world. This decision will be viewed as a strategic victory for our enemies in the Middle East, especially the Iranian regime, which has worked relentlessly to ensure a full withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq." Yo Gramps, go reminisce about your "ranch" time with "interesting" dead dictators as time goes by ...
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Who Would You Rather See Leading Our Nation Today?
These Republicans have absolutely no scruples nor dignity or class. None whatsoever. The killing of Moammar Khaddafi, however it went down, was a great foreign policy success for this President's administration, and one more notch in his relentless hunt for terrorists, far outpacing the Bush-Cheney regime in singleminded disruption of terrorist networks and the elimination of Al Qaeda's top leadership. Khaddafi was a brutal dictator and a terrorist with PanAm 103 American victims' blood on his hands. He may have cut a "never mind" deal with the Bush-Cheney regime to renounce terrorism, cooperate with the U.S. in hunting Al Qaeda in exchange for coming in out of the cold — a slap in the face to the families of the PanAm 103 bombing victims — but it was a deal the Obama administration never felt obligated to "honor."
Quite the contrary, when the Lybian Spring uprising began and Khaddafi threatened his own people, President Obama took decisive action to stop it, and never looked back. The President made all the right moves despite outrageous Republican carping from the sidelines — forget the axiom that foreign policy criticism "stops at the water's edge" — with the unmitigated gall to complain that President Obama (a) should not have intervened, (b) acted too slowly, (c) led "from behind" allowing the French and British to take the point, (d) and yet the much-maligned French (remember "Freedom Fries"?) and British deserved all the credit once the dictator was killed while the President got nothing but grief.
Professor Cornell West said that if this President walked on water the Republicans would say he couldn't swim. And Andrew Sullivan said that if Mr. Obama were a Republican he'd be on Mount Rushmore. It's mindbending that these ratbastard Republicans are bitching about, frankly, a presidential strategy so flawless as to deserve the brilliant adjective, concluded in a matter of months at relatively little cost, no boots on the ground, and no U.S. casualties. They were consistently wrong, as we can see from their stupid carping dating back to the beginning of this collective NATO action.
One thing about Democrats: We're not big on hawking wars, we don't like them, and our instinct is to get in there, do what we need to do, and get out. But once we commit, look out. These Republicans are pathetic in their chest-thumping triumphalism, premature declarations of victory, and jingoistic trash talking. Really, they should STFU already, considering this President is still trying to wind down THEIR WARS eight years later. John McCain, in particular, one of the few among these ratbastards with military experience and a war record, is a pathetic caricature of his old self, and the very antithesis of the Republican warrior-politician so ably represented by the statesmanship of President Dwight Eisenhower.
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Quite the contrary, when the Lybian Spring uprising began and Khaddafi threatened his own people, President Obama took decisive action to stop it, and never looked back. The President made all the right moves despite outrageous Republican carping from the sidelines — forget the axiom that foreign policy criticism "stops at the water's edge" — with the unmitigated gall to complain that President Obama (a) should not have intervened, (b) acted too slowly, (c) led "from behind" allowing the French and British to take the point, (d) and yet the much-maligned French (remember "Freedom Fries"?) and British deserved all the credit once the dictator was killed while the President got nothing but grief.
Professor Cornell West said that if this President walked on water the Republicans would say he couldn't swim. And Andrew Sullivan said that if Mr. Obama were a Republican he'd be on Mount Rushmore. It's mindbending that these ratbastard Republicans are bitching about, frankly, a presidential strategy so flawless as to deserve the brilliant adjective, concluded in a matter of months at relatively little cost, no boots on the ground, and no U.S. casualties. They were consistently wrong, as we can see from their stupid carping dating back to the beginning of this collective NATO action.
One thing about Democrats: We're not big on hawking wars, we don't like them, and our instinct is to get in there, do what we need to do, and get out. But once we commit, look out. These Republicans are pathetic in their chest-thumping triumphalism, premature declarations of victory, and jingoistic trash talking. Really, they should STFU already, considering this President is still trying to wind down THEIR WARS eight years later. John McCain, in particular, one of the few among these ratbastards with military experience and a war record, is a pathetic caricature of his old self, and the very antithesis of the Republican warrior-politician so ably represented by the statesmanship of President Dwight Eisenhower.
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Khaddafi's Bloody Death: A Drone Strike?
There are troubling questions about the role of the U.S. military in the death of Libyan dictator Moammar Khaddafi. The video we've seen of a bloodied but still alive Khaddafi being manhandled by the rebels onto the hood of a jeep, shortly before his death ostensibly en route to a hospital, happened after his convoy was hit by a U.S. drone as the convoy attempted to escape the town of Sirte where Khaddafi was holed up. Preliminary reports are that the drone disabled several vehicles and a wounded Khaddafi crawled into a ditch where he was later found by the rebels. This lays bare the claim by the U.S. that it does not target foreign leaders. It bolsters the President's bona fides as a macho foreign policy leader who, unlike his predecessor Bush-Cheney, has selectively targeted America's enemies. However, the just outcome for post-Nuremberg international law would be the capture and trial of Khaddafi. One wonders also how much Hillary's drop-by visit to Libya just a day or so ago, in which she stated bluntly the hope Khaddafi would be "captured or killed" was not somehow anticipated and staged. (Caution: This is graphic video uploaded from Al Jazeera that was shown on news networks such as MSNBC and CNN.)
One thing's for sure: The outlines of the Obama Doctrine — this blog was among the first, if not the first, to pen it right after the U.S. action in Libya — have become clearer today: Don't mess with America because we've got a badass President who will track you down and get you. This President has flexed American muscle more adroitly than any U.S. president since World War II, the last just war we won, and FDR-Truman. That's pretty good company. But it's also a dangerous course fraught with peril. Good thing Mr. Obama is not only brilliant, but restrained and forceful, a complete turnabout from the strike-first-ask-questions-later "cowboy foreign policy" of Bush-Cheney.
One thing's for sure: The outlines of the Obama Doctrine — this blog was among the first, if not the first, to pen it right after the U.S. action in Libya — have become clearer today: Don't mess with America because we've got a badass President who will track you down and get you. This President has flexed American muscle more adroitly than any U.S. president since World War II, the last just war we won, and FDR-Truman. That's pretty good company. But it's also a dangerous course fraught with peril. Good thing Mr. Obama is not only brilliant, but restrained and forceful, a complete turnabout from the strike-first-ask-questions-later "cowboy foreign policy" of Bush-Cheney.
58 Second Flat (Read Fast) Post-GOP Debate Analysis: A Parade Of Imbeciles
I remain just one thing, and one thing only, and that is a clown. It places me on a far higher plane than any politician. ~ Charlie Chaplin
Indeed, to call this current field of GOP presidential candidates a sorry bunch of humorless clowns and leave it at that would be an insult to Chaplin and his noble profession. With that in mind, here are some of the STUPIDEST things any politician running for president on a major party label has ever said:
It wasn't even Herman Cain's "apples and oranges" to describe his ridiculous "9-9-9" tax overhaul hatched by a small town accountant that would hammer the poor, kill the American auto industry turning U.S. dealerships into used car lots since the tax would apply only to "new" not "used goods," and likely turn eBay into the world's largest supermarket. Nor was it the tired old Republican "wholly owned subsidiary" of Big Oil mantra pushed by their corporate lackey Rick Perry that we can drill, blast and extract our way to energy independence, if only the EPA and its pesky clean air, clean water, clean rivers, clean environment regulations would simply disappear.
Here's Teh STOOPID, a sampling of the "awesomeness" of Ron Paul as Rachel put it in a moment of total mind-melt — Ron Paul who said abortion was the "ultimate government tyranny" and equated Social Security to "slavery" was, curiously, the one who sometimes made sense ... Hello, anybody home?:
Ron Paul: (On "really not" keeping kids on their parents' health insurance until age 26.) "There’s been a lot of discussion about medicine, but it seems to be talking about which kind of government management is best. Our problem is we have too much. We’ve had it for 30, 40 years. We have Medicare. We have prescription drug programs. We have Medicaid." Yes ... and your point is?
Paul: "But if you want better competition and better health care, you should allow the American people to opt out of government medicine" and "the way to do this is to not de-emphasize the medical savings account, but let people opt out, pay their bills, get back to the doctor-patient relationship."
Paul: "But if you want better competition and better health care, you should allow the American people to opt out of government medicine" and "the way to do this is to not de-emphasize the medical savings account, but let people opt out, pay their bills, get back to the doctor-patient relationship."
Setting aside the fact that there is no "government medicine" (it's a private for-profit insurance system) except for the VA and modern MASH units performing miracles on the field saving the lives and limbs of our warriors ... would that we, civilians, were so lucky as to have that awesome "government medicine" at our disposal. No, we have to deal with the private insurance system, if we have any insurance at all. I suppose this libertarian twit wants us to pay for open-heart surgery or chemotherapy with chickens, too? But Paul's unnatural appeal to progressives comes from statements like these which, to quote Rachel, sound real good "in the abstract":
Paul: "Well, I think we’re on economic suicide if we’re not even willing to look at some of these overseas expenditures, 150 bases — 900 bases, 150 different countries. We have enough weapons to blow up the world about 20-25 times. We have more weapons than all the other countries put together essentially. And we want to spend more and more, and you can’t cut a penny? I mean, this is why we’re at an impasse. I want to hear somebody up here willing to cut something. Something real."
And here, Paulie attacks their deity Ronald Reagan which, admittedly, is probably the high point of his weird career, setting the morons in his midst straight; he'd had just about enough of the idiot Herman Cain saying first, that he'd negotiate for hostages, and the next day:
Cain (stupefyingly moronic): "No, I — I said that I believe in the philosophy of we don’t negotiate with terrorists. I think — I didn’t say — I would never agree to letting hostages in Guantanamo Bay go. No, that wasn’t — that wasn’t the intent at all."
Gingrich (piously): "Just very straightforward. Callista and I did a film on Ronald Reagan. [KA-CHING, KA-CHING ... get your credit cards out, Teabaggers] There’s a very painful moment in the film when he looks in the camera and says, 'I didn’t think we did this. I’m against doing it. I went back and looked. The truth is, we did. It was an enormous mistake.'"
Paul: "Oh, yes. As a matter of fact, I don’t want to make a statement. I want to ask a question. Are you all willing to condemn Ronald Reagan for exchanging weapons for hostages out of Iran? We all know that was done."
Santorum: "That’s not — Iran was a sovereign country. It was not a terrorist organization, number one."
Paul (sarcastically): "Oh, they were our good friends back then, huh?"
Santorum (blabbering): "They’re not our good friends. They’re — they’re — they’re a sovereign country, just like the — the Palestinian Authority is not the good friends of Israel."
Paul: "He [Ronald Reagan] negotiated for hostages."
Thumbs up, Paulie. But then he reverted back to the same-old same-old libertarian mantra: cut aid to Egypt and Israel because in Egypt the Arab Spring produced a "more hostile regime." That's just not so. In fact, the Arab Spring validates the foreign aid we have been giving Egypt through the decades as a moderating force with a pro-American population in a region that is otherwise fiercely hostile to Israel (and therefore America) and is a tinderbox for conflagration. For Paul to say foreign aid makes Israel "dependent" on us is actually the point, isn't it, if we want to exert any influence on Israel to reach a peace agreement with its neighbors.
Since aid to Israel is overwhelmingly military it has little to do with Israel getting its "sovereignty back" as a function of its "dependent" economy (?) — the same old Paulist libertarian refrain. It has everything to do with Israel's capacity to protect and preserve its sovereignty through military security, which is where the preponderance of U.S. aid to Israel goes. Not all foreign aid is worthy of praise but neither is it a handout — it is an instrument of U.S. foreign policy; its purpose is to protect the U.S. national interest in benign and positive ways, through peace not war. At its best (rebuilding Europe and Japan, keeping the peace between Israel and its neighbors, extending the hand of friendship through the Peace Corps, and paying to denuclearize huge nuclear arsenals in the former Soviet republics to keep them from falling into terrorist hands), U.S. foreign aid packs a tremendous punch and return on a very modest investment to peacefully secure our national interest worldwide.
Ron Paul is a Republican gadfly in the good sense of the word, and the highest expression — or at least, the most self-evident one — of the inherent silliness of so-called "libertarianism." The other candidates on that stage are know-nothing morons, neo-fascists, and religious zealots. So maybe Rachel's mind-melt exuberance for Paul is because he tends to humanize them, somewhat ... He's that silver lining she's always looking for among these demonic Republicans.
The strain of xenophobic isolation running through the Republican Party today is not very different from its isolationism during World War II when the wingnut elements of Republicanism actually admired Hitler and Mussolini. Others, like Paul, believed in the fortress America idea of retreat from the world. In this fantasy world, U.S. isolation doesn't lead to Nirvana. There are lots of bad actors ready to step into the void.
Okay, Rachel: time to come down to earth from your Glenn Beck/Ron Paul fandom planet.
There were too many stupid, ignorant statements to count in this debate. Its high ratings may cut both ways. Although to some of us these people expose themselves for the utter morons and imbeciles they are, faith the viewing public stuck as it is on "reality TV" — a definite oxymoron here — will see it that way too is a leap we should not take, considering that on the other side of the podium the Idiot Punditocracy sits poised to analyze these words of GOP "wisdom."
Some, at least, had enough self-respect not to say anything nice about this spectacle. Herman Cain, from start to finish, was a parade of utter stupidity. And Michele Bachmann is certifiably insane. Appealing to the inbred xenophobia of their lunatic fringe audience/voters, the candidates made much about cutting "foreign aid" which constitutes less than 1% of the U.S. budget, conflating it with the trillion spent on the unnecessary Republican Bush-Cheney war in Iraq and our deepening quagmire in Afghanistan. This statement from Bachmann, in particular, which no one seemed to notice, stood out big-time for me:
Bachmann: "Cutting back on foreign aid is one thing. Being reimbursed by nations that we have liberated is another. We should look to Iraq and Libya to reimburse us for part of what we have done to liberate these nations."
Madam President Bachmann: Please to tell, who in your fantasy administration will be drawing the short straw as unfortunate U.S. envoy that delivers to the Iraqui and Libyan governments a bill to "to reimburse us for part of what we have done to liberate these nations"? Hmm ... Let's see now: We invade a country (Iraq) which had nothing to do with 9-11, and was actually a buffer against Iranian expansionism in the region, depose their brutal dictator (who had nothing to do with 9-11 and had no ties to Islamic fundamentalism) at a cost to the Iraquis of, conservatively, 150,000 innocent dead civilians, many of them killed by our own WMD as so much "collateral damage," and many more than Saddam ever killed at the height of his brutality. And to Lybia, maybe we demand a discount on the oil the transnational corporations have been exploiting for decades?
Yeah, I can see them taking it really well. Especially the Iraquis. Do human beings have a price when they're not Americans? Because our debt may start adding up exponentially. Perhaps the Iraquis will politely double and triple down on Bachmann's bill. That is, if they don't get kind of mad and behave, well, like the Spartans:
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Wingnut Dance of The Devils
To David Byrne and Brian Eno's Mea Culpa:
QUESTION: What do wingnut bigots have in common when caught "joking" about killing Latinos with electrified border fences or analogizing our President to Hitler?
ANSWER: They call it a "joke;" bigotry is just another "joke" in Rightwingville — this is true, these people are really, REALLY SICK and the bigotry they express privately EVERY DAY sometimes comes out in public. This is the way these people roll. Their version of an apology has the qualifier "IF" because they honestly cannot imagine how anyone wouldn't find this oh, just ROTFLMAO!
QUESTION: What do wingnut bigots have in common when caught "joking" about killing Latinos with electrified border fences or analogizing our President to Hitler?
ANSWER: They call it a "joke;" bigotry is just another "joke" in Rightwingville — this is true, these people are really, REALLY SICK and the bigotry they express privately EVERY DAY sometimes comes out in public. This is the way these people roll. Their version of an apology has the qualifier "IF" because they honestly cannot imagine how anyone wouldn't find this oh, just ROTFLMAO!
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"MEA CULPA, MEA CULPA, MEA CULPA," say the SICKOS ... "IF I OFFENDED ANYONE ..."
OCCUPY WALL STREET WATCH: Chris Matthews, Quotable ... Naturally
“It’s amazing to see. It’s almost like you’re hearing L’Internationale — not to disparage this effort.”
~ Our good friend, MSNBC's Chris Matthews, host of Hardball.
You didn’t disparage it at all, Chris. And since you asked for it, here it is in that wonderful scene from REDS, Warren Beatty's masterpiece chronicling the life of John Reed, American revolutionary communist, journalist, writer of Ten Days that Shook the World, about the Russian Revolution. Diane Keaton plays his lover, socialite Louise Bryant, who leaves her Wall Street life behind to join Reed's own version of Occupy Wall Street in Greenwich Village, ever the home of liberals, progressives, revolutionists, and artists. How many John Reeds and Louise Bryants do you suppose are encamped in Liberty Park, and throughout this great land where the OWS demonstrations have sprouted? John Reed LIVES!
Monday, October 17, 2011
Herman Cain: Lone Speed Wins — Cheap Speed Stops
In horse racing, it's axiomatic that "lone speed," the frontrunning horse with an uncontested lead, is always a dangerous threat to "steal" the race on the front end over its better regarded competitors. It remains one of the best bets in racing. All the same, astute handicappers assessing the relative strengths and weaknesses of the field can easily spot cheap speed versus the real thing. Just scan the past performances and you'll notice faint-hearted frontrunners who wilt, give way, or stop no sooner are they challenged by a determined competitor galloping down the lane.
Before the big race, media "analysts" of the Idiot Punditocracy pontificate about the outcome and review the various race scenarios: There's the "pace scenario" in which the impact of "early" and "late" speed is assessed to determine a "race shape." There's the "class of the field" scenario, determined by lifetime earnings divided by wins. For example, the winners of mayoralty races in hick towns or the CEOs of pizza chains are classified as low to mid-level claimers compared to stakes competitors who win governorships — NY, TX, CA, IL, MA are Grade I stakes; FLA Grade II; Utah and Alaska, ungraded stakes; senators from OH, IL, NY, TX, CA, MA are Grade I contenders; PA, NJ, MI, CO, WI Grade II; smaller state candidates, Grade III or ungraded stakes (Georgia, Oklahoma and Wyoming, for instance); and finally, all members of Congress regardless of state of origin belong in ungraded stakes at best, or Allowance company.
Idiot Pundits and the confused Republican betting public have reached an early consensus, that this is an exceptionally weak field for the Grade I GOP Presidential Stakes. They all agree that there are more pretenders than contenders. The Prentenders, with no chance of winning the race, are: Michele "LA FILLY LOCA" Bachmann; gimpy, overweight Newt "EL VIEJO RAZA BLANCA" Gingrich; Jon "EL CABALLO INVISIBLE" Huntsman; and Ron "STRAW-POLL-MAN" Paul. But the "contenders" are weak and suspect as well. Willard Mitt Romney has the weakest possible Grade I credentials; plenty of in-the-money finishes at the level with only one Grade I win in Massachusetts. When he challenged one of the greatest thoroughbreds of our time, Ted "LION OF THE SENATE" Kennedy, in a Grade I showdown, Willard faded badly in deep stretch. You might even say he collapsed like an outclassed "non-winners of one" Allowance horse. Ted won like the legitimate 1/9 favorite he was.
So Willard occupies that murky contender/pretender zone that represents one of the most profitable angles in horse racing: The "false favorite." The false favorite is the racehorse that becomes the favorite of his field not on the strength of his own merits but based on the demerits of his competitors. The betting GOP public rarely bets Willard with confidence. Instead, they assess the strengths and weaknesses of the field and land on Willard by a process of elimination. Astute handicappers will then "TOSS OUT" Willard in search of the surprise winner of the GOP Presidential stakes, usually an "outsider" with "hidden class" who takes a BIG step-up in class and rewards his or her supporters by finishing first at the wire at generous odds.
You see, the oddsmakers are the Idiot Punditocracy, and as anyone who reads this blog will know, they are the WORST linemakers in the business. But here's the thing about false favorites. Just because they are so branded doesn't necessarily mean they're destined to lose. In fact, they win more than their share of races, backed by a jittery group of institutional "chalk players" — unimaginative favorite "investors" and heavy favorite "bridge jumpers" who sweat bullets as their shaky false favorite staggers home barely a nose ahead of some dark horse longshot, at the line. That is, until the false favorite loses. Because the easiest way to defeat the false favorite is to run him or her at a higher class level.
In horse racing, it is also axiomatic that Grade I horses beat Grade II horses and Grade II horses beat Grade III horses. Eventually class will out. So while a false favorite like Willard may have his way with this weak GOP field in early prep races leading up to the Big Show, the Great Presidential Derby run every four years, his suspect class will be tested by the best of the best once he gets there. And false favorites do not fare well in such an environment. No matter how good their trainers and connections are. (Although trainers and handlers sometimes perform minor miracles with fledgling horsepower if they're significantly more competent than their counterparts. Bad trainers don't win races, but they can keep a great thoroughbred from achieving its full potential.)
Willard's backers know all this, and they're not happy. They've made a pragmatic choice to back Willard as a Grade I horse with a steady but unspectacular record, who trains well in the mornings (A "morning glory" that follows eye-popping AM workouts with dull PM races?) and is eating his oats. They want to win. They want to cash in on their investment. And If they get off Willard now for some chimera that proves to be a flash in the pan, they may be shut out. But after all is said and done, the race still has to be run and it's up to Willard to cross the finish line first. Which is where it got "fascinating" for the Idiot Punditocracy, whose quest for the anti-Willard became the obsessive need to redeem their faux favorite analysis. Not one of them saw Herman "THE $9.99 PIZZAMAN" Cain coming.
Casting about for someone who could "beat" Willard, they landed on Texas Governor Rick "CRAWLED OUTTA MY RACIST ROCK" Perry. He was the "main rival" on paper, the "dangerous" counterpart to the "morning line favorite" with promising credentials: Never lost a race, moved up the class ladder easily stomping all who opposed him. Okay, so he won only state-restricted stakes races ... but still. When Perry entered the race, he instantly became the phenomenon known in horseracing as the "overhyped horse." The Idiot Punditocracy embraced Rick "THE RACIST ROCK" Perry as the "hot horse" and immediately made him the odds-on favorite. Those who knew this horse best were skeptical, but their voices were drowned out by the hype. The anxious GOP betting public fell in line, in its growing anxiety to find the anti-Willard.
The Perry "hot horse" hype was soon hoisted on its own petard. You see, there's no such thing as reliable "inside information" that could possibly substantiate the hype. As the GOP rumor mill ground out the Perry "super horse" fantasy, the public was quickly disabused of its grand notions once the race started. Contenders and pretenders lined up before the race. Gingrich tottered; Bachmann snorted; Paul cavorted; Huntsman doddered — the pretenders, true to form. Willard the veteran was well behaved and "professional."
But when Perry moved up to the line his backers were shocked. He looked washy and nervous, he fought his bit and refused to enter his stall until pushed in. Once inside, Perry swooned catatonically. When the race started he cleared his slower rivals as Gingrich flopped, Huntsman crawled, and LA FILLY LOCA bolted — backwards. But then Perry the "hot horse" stumbled out of the gate and began running rank and erratically down the backstretch.
OH MY.
Meanwhile, Willard the tepid favorite broke cleanly, settled in near the rail, and saved ground. A typical though unspectacular start for the veteran campaigner whose backers were still sweating profusely despite the fact their horse was meeting the weakest field so far in his career. The Beltway Boys, Chris, Chuckles, NostraLawrence, et al enjoyed themselves immensely handicapping the race, but this was no fun at all for the "inside money" backing Willard. "Please don't flatten out, please no seconditis, please, please, please" ... they prayed.
Amid the fog of racing, no one paid much mind to the streaky PIZZAMAN breaking from the outside post with lots of high-carb EXTRA CHEESE early speed. Suddenly PIZZAMAN jumped out front in the solo lead. Uh-Oh. This was not the pace scenario anticipated by the Idiot Punditocracy. They had been hawking the Perry "hot horse" allure, and had dismissed Willard as a "plodder," steady but unexciting. Their "analysis" had visualized a suicidal speed duel for the early lead between LA FILLY LOCA, PIZZAMAN, and RACIST ROCK Perry jockeying for position, eventually burning themselves out having "softened up" the strongest "base speed," deemed to be RACIST ROCK Perry, for Willard sitting a perfect trip just off the hot pace to pick up the pieces around the turn. Another scenario had the RACIST ROCK breaking strongly, taking the lead with a burst of speed, and settling in as Willard chased him all the way without gaining ground. "Philly" Chris Matthews favored the latter scenario, arguing that "conditions" favored RACIST ROCK's crazy LUNATIC FRINGE running style.
No one had seen the dangerous LONE SPEED horse PIZZAMAN coming as he cleared all rivals in 9-9-9 tick increments. "HA!" Yelled Chris, apropos of nothing. Chuckles feverishly consulted his charts — had he missed something? His unique "inside access" clients would be furious with this new twist. No one had paid much mind to the railbird TEA PARTY two-dollar bettors who had quietly poured money on PIZZAMAN's nose, making him the post-time favorite when all bets were closed. NostraLawrence sat back with a wily grin, looking to all the world as if he'd known the race would develop this way all along. He unsheathed his iPhone and said, "get me REWRITE."
Chris: "Is PIZZAMAN for real?" Chuckles spread his palms and hunched his shoulders noncommittally. NostraLawrence declared confidently: "Cheap speed. He'll throw in the towel down the lane. Never makes the distance."
Chris: "HA!?!"
Before the big race, media "analysts" of the Idiot Punditocracy pontificate about the outcome and review the various race scenarios: There's the "pace scenario" in which the impact of "early" and "late" speed is assessed to determine a "race shape." There's the "class of the field" scenario, determined by lifetime earnings divided by wins. For example, the winners of mayoralty races in hick towns or the CEOs of pizza chains are classified as low to mid-level claimers compared to stakes competitors who win governorships — NY, TX, CA, IL, MA are Grade I stakes; FLA Grade II; Utah and Alaska, ungraded stakes; senators from OH, IL, NY, TX, CA, MA are Grade I contenders; PA, NJ, MI, CO, WI Grade II; smaller state candidates, Grade III or ungraded stakes (Georgia, Oklahoma and Wyoming, for instance); and finally, all members of Congress regardless of state of origin belong in ungraded stakes at best, or Allowance company.
Idiot Pundits and the confused Republican betting public have reached an early consensus, that this is an exceptionally weak field for the Grade I GOP Presidential Stakes. They all agree that there are more pretenders than contenders. The Prentenders, with no chance of winning the race, are: Michele "LA FILLY LOCA" Bachmann; gimpy, overweight Newt "EL VIEJO RAZA BLANCA" Gingrich; Jon "EL CABALLO INVISIBLE" Huntsman; and Ron "STRAW-POLL-MAN" Paul. But the "contenders" are weak and suspect as well. Willard Mitt Romney has the weakest possible Grade I credentials; plenty of in-the-money finishes at the level with only one Grade I win in Massachusetts. When he challenged one of the greatest thoroughbreds of our time, Ted "LION OF THE SENATE" Kennedy, in a Grade I showdown, Willard faded badly in deep stretch. You might even say he collapsed like an outclassed "non-winners of one" Allowance horse. Ted won like the legitimate 1/9 favorite he was.
 |
You see, the oddsmakers are the Idiot Punditocracy, and as anyone who reads this blog will know, they are the WORST linemakers in the business. But here's the thing about false favorites. Just because they are so branded doesn't necessarily mean they're destined to lose. In fact, they win more than their share of races, backed by a jittery group of institutional "chalk players" — unimaginative favorite "investors" and heavy favorite "bridge jumpers" who sweat bullets as their shaky false favorite staggers home barely a nose ahead of some dark horse longshot, at the line. That is, until the false favorite loses. Because the easiest way to defeat the false favorite is to run him or her at a higher class level.
In horse racing, it is also axiomatic that Grade I horses beat Grade II horses and Grade II horses beat Grade III horses. Eventually class will out. So while a false favorite like Willard may have his way with this weak GOP field in early prep races leading up to the Big Show, the Great Presidential Derby run every four years, his suspect class will be tested by the best of the best once he gets there. And false favorites do not fare well in such an environment. No matter how good their trainers and connections are. (Although trainers and handlers sometimes perform minor miracles with fledgling horsepower if they're significantly more competent than their counterparts. Bad trainers don't win races, but they can keep a great thoroughbred from achieving its full potential.)
Willard's backers know all this, and they're not happy. They've made a pragmatic choice to back Willard as a Grade I horse with a steady but unspectacular record, who trains well in the mornings (A "morning glory" that follows eye-popping AM workouts with dull PM races?) and is eating his oats. They want to win. They want to cash in on their investment. And If they get off Willard now for some chimera that proves to be a flash in the pan, they may be shut out. But after all is said and done, the race still has to be run and it's up to Willard to cross the finish line first. Which is where it got "fascinating" for the Idiot Punditocracy, whose quest for the anti-Willard became the obsessive need to redeem their faux favorite analysis. Not one of them saw Herman "THE $9.99 PIZZAMAN" Cain coming.
Casting about for someone who could "beat" Willard, they landed on Texas Governor Rick "CRAWLED OUTTA MY RACIST ROCK" Perry. He was the "main rival" on paper, the "dangerous" counterpart to the "morning line favorite" with promising credentials: Never lost a race, moved up the class ladder easily stomping all who opposed him. Okay, so he won only state-restricted stakes races ... but still. When Perry entered the race, he instantly became the phenomenon known in horseracing as the "overhyped horse." The Idiot Punditocracy embraced Rick "THE RACIST ROCK" Perry as the "hot horse" and immediately made him the odds-on favorite. Those who knew this horse best were skeptical, but their voices were drowned out by the hype. The anxious GOP betting public fell in line, in its growing anxiety to find the anti-Willard.
The Perry "hot horse" hype was soon hoisted on its own petard. You see, there's no such thing as reliable "inside information" that could possibly substantiate the hype. As the GOP rumor mill ground out the Perry "super horse" fantasy, the public was quickly disabused of its grand notions once the race started. Contenders and pretenders lined up before the race. Gingrich tottered; Bachmann snorted; Paul cavorted; Huntsman doddered — the pretenders, true to form. Willard the veteran was well behaved and "professional."
But when Perry moved up to the line his backers were shocked. He looked washy and nervous, he fought his bit and refused to enter his stall until pushed in. Once inside, Perry swooned catatonically. When the race started he cleared his slower rivals as Gingrich flopped, Huntsman crawled, and LA FILLY LOCA bolted — backwards. But then Perry the "hot horse" stumbled out of the gate and began running rank and erratically down the backstretch.
OH MY.
Meanwhile, Willard the tepid favorite broke cleanly, settled in near the rail, and saved ground. A typical though unspectacular start for the veteran campaigner whose backers were still sweating profusely despite the fact their horse was meeting the weakest field so far in his career. The Beltway Boys, Chris, Chuckles, NostraLawrence, et al enjoyed themselves immensely handicapping the race, but this was no fun at all for the "inside money" backing Willard. "Please don't flatten out, please no seconditis, please, please, please" ... they prayed.
Amid the fog of racing, no one paid much mind to the streaky PIZZAMAN breaking from the outside post with lots of high-carb EXTRA CHEESE early speed. Suddenly PIZZAMAN jumped out front in the solo lead. Uh-Oh. This was not the pace scenario anticipated by the Idiot Punditocracy. They had been hawking the Perry "hot horse" allure, and had dismissed Willard as a "plodder," steady but unexciting. Their "analysis" had visualized a suicidal speed duel for the early lead between LA FILLY LOCA, PIZZAMAN, and RACIST ROCK Perry jockeying for position, eventually burning themselves out having "softened up" the strongest "base speed," deemed to be RACIST ROCK Perry, for Willard sitting a perfect trip just off the hot pace to pick up the pieces around the turn. Another scenario had the RACIST ROCK breaking strongly, taking the lead with a burst of speed, and settling in as Willard chased him all the way without gaining ground. "Philly" Chris Matthews favored the latter scenario, arguing that "conditions" favored RACIST ROCK's crazy LUNATIC FRINGE running style.
No one had seen the dangerous LONE SPEED horse PIZZAMAN coming as he cleared all rivals in 9-9-9 tick increments. "HA!" Yelled Chris, apropos of nothing. Chuckles feverishly consulted his charts — had he missed something? His unique "inside access" clients would be furious with this new twist. No one had paid much mind to the railbird TEA PARTY two-dollar bettors who had quietly poured money on PIZZAMAN's nose, making him the post-time favorite when all bets were closed. NostraLawrence sat back with a wily grin, looking to all the world as if he'd known the race would develop this way all along. He unsheathed his iPhone and said, "get me REWRITE."
Chris: "Is PIZZAMAN for real?" Chuckles spread his palms and hunched his shoulders noncommittally. NostraLawrence declared confidently: "Cheap speed. He'll throw in the towel down the lane. Never makes the distance."
Chris: "HA!?!"
Friday, October 14, 2011
Republicans HATE Women AND The Post Office: What Can Be MORE UnAmerican?
The outrages keep piling up, don't they. When we can't distinguish Rachel's reporting of the latest Republican outrage from the Cialis commercial, you know, the part where the horny couple smilingly tells us all the ways the little blue (?) pill KILLS dudes who can't get it up, then it's time for Uncle Mike's "have I said yet this hour how much I HATE these Republicans?" to kick in — for us to maintain our sanity. Here's Rachel cheerily reporting how ante-dilluvian Republicans want to remove fluoridation from our water supply, restrict our most sacred franchise, the right to vote, and effectively KILL women by denying them life-saving health services. This Republican HATRED for women, this open-ended misogyny, is virtually ignored or written off as a mild symbolic act of Republicans just being Republicans (hahaha) and it's no biggie because the Senate will never pass it. Andrea Mitchell, WHERE'S YOUR OUTRAGE?! The Beltway Media is so beneath contempt, it's effectively under the radar.
As if that weren't enough, the Republican Party inserted a poison pill back in 2006, in the Lame Duck session of Congress, before Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats took over, to KILL the U.S. Postal Service, privatizing it to swell the for-profit coffers of FedEx and UPS. And for you Constitution-loving Teabaggers, the Post Office is enshrined in and predates the Constitution, and Founding Father Ben Franklin was its first Postmaster-General. More to the point, the heavily Republican "Dogpatch" Tea Party rural enclaves, where Democrats are called "socialist" devils, prepare to be ROYALLY SCREWED by the Republicans, not only with higher costs (how many of you can afford UPS or FedEx?) but with the salient fact that, while the Post Office, which doesn't take a nickel from the taxpayers, is required by statute to service the smallest of backwaters, FULLY A QUARTER — 25% — OF RIGHTWINGVILLE IS NOT SERVICED BY FEDEX AND UPS.
FUCKING MORONS. SEE HOW MUCH YOU LOVE YOUR TEABAG ANTI-GOVERNMENT EXTREMISTS IN CONGRESS WHEN YOUR POST OFFICE IS CLOSED AND 120,000 POSTAL WORKERS ARE THROWN OUT OF A JOB, AND YOU HAVE TO DRIVE 90 MILES FOR POSTAL SERVICE AT A HIGHER COST!
As if that weren't enough, the Republican Party inserted a poison pill back in 2006, in the Lame Duck session of Congress, before Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats took over, to KILL the U.S. Postal Service, privatizing it to swell the for-profit coffers of FedEx and UPS. And for you Constitution-loving Teabaggers, the Post Office is enshrined in and predates the Constitution, and Founding Father Ben Franklin was its first Postmaster-General. More to the point, the heavily Republican "Dogpatch" Tea Party rural enclaves, where Democrats are called "socialist" devils, prepare to be ROYALLY SCREWED by the Republicans, not only with higher costs (how many of you can afford UPS or FedEx?) but with the salient fact that, while the Post Office, which doesn't take a nickel from the taxpayers, is required by statute to service the smallest of backwaters, FULLY A QUARTER — 25% — OF RIGHTWINGVILLE IS NOT SERVICED BY FEDEX AND UPS.
FUCKING MORONS. SEE HOW MUCH YOU LOVE YOUR TEABAG ANTI-GOVERNMENT EXTREMISTS IN CONGRESS WHEN YOUR POST OFFICE IS CLOSED AND 120,000 POSTAL WORKERS ARE THROWN OUT OF A JOB, AND YOU HAVE TO DRIVE 90 MILES FOR POSTAL SERVICE AT A HIGHER COST!
Senior Statesman of The Protest Movements Decodes OWS
Keith Olbermann who has been on the vanguard of the Occupy Wall Street media coverage, not coincidentally the political story of the year (although you wouldn't know it watching the bloviators of the Idiot Punditocracy), elicited the wisdom and cutting edge analysis of the iconic Tom Hayden, one of the leading figures of the protest movement — writ large — of the Sixties. Indeed, one Tom Hayden segment is worth a thousand overwrought sputterings of the Beltway Media. Consider the various scenarios laid out by Hayden — in particular the suggestion that if 10 or 20 thousand protesters were arrested in a peaceful civil disobedience action, they could effectively grind the system to a halt simply by demanding individual jury trials of their peers. (Do you suppose Mayor Bloomberg was listening in when he backed down from a park eviction confrontation this morning?) Or the advice he has for President Obama, which seems to have eluded the White House politicos: End the wars — one trillion saved; end the Bush tax cuts — another trillion; a "special adviser" on Wall Street is good — how about a special prosecutor; and "laying down the gauntlet" which is another way of demanding from this President bold, decisive action on the domestic front, his carpe diem moment of which Ron Suskind (as I was saying, not having read the book) noted on Rachel, there are intimations, as yet unfettered.
The President and the Democrats need to step up to the plate. The people demand it. Comically, OWS has the Idiot Punditocracy and many Democratic politicians in knots because they don't have a neat little list of demands. Take a look around, imbeciles. What do you see? A ravaged middle class, bailed-out criminals on Wall Street giving themselves extravagant bonuses with our money and using it to purchase Congress while throwing millions from their homes and trampling on the "American Dream" for the rest of us. What's the PREGNANT question hovering above the OWS movement? Here's a hint, MORONS: "Where's the accountability, where's the justice?" And for the President to say in his presser, a question that went largely unreported by the Idiot Punditocracy, that "no laws were broken" just isn't good enough. We're still waiting on Eric Holder to show the same dedication he has chasing down terrorist plots from Iran to chase down the criminals on Wall Street. And don't give us insider trading convictions; that's tinkering around the edges. Don't ask us to applaud the SEC for once doing its fucking job! We're still waiting on our government to start taking concrete actions on behalf of the American people to right the wrongs that engendered the OWS movement. Otherwise the Ayatollah's claim, that the alleged Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in a D.C. restaurant is a ruse to divert attention from OWS, might even gain traction.
The President and the Democrats need to step up to the plate. The people demand it. Comically, OWS has the Idiot Punditocracy and many Democratic politicians in knots because they don't have a neat little list of demands. Take a look around, imbeciles. What do you see? A ravaged middle class, bailed-out criminals on Wall Street giving themselves extravagant bonuses with our money and using it to purchase Congress while throwing millions from their homes and trampling on the "American Dream" for the rest of us. What's the PREGNANT question hovering above the OWS movement? Here's a hint, MORONS: "Where's the accountability, where's the justice?" And for the President to say in his presser, a question that went largely unreported by the Idiot Punditocracy, that "no laws were broken" just isn't good enough. We're still waiting on Eric Holder to show the same dedication he has chasing down terrorist plots from Iran to chase down the criminals on Wall Street. And don't give us insider trading convictions; that's tinkering around the edges. Don't ask us to applaud the SEC for once doing its fucking job! We're still waiting on our government to start taking concrete actions on behalf of the American people to right the wrongs that engendered the OWS movement. Otherwise the Ayatollah's claim, that the alleged Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in a D.C. restaurant is a ruse to divert attention from OWS, might even gain traction.
Thursday, October 13, 2011
A Rational Person's Reaction As Rachel Reports One Pernicious Republican Outrage After Another
3 - 2 - 1 — GO MIKE!
[Insert latest Republican outrage here.]
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