Nien Nien Nien to Herman Cain!

Since Jack Krier’s favorite empty headed right wing tart, Sarah Palin, announced that she wasn’t running for president, he’s been in a bit of a scramble. To find a candidate that’s just as vacuous in their rhetoric, will allow him to get away with veiled racism, and ultimately, to never ever be able to land the nomination. He can continue to prattle on during Obama’s reelection about how this one person could’ve saved the world from Muslim based, Sharia Law-ed, socialism. Jack Krier’s pick: Herman Cain. Mr. Krier even takes inspiration from The American Spectator's Aaron Goldstein's Nine Reasons Why Republicans Ought to Nominate Herman Cain. It’s becoming increasingly clear that Mr. Krier may in fact not be writing much of anything these days, just pulling a Mad Libs style Dave Barry writing ethic. I’ve only been reading Mr. Krier for the past year, and I’m finding a LOT of e-mail forwards disguised as editorials or other articles being gussied up and pasted in his opinion section. But naturally I take great inspiration from Mr. Krier’s idiocy so I have retorts to these bullets points. The bullet points in bold are from The American Spectator article, then followed by me ramblings.

1. Herman Cain has no sense of entitlement. You need a lot of ego to think you can run for president. To think that you can be that guy for four years. Especially in this day and age when it’s pretty much available to the highest bidder and not the most qualified. Herman Cain wasn’t born in to privilege and seized moments throughout his life? That sounds like Obama, and wouldn’t’ you know that this was one of those things that made him NOT electable to Mr. Krier and his ilk.

2. Herman Cain worked for Burger King. Oh, like 89% of people who worked some form of restaurant job? Herman Cain was as a CEO (quick reminder before the other bullet points) “assigned to manage some of the least successful (read ghetto neighborhood) Burger King restaurants and turned them in to the most profitable”. Here again is this failed idea that a business and the federal government are so similar that they can be run the same way. Do you now how Herman Cain may have turned some of those Burger King’s around? By firing most of the staff, and only paying minimum wage, with little to no raises, no ability for promotion, and the eventual epic turn around of employees that do stay, you too can turn around a struggling business!

3. Herman Cain has never held elected office. The article foments that never holding elected office is a good thing, yet again the antithesis to the entire argument against Obama. “He doesn’t know how it works, so he will fail!” Yet, this whole “outsider” bent that every politician from the past few decades have used to get elected in to office, is here again! For some reason this sentence is thrown in there too: “…Cain thinks outside the box, as evidence by his success in the business world…” Again, this is written by someone who has to have no idea how business’s run themselves, and how this isn’t even applicable to running a government. Never mind the fact that the president in only in charge of one branch of government. The Executive branch does not make laws or pass budgets, much to the chagrin of the right-wing.

4. Herman Cain is a mathematician. As evidenced by his idiotic at best, cynical class warfare at worst, 9-9-9 tax plan. That in the plainest of terms would bring about revenue on the backs of the poor and old. If Herman Cain thinks this is going to win him over with the minority crowd his is mistaken. However, I don’t think Herman Cain is looking for the minority vote anyways. This also kind of similar to the “Obama is a constitutional lawyer/professor” argument that proffered the mistaken idea that Obama would not just be an extension of W.’s with policy and the like. Clearly, having degrees in the mathematics has little to do with executive economic competency.

5. Herman Cain was a CEO. It's vaguely mentioned in the Burger King bullet point, but not focused on which is why this bullet point is so odd. I get the feeling The American Spectator article was really stretching for 9 things worth noting about Herman Cain. These next few points are kind of one in the same. So "managing" Burger King’s and being a CEO of another company is different…how? Well on this level “he learned first-handed (sic), how the business worlds works. He knows that the federal government is a hindrance when it comes to private enterprise creating jobs…[he would] relax some of the stringent government rules that have tied the hand of business…” Because, as we all know, deregulation is the key to our past economic glory days!

6. Herman Cain is the adult in the room. Ahh, this new nugget of idiotic deliciousness. Since Herman Cain is black, he could take Obama to task without being called racist? This doesn’t make any sense and should probably be included in the next bullet point. But nope, it’s here. How does that make Herman Cain the adult in the room? Time and again this “so and so is the adult in the room” talking point got a lot of mileage during the deficit “crisis” over the summer. In an Obama/Cain debate, as prophesied in this article, Obama would take Herman Cain to task for not even being remotely realistic, and would break done his idiotic 9-9-9 plan for the class crushing bullshit it is. Herman Cain only has charisma to stand on, and while it would be a lively debate, of that there is no doubt, it would be a shallow pool of rhetoric for Herman Cain (See Palin/Biden vice presidential debate). Obama would have to be on his best behavior so the corporate media wouldn’t think he was patronizing Herman Cain and actually taking him seriously.

7. Liberal charges of racism would look really, really stupid. For decades, “the liberals” have been calling conservatives racist? No, how shocking! Maybe because Conservatives pander to these people and have been since Nixon? The article speculates this tired notion that if republican nominate another black person to a spotlight position that that culls the racism? Does anyone remember Michael Steele’s appointment as RNC Head right after Obama got elected? Yup, that sure didn’t look suspicious or anything, Or the fact that you can count on ONE hand the number of minorities representing the Republicans. But it’s about the person's character, not the color of their skin right (wink wink)? No, nominating a black man doesn’t mean you stopped being racist, just as voting a ½ black man president did not make America suddenly post racial and wipe away decades of history.

8. Character Content. Again, they should’ve maybe just wrote paragraphs instead of spreading a short sentence about Herman Cain to 9 bullet points. It reads like one on of those staid business profiles on a corporations website. Herman Cain is a man “who carries himself with a sense of humor, dignity, modesty, responsibility and gratitude towards his country,” Wow, this guy has it all! I don’t think I know anyone who does this on a daily basis. Do you fair reader? What I don’t get is the gratitude part. Gratitude for allowing him to become Herman Cain? To bilk clueless right-wingers out of money by pushing an catchy jingle in the guise of tax reform? Not to mention Koch/Americans for Prosperity financial backing. The last part of this bullet pint tickled me as well: “He doesn’t know everything, but he is a quick study.” Like most of this article, it doesn’t even scratch the surface on who Herman Cain is. This honestly does read like a repurposed “This is why you should elect Obama president” twisted around with Herman Cain for the right-wing crowd. Hell, I’d even go far as to say this covers a majority of people running for president at any one time. But the “he doesn’t know everything, but he is a quick study” is a bit unnerving because in a recent Bloomberg Magazine interview he prefaced with a piece of rhetoric with “I don’t have the facts to back this up,”. Is this something you want your president saying to you during a state of the union address “I don’t have the facts to back this up, but Iran is a dick and we must invade them.”? If you do, you’re probably a right-wing idiot.

9. 9-9-9. Finally! We got to 9! Let’s dovetail that in to this 9-9-9 plan that cannot stand up to real world application. The American Spectator article is correct that would represent the biggest change to our tax system. But it comes off the backs of the middle and lower class, it railroads the progressive nature of our tax code. It gets rid of the payroll taxes that fund Social Security and Medicare and dismisses that FICA is a federal tax! According to Bloomberg News it would‘ve generated $200 billion less in 2010 than the governments $2.2 trillion in collections for that year. The article supports 9-9-9 because it would be significant first step in reducing the size of government. Not fixing our debt “crisis”, doing anything to stem the tide of more wasteful spending, or even beginning to bring in more revenue to pay for the stuff we’ve already demarcated. No, this is plain and simply to shrink the government, right in line with the current right-wing ideology. It doesn’t have to make sense, or withstand a litmus test of feasibility, it just has to do what the great Grover Norquist wishes.

Hopefully, what with all these protests and movements, we might shake up the status quo around here. While I doubt it’s true reach, we can always be rest assured that the elites will continue acting as if nothing is going wrong. Your friendly neighborhood newspaper will go ahead and keep pushing that agenda because they need the readership. I often wonder if editors or publishers read half the shit they publish on a daily basis.

I say this because it’s become rather apparent that the days of “blank v. blank” are getting behind us. I can’t help but cringe when the old conservative v. liberal article whips around to kick a hot soupy pile of what used to be the dead horse. Tom Purcell becomes our focus today, he’s writing of Barry Manilow maybe not being a liberal democrat, you know because 120% of Hollywood is bleeding heart liberal.

It’s funny the straw men of each respective “side” if you want to get down to the nitty-gritty. The right-wing seems to think that Michael Moore represents all of Hollywood, and the left wing seems to think Darth Vader is real and pours tons of his galactic space bucks in to the TEA Party (who is also, as you know, racist). There’s evidence to the contrary readily available, but then, where would all these hack pundits go when trying to maintain the status quo?

Tom Purcell seems to be under the impression that conservatives are “logical and analytical about issues” and liberals “tend to react with their hearts and emotions” which is parlance for “liberals = pussies” in my opinion. I had to step back when reading this article, because I couldn’t believe that’s 2011 and people are STILL pulling this bullshit. It’s somehow not apparent to Mr. Purcell that our country has been pretty divided as of late, and it has nothing to do with conservative/liberal nonsense! America is experiencing real pain, and he wants to whip out ideas that were stale on delivery in 2004!

But then, I got to thinking, he’s only half right. The problem is he’s not distinguishing between big “C” conservative and little “c” conservative. If he did, this article would be more cogent. I can see a Conservative perhaps being analytical and logical, I mean they had William Buckley, who hated ignorance amongst the right wing, and feared that it would tear the conservative argument asunder had they been given root. Today’s Conservative powerhouses of thought are NOT logical and analytical, no matter how hard they try to prove otherwise. Ann Coulter and Charles Krauthammer can support these supposed definitions? I scoff at this notion! Both are peddlers in the hyperbole and flat out wrongitude! Ann Coulter is an expert at crafting the longest book titles known to man, over loading Lexus searches, and fucking Bill Maher. There’s nothing substantive to anything she says. It’s part of the reason the right wing gets so much shit from the left wing, it’s shrill non stop harping, with nothing to anchor it with. She’d be more compelling if 2% of what she said was marginally true. When her and Laura Ingham broke down Sarah Palin a few weeks back, they came across as mean girls finally unleashing the cat claws. It was pitch perfect! This doesn’t necessarily help my argument, but it boils down that just she alone has near vaporous grasp of anything analytical or logical.

Analytical and logical people, I think, are more adaptive than the conservative. Big “C” conservatives, if they’re worth their salt wouldn’t harp on the same bullet points day in and day out. Any length of time studying conservative outlets proves this lack of logical and analytical basis. The ONLY approach to fix the debt “crisis” is the same thing: cut, cut, cut! “Don’t look at it too long, your face will melt“-like dealings with anything difficult to grasp? If conservatives were logical and analytical they’d be able to parse their argument down so that the masses could understand, and maybe, join their side. But no, THEY deal in hearts and emotions. Like tugging on evangelicals with moral and social issues to buoy a vote. I cannot believe that yet again, and even in the state level, that conservatives yet again get voted en masse in to office proclaiming to fix joblessness and the economy, yet mostly pass laws regarding abortion clinics, voter fraud, and all those wedge issues that as of right now, need no more clarification or dealings. If anything more heavy handedness is going to cost more jobs. That was your mandate?

What of all these current republican mouthpieces flapping about in the media. Your Sarah Palin’s, Herman Cain’s, Rick Perry’s. What exactly is so logical and analytical here? Does a logical person use prayer as a campaign decision tool? What about prefacing a pile of horseshit rhetoric with “I don’t have the facts to back this up but…” that’s analytical and logical where? If Mr. Purcell’s argument that most conservatives are engineers and businessman then how do you explain the Conservatives that lead the party? Most of them are not engineers or businessmen, most are failed actors, writers and radio shock jocks who share the more common predilection of money grubbing like the prostitutes of yesterday and today. I’m sure one day that a multi-millionaire liberal interest could get them to change their tune. It’s obvious that most of them could be easily swayed.

I think the biggest sign of any modern conservative is the ability to yell over someone making a point, and being able to weave any talking point in to a discussion. I guess some care could be made that it’s logical/analytical in some way.

The ultimate point of all this is to rebuke Mr. Purcell’s aged notion of a left and right at the bottom level. That these conservative v. liberal trivialities only exist in the imaginations of writer’s looking to maintain a tired status quo. Party affiliation’s fall out of favor once you and your neighbor realize that you’re both part of the party of fucked, whose only resolve is to somehow get unfucked in this current economic situation. So the Liberal vs. Conservative while still white hot on the 24 hour “news” networks, is essentially a first class problem to the liberals and conservatives who share much more in common. In the face of all that, to say that one side solely possess a superior trait over the other is not only illogical but devoid of any analytic thought, much like Tom Purcell’s editorial.

I was reading Kathleen Parker’s recent column about Ron Suskind’s blazing new book Confidence Men, and her take on the quote from some ladies in the Obama administration about not feeling welcomed in the economic team’s boys club. While most of the article is of the utmost pedestrian prose (as this Kathleen Parker we’re talking about), a revelation was levied that framed everything Ms. Parker has based her career on. The admission is probably nothing to those who could care less, but being that I am frequently exposed to her, for lack of a better phrase, “brain farts”, it made me want to find a window and scream out of it “Aha! It totally makes sense now!”

Ms. Parker admits that she’s worked from home some 20 odd years and really has no understanding of dynamics in a workplace. Be that gender politics, or other. It made sense why she failed as a co-host on her CNN show. It explains how every article she writes seems to have the common theme of someone who’s lived in a cave for decades trying to act like she’s got a modern grasp on the issues at hand. She has no real world experience to glean a constructive critique of reality from. That’s why she constantly appears to be alien on a lot of topics outside her grasp of mere flip flop-ness.

On one hand, I don’t blame her. If I could work from home and not have to deal with conflict that would arise from my buffoonish meanderings fronting as hard hitting editorials, I’d do it too. Mail those checks directly to me, and let me bark at the world from a 10 foot poles distance from anything resembling conflict.

The great thing about this is that Ms. Parker is smart enough to see that now there’s enough room to flip flop on this topic of gender politics. Whereas before she would just shrug it off and tell women to “grow a pair”, she now see’s that her ignorance was short sighted, so she can now understand where women may be coming from with the whole inequality thing. Especially now that it serves some purpose to her.

Being a Ms. Parker column, about half way through she runs out of gas and relates the tale of Mika Brzezinksi of Morning Joe fame and her inability to get a leg up on the show until she wrote a book about being mistreated. Of course this leads to a switch up at the show and a “deference toward the lady of the house is the new rule…but the show could use a lot more women.” Does Ms. Parker not realize that maybe they’re just humoring Mika? That maybe that book did more damage to that “Aw shucks guffaw we‘re one big huggy family” garbage that most morning shows project? For instance, if Ann Curry wrote a book slamming the way she’s treated at the Today Show, do you not think things would change around there?

That’s the problem with civil rights of any nature. There’s that razor fine line where you’re perilously close to patronizing the wounded party and not elevating their cause. Wouldn’t our society be a much different place had we not taken woman’s suffrage and black civil rights seriously? I mean no one’s taking a hose to Mika Brzezinkski or anything, but you get my gist. Ms. Parker is failing to see that line, and in fact does what most of our society does when confronted with issues like race and gender inequality: “Oh I thought we took care of that like years ago already, right?” It’s not a set in stone and done forever, it’s a constant battle of gains and losses, and no amount of book writing to change one person’s place on a morning show of gas bags is going to correct DECADES of malfeasance towards an entire subset of people!

Ms. Parker argues a remedy against the boys club mentality is “more women, more women, more women!” Obviously on top of living in a cave the past couple of decades, she doesn’t seem to see that more women would only STRENGTHEN the resolve of a boys club, and just lead to the “more women” feeling marginalized. This editorial reads less and less a veiled feminist tinged rant (go girls!) and more a veiled republican hit piece coming from a “democrats DO hate women” angle. However, Ms. Parker lacks the balls to out and out say that, she might alienate readers!

The change of true feminist progress is going to come from the bottom up, not from the top down. Most of the heads of corporations and business are old white doods that believe, although subconscious it may be, that a woman is to be seen and not heard. It’s not rampant or anything, but it sill bubbles underneath the surface. It’s why a woman still makes less than her male counterparts in the this day and age! It’s just that the only light shown on this issue is never a serious light, and it instigates nothing. It’s going to take a lot more than “nutting up” as Kathleen Parker suggests to get any real change done. Also, she’s not looking to change anything either, there’s more fodder for future writing here, she thrives on perpetuating the status quo.

Political Fiction

Americans for Limited Government HAS to be a publishing arm of a science fiction writer. It’s as if they have a draconian embellished dart board with various topics, then a smaller wheel with various names for the characters and worlds that inhabit their fictions. Today, the story is of German Morales, small business owner and painter of houses and such.

The great thing about these short stories provided by the Americans for Limited Government, is that they always start out with a vaguely connected topic to the fiction at hand. The writer, Bill Wilson, starts the tale with the meager “controversy” of Solyndra, a solar panel manufacturer who closed it doors a few weeks ago to bankruptcy. Also, China produces a better solar panel, so it loses on the battlefield of the “competitive marketplace” that Mr. Wilson so proudly supports. Sadly, Solyndra laid off 1,000 workers, which is in turn, tied to another “green energy initiative” in Seattle which only created 14 jobs. The thing to note when reading a lot of this right wing bologna is the specificity of some of the writing versus the near lack of anything other than “This one thing that one time in Somewhereachussetts”. It sets off my bullshit alarm every single time. Why can’t there be constant specifics? Your omission only leads me to believe that your argument is already faulty to start at best, or the point your striving for moot at worst.

I think Americans for Limited Government would have a point, say 30 years ago, before the overreach of Government reached a fever pitch under Reagan. Not that he was the first to begin the overreach, but merely to frame the modern problems we faced today. The seeds of our economic decline were sown during this time, to be sure. But Americans for Limited Government’s point is rendered obsolete by the fact that Ma and Pa Public have, nor have the ever, possess the ability to put the entire society on their backs and jump start the economy. They have at most the ability to toil and sweat for their own sake, and the lives of their kin. But they do not posses any larger power than that of voting for representative government, which has largely been taken away from them by corporate lobbyists and their interests.

The German Morales short story paints the average American as grateful for the suffering it is currently being put through. He wakes up every day with “hope” of doing a good job, so he can continue to struggle. Mr. Wilson believes that Mr. Morales is a great example of the entrepreneurial spirit that’s so waning in America. Sacrificing and cutting back, risking his security for a better life. You’ve got to be kidding me.

The next couple of sentences really hit home the general derision that the right wing elite have for this country:
“The genius of the American economic system is that there are no guarantees. The Declaration of Independence says Americans have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, no a guarantee of happiness.”

In other words, go fuck yourself the poors! This is why people like German Morales should rise up and strike these people from their perches. Not only for looking down their nose at over half of American society, but for talking behind the working American’s back to those who fancy themselves “not one of the poor’s” with bullshit like this editorial.

I can guarantee that most of the right wing blowhards/punditry did not pull themselves up by the boot straps, as they are wont to preach to everyone. When people like Bill O’Reilly threaten to stop employing people if he’s taxed anymore, when the truth is Bill O’Reilly’s taxes are the lowest they’ve been since the Great Depression, we have a problem here. There’s a dishonesty being peddled to the masses as fact, and it’s not going to get any better.

The “competitive marketplace” as Mr. Wilson puts it simply does not exist on the ground floor of the economy any more. Not since the days of the horse and buggy has the individual been in command of anything beyond the macro level of employer and a group of like minded employees. Success is however a great side effect to this thinking. But it is the exception and not the rule. If it was in fact as simple as that, everyone who met a need would be millionaires.

The real threat of the think tanks like Americans For Limited Government is that they always look inward to cut the public off at the knees instead of say the unending cash water flow that goes in to our defense spending. America has yet to shake this the bitter winters of the Cold War and continues to build and amass a giant army, of which a LOT of monetary waste is the order of the day. Lest I remind you that a 6 billion dollar pallet of money just up and disappeared in Iraq. How does a giant stack of cash just go MISSING? The no bid military contracts, the failure of said contractors in providing usable infrastructure to our soldiers or even civilians. Yet you never ever read a think tank piece saying “You know, that defense budget is kind of out of whack.” No, you will get the obligatory “Oh no, if you cut just one dollar from defense, we will be annihilated!!” Never mind the 700 odd military bases all around the world, and America’s station as the “Police of the World”. Americans For Limited Government can’t even look in that direction to suggest some useful in the way of spending far far less. Hell, their fiction would prove more useful, in that Tom Clancy sort of way. People would eat that up!

Finally, a nasty trend of the right wing sound machine has been steadily catching my attention. Mr. Wilson’s article reminded me of it. The Declaration of Independence is indeed not part of the constitution. I don’t know how this thought came to be or why this is being tirelessly bandied by the right wing, but increasingly I’ve been seeing this denial to the middle class in general that they aren’t “guaranteed” anything. The Declaration of Independence has no real modern application other than our society’s unwritten rule not to be assholes to one another, a reminder to not be a tyrant to our common man like the British Empire was to the colonists, who penned the Declaration in order to tell the King what for. It is NOT a part of the Constitution. The Constitution, however, does give us rights and freedoms (and rules and law). The only thing the Declaration and the Constitution share is the fact that they are historical documents.

The Rise of the Planet of the Knuckle Draggers

If Shithead Hall of Fame Inductee™ Kathleen Parker is to be believed, Americans “don’t really want an egghead elite”, well, tell that to the 202 lawyers in congress. For some odd reason, we fail to vote in plumbers, janitors, and that guy that sleeps on your couch to higher political office (However 28 Congresspeople do not have a college degree, so there's hope yet!). Ms. Parker, the elegant headmistress of flip flopping finishing school says we’d rather prefer a state educated corporate money fueled cad over an Ivy league educated corporate money fueled cad.

For some reason, and of all people it seems, “independents” are a very forgetful bunch. If, as Ms. Parker suggests, this is a brain vs. gut situation, did we not have that “gut” mindset during the W. years? Also, claiming that some of the GOP dumb themselves down should more appropriately be called pandering. As this is to Ms. Parker's bread and butter to her readers.

More to the point, and I think it will become more clear in the coming election year, is that there’s really no discernible difference between anyone who represents the two major political parties anymore. If Mitt Romney wins the Republican Clown Car Rally, my case will be made in it’s entirety. The wrench in the works is this goddamned American love affair with the “cowboy” mythology that will continue to bite this country in the ass and give us the go ahead push over the waterfall. Rodeo Rick Perry is yet another character yee-hawing his way on stage for the bottom feeding know nothing voters to latch on to. If there is some truth to the idea that most voters spend about 15 minutes researching a candidate or issue to vote on, then yea, we have a lot to be worried for.

But that’s par for the course when it comes to the voting public, it’s a sad fact, but it’s preferred to the know-nothing political operative who would be given the power to shape society itself via political office. It’s one thing for your right leaning aunt to hear “something” from “someone”, it’s quite another Michelle Bachmann was told by “someone” in a crowd about adverse side affects to a vaccine. Really Michelle, you couldn’t be bothered to grab (or make up) a name for that?

I’m talking about the idiocy that most of these current crop of GOP possess, not word gaffes, which seems to be the only rebuttal the right wing has to this argument. Obama claiming that there are 53 states is no where near comparable to Palin not knowing what newspapers she reads, to quote a classic example. If Obama had one-millionth of the word buffet power that Palin had, he wouldn’t have even been able to sniff the front lawn of the White House.

Happily, there are websites such as Politifact.com, that do cover a lot of this nonsense from all sides of the government. Sadly, these sites never make it to the unwashed masses, which is where it is most problematic.

In addition to that, the fact that corporations now have the infinite ability to contribute to campaigns and super PAC’s means that the inundation of misinformation from television and radio ads during the next election year will be at a fever pitch. Recall the pain train from 2010? Yeah, that was nothing.

Now, before you try to pull off my tin foil hat, there has to be some acknowledgement that having an even keeled, pragmatic person run a branch of government is something we should strive for. Our ability to have a beer with him is not. There’s lots of talk lately of class warfare, of which there is no doubt to it’s existence. But before that began there’s been a constant battle over intellectualism versus I-know-what-I-know aka ignorance.

If there’s one thing you could boil the TEA party down to is a strong desire to not be told what to do. Sure, that’s inherent in most people, but as a movement the TEA party embodies this revulsion to authority with gusto.

And make no mistake, I’m not saying common sense and ignorance are one in the same. Ignorance can be fixed with knowledge, stupidity cannot. Stupid can be confused for ignorance, and hence we have all these non-players actually having a shot in the GOP Clown Car Rally to the White House. Sure, some can run a business, be a governor, but we all know a lot of dumbasses in our very lives that run things they probably shouldn’t be to varying degrees of success. What these people excel at is patronizing and pandering to lower common denominators. The eerie simplicity of “this bill is 100 pages, I would cut it like 5 paragraphs” ideal and the fact that the presenter wouldn’t be laughed off the planet should make people reconsider.

Further, these people are vying to be the face of our nation, sure we can’t hide all our soft headed population under the floorboards forever, but we do need to have some sort of global respect. Walking around with your chest puffed out and trying to strike fear in anyone is not great foreign policy.

To sound far more elitist than I should be allowed, haven’t we done enough for our knuckle dragging brethren in society? We have warnings on plastic bags to not put them over your head, secure lids on hot beverages that explain that said beverage is very hot, on and on. We now have to entertain their notions of higher political office out of what, fairness to all? Would you get into someone’s car if it looked like it had had it’s fair share of scrapes and dings? Go hunting with someone who shot off their own foot? Seriously though, it’s only an entire nation right? What could possibly go wrong letting the short bus rider’s think they’re people?

Sure, lets let them entertain themselves by playing in the shallow end of the political pool. Let them be comptrollers and mayors of 234 person towns. But handing them the keys to the world? No fucking way!

Life Through Sepia Colored Glasses

Say what you will about him, but Old Man Jack Krier does have one consistent theme throughout his writings: blamelessness. It’s always someone else’s doings no matter the topic of the day. It makes you begin to wonder if it’s in the DNA of baby boomers, or just a really specific generational tick shared amongst a LOT of old people.

It’s also why I’m not surprised that the TEA party is predominantly old white people. Regardless of party, selfishness holds no real political party. But I’m fairly certain it’s a majority republican held ideal. Like the old adage “as a youngster I was democrat until I had something to lose then I became republican“.

What I cannot truly fathom is Mr. Krier’s staunchly held belief that things were better in the olden days. I’d honestly like to take the sepia colored glasses from his face, but I think there are superimposed in some sort of fever induced face/glasses melding. In a recent “column” (read: email forward) How wasteful the older generation Mr. Krier relates the tale of a little old lady being admonished by an probably young cashier that the older generation “did not care enough to save our environment”. This “column” then goes on to explain how things were in the olden times, before someone/something/probably the illegal’s dumped tons of trash in large piles, then called them landfills and walked away. How someone filled our rivers, oceans are air with manufacturing pollutants, which was probably fish poop and cow farts right? But oh no, back in the olden times people returned glass bottles to the stores, hung up clothes to dry and didn’t drive two blocks to get something.

It’s utter…to use olden time parlance…hogwash! How much of this attitude was actually dictated by the times and how much is actual mythical brainwashing? Before the mainstream use of plastics for bottling, wouldn’t it be prudent to return recyclable glass items? Especially since they were often BOUGHT BACK, you know that little cash value 5 cent/10 cent redemption on your bottles that resides there to this day? I have even bought milk in a glass container and had to pay a $5 deposit on the bottle, this was two weeks ago people? Am I now too doing my part in the whole “green thing”? Where’s my olden time medal of excellence in the face of political correctness/green police?

Cars have always been prohibitively expensive items. Not quite luxury items, but still every single person does not own a vehicle now, and more importantly didn’t in the past either. However, olden time cities are made predominantly for and cater to foot traffic. Compare New York City to Kansas City. You can bike or subway most places in the NYC without need for a car. Kansas City….well, not so much. It’s so spread out in KC that a car is a necessity to get to most business’s, and seeing as they’re cutting a lot of their mass transit budgets, doesn’t look to get any better. And biking? Forget about it! While there is an intuitive to get more back paths around town, it’s going to take a long while, and a lot of that is mostly just carving up existing not made for bike lane roads with a little “bike lane” paint.

Joining Mr. Krier on this TEA Party bandwagon is another old white man editor of newspapers Rolf Yunglas. In recent memory has been advocating that the TEA Party is just like the rest of us. Does anyone else get the feeling that “us” is inclusive? He talks about “some poll” (good journalism right there) that says that 51% of Americans think unfavorably of the TEA Party. He then goes on to explain that the TEA Party IS America, so why is it getting “co-equal” blame for the debt crisis theatre experience? Well, Mr. Yunglas, let me share something with you. You see, the TEA Party mistakenly believed that the soft head ambivalence of independents was actually a mandate to take part in a bigger regressive GOP agenda. Most of America, dare I say 49% or so, don’t give two shits about government until either tax time or election years. They don’t pay attention to the machinations going on in the beltway, and they sure a shit have no idea what their state assemblies are doing. So when the “other” party doesn’t get it done, they naturally just flip to the other side to see if that will work. Problem is, independents lack any fortitude to stick with a plan to see it through, that’s why it’s so appalling that many people just assume that one branch of government can somehow turn the tides of an economy in 18 months. It’s foolishness, and that foolishness leads to ever increasing poor decisions, and thus the TEA Party was given a small foothold in the House of Representatives.

Again, this wasn’t a mandate. But when that small group of small minded people took a chunk of the House hostage during the debt crisis theatre revue, they exposed themselves. Do you really think the GOP is going to let itself be burned alive by the likes of a “astro-turf” roots based corporate fueled “movement”? No sir! Naturally, they’re going to, pardon my analogy, throw that TEA Party nonsense overboard.

On top of this, it’s becoming ever so clear that the TEA Party has no real ideas, and the ones they do have are regressive and bad for the country. Also what may have worked two centuries ago with far less states and citizens cannot even begin to bridge the cap of a modern society made up of millions of people with various needs. It cannot fly in the face of the globalization this country fosters and it cannot turn it’s back on deals brokered in the past, regardless of party affiliation.

The idea to play chicken with our economy was a GOP idea. The TEA Party was sitting at that table, thumping along in time with the rest of the GOP Carnival side show band. I surely didn’t see any “left leaning socialist spend more tax more” liberals saying “Hey, lets just do nothing and see what happens,”. This wasn’t future debt that the beltway was fighting over, these were bills that we promised to pay, the money was already spoken for. The TEA Party and the right were ostensibly saying “Hey, don’t pay your bills…nothing’s going to happen,”. So the bottom of that argument not only looks insane, it paints a horrible picture to the independents that this “side” of the coin, doesn’t have the general best interests at heart. Therefore, they’re not so high up on these so called “patriots”.

If anything this could be a lesson to those of the TEA Party. As with most uninvolved participants to the game politic, they got had. To some of their credit, they realize this. At a recent Sarah Palin tour stop a fan asked her if she came to hock books or announce her candidacy. If she wasn’t going to run she needs to get out of the way. Good on you, Mr. Patriot.
Mr. Krier, Mr. Yunglas, and the rest of those right wing buffoons have a limited memory, or at least one for the truth. Sure, the olden times were full of simple things with simple people, but simple doesn’t mean stupid or unreasonable.

Shithead Hall of Fame Nominee: Rebekah Rast (The Americans for Limited Government)

I’ll never understand the right’s obsession, nay fear, of socialism “sneaking” in to our lives. It’s readily apparent that America has been picking and choosing chunks of governance philosophy for most of its existence. They fear this socialist uprising, yet bat no eyelash to the bulldozing of separation of church and state. For some reason, to top all of this off is the mystifying, stymieing, protection of the wealthy that most of the right is embracing with open arms.

Unfortunately, our media is helping push this bologna along with the objective eye that news has two sides. Typically, an opinion piece in the paper will be festooned with a writers affiliations (if there are any). It’s a great way to tell a buzzword, dog whistle laden, think tank hit piece from your neighbor down the street’s Fox News, buzzword, dog whistle laden bile explosion. Problem is, not that many newspapers or websites will run these credits with the words, and just lay them out there as fact. Hence, we get the old fashioned “Well I heard, that in the one place, they do (insert evil Liberal overreach)” or the fast belief that Sharia law is somehow invading our court system. You know, that silly tin foil hat bullshit that somehow is given credence because it’s run nonstop of 24 hour “news” networks, then picked up by major networks as a “B-Side” to the other side of a story.

Rebekah Rast, from The Americans for Limited Government (is there really any other?), writes about how a school in Detroit is doing the socialist bricklaying by allowing ALL children to get free lunch. This is done as to not shame the poor kids, who “…would skip important meals to avoid being identified as low income”. She goes on to further twist that this would then lead to the rich believing they should be privy to welfare checks, food stamps and government assisted housing.

It’s bullshit to assume that “rich” people would just start taking government subsidies, when wealth provides you with the hubris to turn your nose up at those who are living below you. There’s a pride in it, and you can see it every day if you look hard enough. Even those with barely a leg up over their more impoverished neighbors still cast a dejecting eye at those perceived below them.

As a child, I consumed a fair amount of free and reduced meals. I was never shamed of it, as I was a growing boy and constantly hungry. I was not ill care for at home, however. But my parents, who worked full time, did not have the time to brown bag me a frou-frou bagged lunch. Did I feel like a got the short of the stick sometimes, especially when friends would pull out warm wishing little notes with their sandwiches and puddings? Of course. But I was being fed and taken care of, with the tax dollars my parents put in to make sure of it.

Ms. Rast also mistakes, as I assume she NEVER ate a free lunch, that the stigma is wrought from consumption of free lunch. If you are poor, people know it. Kids are insanely keen and harsely judge, from an early age and probably learned from their parents, on appearance and in the rough and tumble world they roam, eating a free lunch is the least of your worries. It’s not like you can hide your ratty clothes, or lack of general hygiene.

To top this all of the “Healthy-Hunger Free Kids Act” will not even be put in place until 2014! It’s not even set in stone, yet we have groups like The Americans for Limited Government up in arms about it’s societal implosion and road paving to Russia fear baiting horseshit. It’s the same with “Obamacare” most of what that bill does doesn’t even come in to real action until 2014 and already it’s safe to say its impact will be negligible, in fact I’m sure the health care companies, who run on and for profit are so saddened by the sudden influx of new cash cows! The horror, America!

While the newspaper I found this appalling garbage in rightfully credited it to a writer from the very think tank she represented, many will not. They will post this up in the opinion section as if it were written by someone from town, or just another side of a story that’s patently false in every sense of the word. Even more disgusting is the fact that Ms. Rast quotes the president of the very think tank she’s writing for. Are you rewarded with head pats for a job well done Ms. Rast?

It’s been proven that a well fed child performs better in school, is more alert, and functions better in the classroom. It is also entire reason that the school provides food for children, and expanded it to include breakfast. There is a general societal/cultural awareness to make sure we take care of our children, as it a cornerstone for the supposed “future” these right wing buffoons are always going on about.

Most discouraging of all is this backhanded methodology in dealing with any of the societal woes facing American today. That if we took this twisted think tank logic and applied it elsewhere the kind of howls would erupt from the right wingers. For example, what about farm subsidies? Why should taxpayers have to prop up farmers when they lose their crops to drought, malfeasance or lack of forethought? Doesn’t that create a stigma when a poor farmer needs government assistance to help replenish his drought ridden farmland. Or the copious tax breaks to Agriculture monoliths like Monsanto, who are continually punitive to small farmers who will not use their products?

There’s always going to be an element of selfishness cloaked in piety, it’s (mostly) the American way for the upper class of this society. Ms. Rast is one of many think tank stooges that continues to fan the flame of class warfare in this country that has been brewing for some time. Though it is disguised as the classic “oh no they’re trying to get socialism in our America” nonsense, it is indeed a dog whistle for those among the right wing to avoid doing their part to help their neighbors and communities. Because what is not told is that these “lesser” people if they cave and fall, they take everything with it. The crime rate explodes, house values already at precarious levels fall even further. Look no further than the fanciful fever dream Detroit Ms. Rast and her think tank provided in her column. It’s STILL being ravaged by this recession and it’s decline didn’t start nearly three years ago when Obama became president as you are lead to believe.

It’s going to be a sad day when using our taxpayer dollars to repair and propel our great societal net is viewed as anything less as the least we can do for those less fortunate than the rest of us. I personally am perfectly fine in paying more taxes to keep every child who hungers fed. This is our future we’re talking about here, do we wish to set a good example, or a poor one? You’d think that the great societies who brought us these programs, who laid out a plan, would be inspiration enough. Sadly, wealthy people out there seem to think you can take it with you when you go, or are more than happy to pour taxpayer money down their corporate whore holes to continue to spread buffoonery much on par with Ms. Rast and her think tank overlords.