Above Kathleen Parker's Pay Grade!

Oh all right, I’ll indulge this petty need to write about Shithead Hall of Fame Inductee™ Kathleen Parker. It’s not that she hasn’t been dropping turd nuggets of all sorts lately, far from it, but I couldn’t bear to write another article blasting Susan Stamper Brown for “knowing” that Reaganomics worked. Really…you KNOW Reaganomics worked? And of course she sources nothing, but her “know”-ing, it’s maddening for sure, but I’m just not in the mood right now.

The National Prayer Breakfast is an antiquated joke. Every single year Obama seems to fail to give a proper speech. This years was no different. But this year, Ms. Parker has something to say about it…I think.

Bill O’Reilly’s column was finally put out to pasture late last year, and for good measure. From the little I covered of his articles, it was desperately necessary, as he was just not writing anything of substance. On top of that, the word count was woefully short. Perhaps the Washington Post should cut Ms. Parker’s output down to just one column per week, as she just quits on this piece. And really, she doesn’t need two columns.

Waddling out in to the tides of a religious column just isn’t in Ms. Parker’s wheelhouse. It’s painfully obvious to everyone involved about three oddly placed sentences-as-paragraphs in. Since I’m assuming she didn’t attend the event in question, she’s just hoping to fill a word count quota and move on to her next column idea. So sure, lets just assume that religious protections are under attack in America.

Obamacare is forcing for profit religious entities to cover contraception for it’s employees. Again, this goes back to my notion as to why that’s an attack on religious freedom, and having people who aren’t in need of boner pills pay for others need to defy nature, isn’t an attack on their freedoms from the un-need of boner pills?

That Ms. Parker states that religious-liberty lobby is losing is absurd. They’re not losing any ground, and if anything are attempting to strengthen themselves by coalescing in to concentrated tribes in the middle and south of the country. So sure, they may be marginalized in terms of mainstream popularity, but their far from out in terms of their single issue voter bloc, and the GOP right-wing’s ability to rile them up and drive them to the polls with the word “abortion”.

But this debate is more than just about birth control, it’s about the stability of the nation!  If we force for profit businesses with “religious convictions” to offer basic insurance coverage to their employees, of which their use of it is absolutely none of their business, the religious freedoms are doomed!

This IS more than a debate about birth control. Indeed, it is yet another way for the GOP right-wing to team up with their 12th man evangelicals to try and dismantle Obamacare. Waste more time and money propelling this case through the federal court system, and ultimately, lose at the Supreme Court.  But then, they have something to rile up the one issue evangelicals with for the 2014-2016 elections, and ultimately, lose there too.

The problem with the “but my religious convictions” argument is that these businesses are for profit. Religious groups are one thing, and ideally, if they are participating in the free market, they should be obliged to pay for insurance coverage, just the same as any other business. But businesses like Hobby Lobby, a non-religious corporation, are only a pawn in yet another campaign to destroy Obamacare. The fact that Ms. Parker parks them all together into this “persecuted” mass is a disservice to the argument she’s attempting to make. Thanks to Citizens United, corporations are people now, so I guess if they want to make a better argument they need to baptize their corporations and get them to start tithing to become religious entities fit for prosecution.

But then she just drops her entire thesis. Quoting Obama’s answer to Rick Warren back in the day: “It’s beyond my paygrade.” What an utter waste of time, right? All this stupid ass pontificating, and all you have for us is a shrug? Shame on you, Ms. Parker! Shame! What we are left with is a bunch of right-wing posturing about Obama-come-King nonsense.

Reducing the argument down to “free contraceptives for women” is an attempt by right-wing punditry to put the argument back in to the government overreach arena. That the whole reason of Obamacare is for the government to offer freebies to all the ladies, thereby locking them down in to democrat voters for the foreseeable future, just like what they did with welfare and the “others”.

But it’s not about “free contraceptives” it is and always will be about offering health insurance to anyone and everyone who wants it. This odd religious argument Ms. Parker makes is dangerous as it pertains to only a certain religious thought. What about other religions and their objections? Should we honor all of those as well? By Ms. Parker’s definition their religious liberties are under attack, and NO ONE is speaking up for them in the pundit class! And what about Hobby Lobby’s (probably non-existent) non-religious employees? Should they have their corporate overlords religion foisted upon them? What about their rights?

The answers? Oh yeah, that’s above my paygrade. But at least Kathleen Parker got her comments section in a tizzy! Over 1,000 comments and counting!

Jonah Goldberg's War on Women

Far be it from me to be yet another white guy with an opinion on women’s issues. But I can’t help it, and the pundit class isn’t covering anything of note. Which makes sense on some level. The right-wing pundit class has “spoken” on Chris Christie’s current problems, and if anything use those as a launching off point to cover all the Obama “scandals”. More importantly it’s yet another reason to trot out Benghazi…again.

One of the biggest women’s issues is, of course, their ability to control their own bodies. White old men have plenty to say about this and do as much as they can to control it…and by extension…women.

It would be reductive to say that women need to step it up and get more of themselves in positions of power, but that’s exactly what they need to do. And not just in Congress, but state and local places of power too. As it’s becoming clearer that the anti-abortion crowd is finding more success on the local level in their war against a woman’s constitutionally protected right to an abortion.

Roe v. Wade’s birthday was recently, and this article would’ve probably been more at home here, but then I would have missed Jonah Goldberg’s ridiculous hit piece against Wendy Davis, who’s making a run for Texas Governor.

If there’s one thing the GOP right-wing hates more than abortion, it’s powerful women democrats. Look no further than the ascension of Hilary Clinton’s phantom 2016 presidential bid. It may explain this continued insistence on Benghazi, just in case she does decide to run, it will be in the recent memory of “independent” voters. Wendy Davis is just a more recent, fresher example of persona non grata for the GOP right-wing pundit class, that she made a stand for Texas women and their reproductive rights, just doubles the rage against her.

Mr. Goldberg’s reducing of Wendy Davis to her pink sneakers and 11-hour filibuster is hugely misogynist on it’s own merits, but he doesn’t stop there. His article attempts to insult her intelligence on current abortion news, and wonders aloud why she has so many problems with common sense legislation on abortion clinics.

This is currently how the anti-abortion crowd is propelling their agenda: legislating abortion clinics in to oblivion. They act as though these are just common sense laws that are helping the clinics perform and conform better thereby providing safer baby killing abortions. Sadly it’s working all to well.

Gone are the days of scaring young people with programs that were largely unsuccessful: abstinence only "sex education", and shoving pictures of dead fetuses in the face of young people on campuses across the nation. Unfortunately, what they’re doing in the state legislatures is much more horrific than anything they could conceivably put in a picture.

What’s more, the amount of sheer ignorance to abortion is on display from the GOP right-wing, that you really do wonder why they have so much to say on the subject, but so little substance to back it up. Arguments always boil down to “well, I feel that…” and no one should give a shit about how you “feel” about another persons right to do what they wish to their own bodies.

Couched amongst the Wendy Davis hit-piece of an article is the Kermit Gosnell case. And while the entire ordeal is indeed eye-brow raising, it does show the horrors of both a society that turns a blind eye to a very real need amongst young minority women and immigrants that need proper medical care, and government bureaucracy that would let something like Gosnell’s clinic exist in it’s failed state in the first place. The lack of oversight can also be found in the like of the recent toxic leak in West Virginia. Where a tank hadn’t been inspected in over two decades!

Wendy Davis’ crime in all of this? As a vaunted pro-abortionist she didn’t know much about the Gonsell case! “For shame!" Cries Jonah Goldberg. To be fair, who else really knew about the Gosnell case from the lack of reporting from the corporate media? The GOP right-wing certainly didn’t say anything about it. I would’ve noticed and written about it at the time, it just wasn’t really covered. But to who’s determent is that? Doesn’t the GOP right-wing have an entire channel dedicated to their bullshit?!

Her further crimes are pointed out in that when asked about the fact that a majority of American women support a ban on late term abortions, she answered that she felt a lot of people (key word) don’t really understand the landscape of what’s happening in that arena today. To which Mr. Goldberg assumes Ms. Davis meant JUST WOMEN and that she was “casually dismissing the majority of American women”.  Saying nothing to the fuller extent the PEOPLE  mentioned, of those being the white old men who haven zero concept on not just abortion but of birth control and other women’s health issues, who are pushing all this regressive anti-women legislation.

Jonah Goldberg isn’t quite done with trying to convince us that Wendy Davis isn’t worth supporting, and the war on women is a made up construct. When asked “When does life start?” She treated it like the non-question it is, and stated the Supreme Court has answered that question. To which Mr. Goldberg adds “Blah Blah Blah.” So this answer, and Mr. Goldberg’s friend Tom Bevan (who would have guessed a conservative?) agrees, is cowardice? She should’ve answered the question in a straight forward manner because it’s assumed that she’s made pro-abortion a “signature issue of her political life”.

This is an odd statement, seeing as all she really did was stand up for the women’s rights in Texas. The question itself is ridiculous on it’s own, because who cares when life begins? Most assuredly the anti-abortion camp does, and they’re doing everything in their power to close the window of opportunity a woman has in getting an abortion. To say nothing of if she can find one within reasonable distance to her general location, needless ultrasounds to compound the guilt and add a dash of shame. The 24 hour waiting period if she does go through with the procedure, because hey if you got time for an abortion, I guess you have a few days to wait around and kill some time along with that precious fetus.

Mr. Goldberg surmises that the pro-abortion crowd is just afraid to talk about abortion. That they attack the anti-abortion crowd out of insecurity that they’re defending murder. Which again, goes back to my point that the GOP right-wing just loves painting pro-abortion advocates as soulless baby killers who don’t understand the profound depths of having an abortion. What’s more, this debate is convictions versus rights. As the debate unravels it always comes down to someone’s faith telling them that abortion is wrong, and therefore the person’s rights mean nothing in the eyes of an almighty deity. It’s an absurd base argument with which to build on and curtail a constitutionally guaranteed freedom. This same logic somehow doesn’t apply with common sense gun laws and the GOP right-wing 2nd amendment crowd.

Further from that in Mr. Goldberg’s misogynistic ramblings against women’s right to choose is the notion that Wendy Davis is ignorant and therefore an unworthy mainstream political candidate. Not unlike the left-wing conspiracy that makes Sarah Palin a perpetual joke. But the problem is…Sarah Palin IS ignorant on most topics (political or otherwise) that matter to people. For Pete’s sake she couldn’t be bothered to answer a question about what newspapers she reads in a straight forward manner. Which means she’s a coward for not knowing about reading newspapers?

On the subject of women’s issues the GOP right-wing is only doubling down and losing. If they continue to push the issues, especially in the case of Obamacare covering contraceptives for women, they will lose further. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that insurance covers men's health items such as boner pills, penile implants and a score of other things, that I’m pretty sure women, or young people in general, aren’t interested in having to “pay for” out of their hard earned money.

The GOP right-wing is hoping to gain a foothold on gender issues by pressing the horrors of late terms abortions and banning them in the states. It’s seems like their eventual hope is to waste more taxpayer time and money propelling another case to the Supreme Court in the hopes of squashing a woman’s right to choose no matter the cost. This cost is going to be women voters across the board, and with the old white men arm of their party base slowly dying off, the GOP right-wing may need to pick their battles more carefully.

The Tested and Tried Conservative Ideas That Do Work!

I don’t really have any thoughts on the Obama side of the State of the Union. I mean really, who thought it wasn’t going to be exactly like it turned out to be? My complaints fall largely with the three…that’s right THREE different Republican responses. Well four if you count Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, which I won’t because the cynical GOP grab at minorities and women is bald faced enough on it’s own. Cathy McMorris Rodgers was the official GOP response, followed by TEA Party response from Mike Lee and then Rand Paul has one on the internets, because Libertarians are the internets.

The official GOP response is ludicrous. I can’t decide if it’s as insulting as when they promoted Micheal Steele to head of the RNC in the wake of Obama’s first term ascendancy in this “Hey, we have black people too!” Perhaps Bobby Jihndal’s response from a few years back with yet another stab at the “Hey, a brown republican!” can approach that buffoonishness. Rubio’s response last year seemed to be just a double down on the whole “What minority problems?” and had the added benefit of Rubio’s awkward thirst issues. So this year’s response coming from a woman Republican who's proven to be just as anti-women as her party peers is really no surprise.

The official GOP response was little more than a veiled autobiography sprinkled in amongst the same tired GOP talking points. A woman, born poor, instilled with conservative beliefs (like saving money!) pulled up by her own bootstraps to be a Congresswoman. A friend of mine commented that this was literally the exact same speech the GOP has been giving for the last three years. Three years is being generous.

In this vein, I am compelled to continue this “new conservative idea” thread of late. There has been no shortage to this, seeing as the right-wing pundit class has been scrambling to add something substantive to the lack of mainstream GOP ideas that have been coming out. Perhaps they had seen Mrs. Rodgers’ speech and have been spending recent weeks trying to trick people in to thinking that there are actual “new conservative ideas”?

It should come as no surprise that I think Rick Jensen is a boob. This kind of article bashing is lower than the low hanging fruit I typically deal with. I just can’t help it, and he just so happened to write something about conservative ideas recently. But not so much “new” ideas as “tried and tested” ideas that have withstood ridicule…and are gaining support.

But first, he decides to flog Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

You read that right, Mr. Jensen starts off an article supposedly about conservative ideas gaining support by trotting out a 2008 GOP boogeyman and flogging him for “bearing false witness” against his fellow (TEA Party) man. So again, these vaunted “ideas” are taking a backseat to more pundit class ankle biting.

Mr. Jensen then goes on to pull (probably straight from his ass) figures of TEA Party backed candidates that were black, and the “a least a dozen” TEA Party organizations with African-American leadership. Surely, they can’t be racists! See how progressive they’re being? And despite this claim that they are bigots, still the conservative “considerations” are “slipping in to the American consciousness”. Doesn’t that sound a tiny bit rape-y or at the very least nonconsensually invasive?

So he trots out the old “they’re gonna take yer guns” bullshit. Democrats supporting gun buybacks? Really? What year is this? He then references all these studies from newspapers, universities, and police departments that show that this concept doesn’t work. Yet, he doesn’t mention ONE by name. It’s all I’m ever asking for from right-wing pundits: just some names! Just one! Just like I’d like to see just TWO new ideas from the GOP right-wing. Just two…that’s all I really want.

This lack of named studies from anywhere is even more galling when he mentions U.S. Census and Bureau of Labor Statistics later on in the piece.

Going back to the original “gun buyback” bullshit, is this veiled racism that permeates the ENTIRE portion of this article. “Targeted police patrols”, “known criminals”, “specific neighborhoods”, just to name a few. This notion of a Minority Report system of “applying 911 calls research to deploy teams to “troubled areas” in advance of the next crime to prevent crime” is scary enough. I thought you guys were all about limited government? Oh, it’s not cool in the “white” areas…but “troubled areas” game on? And not even to speak of just where a city is going to get the money to pay for these deploy teams. Raising taxes? That’s bad! Hell, it’s not even thinly veiled racism, it‘s just good old right-wing double down on the fear of “them”.

Sensing that perhaps he may be called out for perceived racism, Mr. Jensen focuses on the black youth inner city teens of America and the minimum wage. Using the tried and true method of blatantly ignoring any history Mr. Jensen proceeds to show that in 2009 Democrats (and Democrats alone, which is how Congress works) raised the minimum wage. From 2008 to 2009 teen unemployment went up. Somehow, this is the minimum wage increases fault? According to Mr. Jensen, this proves that increasing the minimum wage doesn’t work.

On a recent Real Time With Bill Maher, Carly Fiorina bristled at the notion that as a republican she had to defend her fellow party members when they said ridiculous things, as in the case of Mike Huckabee’s “Uncle Sugar” line. Sadly, in the age of the false equivalency, she has to. Propelled by her friends at Fox News, and the GOP right-wing echo chamber, you now have to answer for any one affiliated with your party. If the GOP isn’t going to admit it has a fractured party problem, then they indeed have to explain their more crazy side when shit starts spilling out of it’s gaping maw.

It’s clear that Mr. Jensen doesn’t represent the mainstream GOP and probably proudly boasts that notion. But he’s out there, spewing his veiled racist nonsense under the banner of the GOP right-wing. Sadly, as his article proves, the GOP still doesn’t have any “new” ideas; and if he’s going to write an article that attempts to prove that pro-gun and anti-minimum wage are strong ideas that need doubling down on, then the GOP right-wing has a lot more to worry about than “new” ideas.

Russ Douthat: Fresh New Republican Ideas Are Here!

One of the chief complaints against the GOP right-wing is that they don’t have any new ideas. Or any GOOD ideas for that matter. It’s bad enough that they don’t have any ideas, but that they continually insist on doubling down on the failed ideas that they do have is ludicrous. The constant refrain of “Oh, no…they will work, just give them time!” Meanwhile their failures continue to mire this country and society in this quicksand of their failed ideas, and we’ve even stopped moving!

Ross Douthat appears with a new column that says indeed, the GOP right-wing conservatives do now have some new ideas! Finally!

You know it’s not a good sign when these new fangled “ideas” aren't the lead off in Mr. Douthat’s piece. In fact, it’s not until the very end when these “ideas” show up. He appears to be trying to practice the dark arts of a David Brooks piece and just filibuster the word count until he can rope in some half baked thesis that’s completely useless. He even does the David Brooks assertion at the end. It’s uncanny how bad writing can spread in the pundit class in the cold winter months of nothing going on politically.

The David Brooks practice kind of infects Mr. Douthat’s entire article. Typically, though wrong, Mr. Douthat makes compelling, derivative articles championing GOP right-wing baloney. In this article his preamble declares that both parties (in the grand equivalency) are ideologically rigid and therefore that’s why new ideas haven’t been propping up on  the right-wing.

He then goes off to rattle off a grip of right-wing pundit class that rose up in the wake of the W. administration’s utter decimation of “thinking”. These pundits represented a “reform conservatism” that unfortunately came much too late and was subsequently ignored by the GOP. Mr. Douthat establishes that by 2012 there appeared to be a clear delineation of this “reform conservatism”, that rose up after 2008? David Brooks level of ridiculous chronology aside, what stopped this “reform conservatism” from sticking. Well, Mr. Douthat explains: the same talking point that the GOP right-wing has been parroting since 2008.

It’s not their fault. Of course it’s not! Mr. Douthat explains that Paul Ryan, championed himself as an austerity freak instead of a reform guy and this pulled some GOP that way. While the TEA Party gobbled up the rest in it’s insane grasp. In the interim Mitt Romney failed them. This is the way the GOP right-wing portrays what went wrong in recent years. It bears nothing on reality whatsoever and Mr. Douthat just doubles down on it.

The GOP right-wing is desperately grabbing at anything that will propel it along, and then poorly deal with the fallout of courting bad ideas and ideologies. Which is what they’re dealing with now as TEA Party caucus members are alienating not only other republicans, but anyone who would remotely be interested in the other right-wing ideas that maybe speak to them as independents. In fact recent polls show that those who identify as republican is at an all time low, and the independent label is on the rise. Sure, under the banner of false equivalency, democrats have lost a bit too, but that republican has fallen so sharply so quickly, as the TEA Party loonies and their redistricted representatives have risen.

So what good are new ideas and “reform conservatism” if the ideological well has been muddied and poisoned by three decades of desperation tactics? Mr. Douthat doesn’t really paint a rosy picture of the future, and considering that Paul Ryan himself was a rising star that preferred to burn out with a failed Romney candidacy than help his party, speaks volumes to just one of the GOP right-wing’s current problems. That he all but concedes that a Hilary Clinton presidential run will overpower any real good “ideas” that the “reform conservatism” movement might bring kind of torpedoes his article. Much like a David Brooks article, the piece is just too top heavy with fantastical bullshit that when the real point of the article shows up it’s just flops over.

Oh yeah, those ideas? Yeah, they’re not new or reform either. When Mr. Douthat mentions that they’re from Mike Lee and Marco Rubio, the rest of the air leaves his column. He seems to confuse political mercenary tactics for something seemingly “new”. Having been unable to derail Obamacare and having large amounts of egg on their face; both Rubio and Lee are looking to do a little maintenance on their image seeing that they’re probably going to try and be Republican presidential candidates.

That Mr. Douthat thinks what Rubio and Lee are proposing are more interesting than anything the GOP in 2012 is enlightening as to just how far the depths of their lack of ideas go. His final line is also laughable: “But for conservative policy reformers, there’s an unfamiliar feeling in the air: It’s as if, for the first time in many years, their perspective actually exists.” But it’s always existed, if only to be marginalized by the GOP, the right-wing and their pundit class representatives like Russ Douthat. But where was Mr. Douthat when his vaunted pundit class thinkers were publishing article touting their “reform conservatism”? He certainly wasn’t promoting them in his pieces, because their also his competitors. So it’s a bit of a double edged sword. Ultimately, these ideas aren’t new or reform and just because you attempt to get behind something and start touting it as new, isn’t going to convince anyone otherwise.

Thomas Sowell's Trickle Down Bullshit!

You know, I was all set to bag on Kathleen Parker again when Thomas Sowell went and ruined everything. Sometimes, you just got leave the low hanging fruit alone and actually pick some of this “fruit” off the ground. Wait, this isn’t fruit…it’s A-grade bullshit.

Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely don’t want to write about anything Thomas Sowell. Jack Krier “liberally” uses his columns (read straight up steals from) to pad out his “I’m not racist because I hate Obama, look Thomas Sowell is black and hates Obama” racist anti-Obama screeds. Dr. Sowell himself is a conservative bizarro universe ambassador, and his recent article just flat out takes the cake for sheer lunacy. He’s also an economist, but you’ll never read anything remotely close to economics from him. Most of his work is spinning the right-wing echo chamber and filling articles with debunked TEA Party rhetoric.

Economics for most average people is a slippery slope, we just don’t know squat about it. It’s why we depend on economists and those who write about the topic to sort of hash this stuff out. And while I’m not as well versed in economics and the machinations therein as I’d like, I can’t help but lean on my crutch of social justice when looking at things like the economy. Mr. Sowell, with all his economics acumen, insists that there is no such thing as the trickle down economics…”theory“.

Being a Thomas Sowell article, it’s a continuation of empty partisan hate rhetoric and other right-wing baloney, that’s hungrily gobbled up by his readers. Who, from the comments section, don’t necessarily comprehend what he’s writing about, but since he has a Dr. in his title, he must know what he’s talking about right? So, parrot away!

To be fair, Dr. Sowell is an economist, who really doesn’t write all that much about economics, oddly enough. But he has stood by this notion that there is no such thing as trickle down economics “theory” in the past. His article is less about the trickle down “lie” and more about semantics.

This becomes slippery because trickle down is just a phrase, it’s not an economy theory. It has now become political shorthand. That doesn’t make it any less true or apt, and it certainly doesn’t mean it’s a “lie”. It’s an idea, Dr. Sowell puts the theory on it to make a seemingly baseless semantics argument. Because as he mentions in his article: “Let's stop and think. Why would anyone advocate that we "give" something to A in hopes that it would trickle down to B? Why in the world would any sane person not give it to B and cut out the middleman?” Well, why would they Dr. Sowell? Why would anyone also make it a major plank of their political ideology?

The trickle down term has proliferated itself because of it’s simplicity of understanding. Supply side economics, Reaganomics, and all the other right-wing economic strategies have all sullied themselves and have now come to be seen as negatives because they just do not work, and trickle down just goes ahead and just calls it like it is.

Dr. Sowell also waves around his hero, J.A. Schumpeter and his glorious uber-book on economics, and states that no trickle down theory exists therein, therefore it just doesn’t exist. It’s patently absurd to use a near modern turn of phrase and somehow think it’s not going to be in a some ancient tome from a man who died long before supply side economics was twinkle in Arthur Laffer’s eye. It’s sheer laziness, and is just bite sized enough that any right-wing idiot can parrot it aloud.

Sowell then goes on to quote that the Washington Post, New York Times and “professors at prestigious American universities” have attacked the trickle down economics. Then states that there can not be found anyone who has advocated it. Which is an odd paragraph since he doesn’t state anyone particular who has attacked it. You’d think he’d be able to if he’s going to say something so baseless. Hell, I’d even been fine with him just quoting one of his fellow coworkers at the Hoover Institute like Americans for Limited Government do all the time in their articles.

Dr. Sowell’s true argument is that taxes are still too high, and that they need to be lowered. But the how and why remains largely absent from any and all of his articles his writes on economics. As with his political ideology, his ideas are largely absent. 

Susan Stamper Brown's Liberal Resolutions for 2014!

Ahh, a new year, a hopefully new start, and continued writing in this here minutes! It is true, I have been somewhat an absentee mayor as of late, but fear not…I am trying again! But what to write about? So many yummy nuggets came all at me towards the end of the year. Most of them of the list, “mea culpa (but not)” variety. I had Kathleen Parker write about how she is so above it when it comes to writing, and how she doesn’t read her comments on her website articles, but upon further inspection the paltry comments therein lead me to believe it’s a point most moot for her. If only The Washington Post would take notice! David Brooks chimed in with his nugget of how the GOP needed to reach out to women, minority’s and independents if they have any political future. No, it was from the end of the year, I promise…although I can’t say whether or not it was just a reprint of a 2012 article. Ross Douthat reflected on his year as a right-wing blowhard, and found more often than not that he jumped on the hyperbole wagon too fast and too hard, scraping his knees and making him sure that this coming year he’ll try better. Looking at most of his output, this is unlikely.

But I want to start of the year with a bit of a softball. Susan Stamper Brown is one of those right-wing pundits that just don’t live in the country, or on this planet, I’d say galaxy, but that’s science that’s up for debate, so…we can only safely assume the earth is 6,000 years old and just move on from there. I’ve wrote about Ms. Stamper Brown before, her and those of her ilk, are evangelical Christians whose extreme piety is only matched by her supreme political ignorance. Not to be outdone by her more successful peers, Mrs. Stamper Brown came up with a list.

This list is a list of resolutions for Liberals to follow in 2014. It’s indeed something of a marvel to behold, seeing as her grasp on the political front is tenuous at best, that she tries to wrap her mind around what a Liberal might be. So instead of say, a human being, you get this Fox News inspired cartoon. I also love the beginning of her piece where she slides in this faux false equivalency of Liberals driving the Democrat Party out of the mainstream. Do what now? But that is another article for another time. Here we go!

Touch a Gun. I have forgotten to mention that Mrs. Stamper Brown recently moved to Alaska. In this move she naturally become a more feral conservative. So…guns. They don’t kill, they protect! She grumbles and burps out over a bloodied seemingly liberal carcass in her paws. I love the dead moose meat being lean and healthy line she puts in at the end. It’s just too bad that’s not the argument Liberals have against guns. While I do applaud her not making yet another “Oh Liberals are giants pansies who have never shot a gun” argument, I don’t think her notion that gun free zones are actually “Hey crazy gun nut…Free For All Shooting Time!” is correct at all.  But she got it out of her system nonetheless.

Share In a Meaningful Debate. I love when right-wingers act like what they consider debate is somewhere approaching meaningful. Just look at the 24 Hour News cycle, and chiefly Fox News. There’s no debate to be had there at all, and meaningful? Please. Also, I don’t consider yelling at the top of your voice debate either. Mrs. Stamper Brown also assumes that her political ideological bent is indeed a correct one. But when your ideological house sees two sides to every story, in EVERYTHING, why even try debating at all. There’s facts and there’s lies, end of story. I love this line: “Using inane adjectives to discredit your opponent is juvenile and ignorant…“ I’m supposing some dirty liberal probably used a few words on her that she didn’t understand in a debate, and she got mad, started yelling, and lost. Additionally, being ignorant of most things gives the impression you’re good at debating, because people just stop trying to help you out of your ignorant hole.

Seek Truth. Hot on the heels of “meaningful debate” and abstaining for inane adjectives is a plea to seek knowledge and be informed. This is an odd one considering Mrs. Stamper Brown’s allergy to it on most occasions. I enjoy the two fold notion that Mrs. Stamper suggests forming new relationships to those who may not think as you do, and that liberals only get informed by watching MSNBC and Comedy Central. Which to be fair, of all the things that could inform somebody, you can’t really go wrong with MSNBC and Comedy Central. My favorite thing ever is that study that proclaimed Fox News viewers less informed on a variety of topics than uninformed people. Most assuredly, Mrs. Stamper Brown is one of those less informed types. She’s also saying that potheads are probably more informed than she is…scary thought.

Value Life. Ahh, here we go…deeper into the right-wing idiot morass. Of course, being a liberal, you absolutely abhor fetuses! Mrs. Stamper Brown rattles off a bunch of scary numbers of only the “reported” abortions that happen and suggests that indeed if fetuses were to be put on an endangered species list, suddenly liberals would care more. What? This is absurd and not really worth getting in to…again. These “scary” numbers don’t do anything for me personally. In fact, if this was written for a Liberal to follow, I think Mrs. Stamper Brown would’ve been better served not even including this point at all. It’s a great dig, which why I assume it’s in here in the first place, but these “scary” numbers are only good at ginning up uninformed evangelicals come election time. And because it still works like a charm in fly over country, we see it in this article as well.

Make Money. Because if you’re liberal you’re also probably poor, right? “If you have a job, be grateful, if not, go get one or create your own. Hop off that never-ending hamster wheel of “I can’t get a job because I have no experience,”  stop blaming the economy and become part of the solution.” I love this “create your own job” pull yourself up by your own bootstraps horseshit. It’s been the right-wing go to card on this economy for the longest time. It looks like that economic plan isn’t really doing them any good. It’s even more galling when you notice that most of the states that take in the most welfare are proportionally red states, and most takers white people. That’s weird right? Yelling “STOP BEING SO POOR!” at people doesn’t work, and this gratefulness for any job is absurd. I thought this was America, dammit, anything’s possible! I also love her minimum wage bit, because that’s why the minimum wage was created in the first place right? Oh, history! Soon!

Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is. This is a short one because, yet again, this is more a Liberal hit piece than anything else. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised at this one, but I was really hoping Mrs. Stamper Brown would be able to teach Liberals something with this “list”. I was always of the mindset that if you live in a capitalistic society, work in a capitalistic society, that you were inherently participating in capitalism. According to Mrs. Stamper Brown Liberals either embrace capitalism or stop buying Apple products. Yup. That’s it. This supposes that Apple is single handedly the driving force of the American economy…and…wait…what IS she saying?

Do Charitable Work. Liberals are the most uncharitable people on the planet, according to some poll one time. What better way to give back than by giving back AND looking down on those less fortunate than you! It’s only christian. This is kind of a weird one. To be fair, the list has just dropped any pretense of being anything other than a hit piece. But this assumption that because the right-wing is predominantly evangelical means they’re more charitable and caring is absurd. At the very least the inherent piety is disgusting enough no matter what religious leanings Mrs. Stamper Brown adheres to.

Buy An SUV. I’m half surprised there wasn’t more to this one, like an actual sponsorship by a SUV manufacturer. Mrs. Stamper Brown prattles on and on about all the new features of a modern SUV and adds: “The additional money you will pay for in gas is well worth the safety you will gain.” So is this more like a “To-Do” list for Liberals? Because if there’s no job to be had, then one would assume that buying an SUV would be low on that list of things to own. What exactly would owning an SUV afford a Liberal in 2014...is this even a suggestion?

Become A Student of History. Hahaha. Very funny Mrs. Stamper Brown, suggest reading a biography as somehow a parallel to actually knowing some history. You could watch the History Channel and be more informed on history than a right-wing conservative. This addition to the list is proof positive of this idiocy. So the bullet point should be “Know something about World War II (Nazis bad)” ?

Read The U.S. Constitution. And no other country I suppose? So much for learning other things outside your wheelhouse, huh? I’m glad Mrs. Stamper Brown saved this one for last because if there’s one thing I’m not tired of is right-wingers thinking they got this whole government thing figured out because they read AT the constitution. Oh sure, you can read the constitution all day, but it doesn’t do you any good if you can’t absorb what it’s trying to say. What is supposed to be a governing document for our country is being turned in to some sort of religious artifact by the right-wing.  Who, like their bible, have somehow been the only people to literally get it and no one else has the vaguest idea why, so you just have to trust them. Unfortunately, their reading of the constitution just so happened to coincide with Obama's 2008 election, so all those years where their vaunted constitution was actually being used as toilet paper by the W. administration, they couldn't be bothered to remember their 4th amendment right. More importantly they don't really seem all that interested in anything but the 1st and 2nd amendment anyways, so I don't really see a need to read the ENTIRE constitution to debate a right-wing blowhard.

Lane Filler's Henry Ford Legend!

Minimum wage, that old bugaboo that never ceases to amaze those who look at it in awe, wondering what went wrong. Mind you, these fast food worker strikes, wherein they ask that they get paid $15 an hour for their labors, can’t help but rankle those amongst the middle class who don’t make nearly as much working “regular” jobs. Especially in places like the Midwest where the cost of living is so low, and with it, the wages as well. It was something I was reminded of when listening to the local right-wing talk show. Caller after caller would phone in talking about themselves or others who were making $12 an hour working a job that required a degree. They were incensed that a (not spoken aloud) lowly fast food worker was demanding $15 for shoveling crap food in to the gaping maws of their fellow man. An d honestly, I couldn’t agree with them more.

But…here’s the rub…I think fast food workers should be paid $15 an hour, just not all of it wage based. I wouldn’t be opposed to, say $12 an hour, with the rest of that $3 paid towards a basic health insurance plan. So that they can get sick, miss work, or just be able to breath a bit easier knowing that they can live life without fear of losing what little foothold they currently have on life. Restaurant work is indeed hard, and like the right-wing likes to flaunt, if someone won’t do a job, someone else will rise up and do it instead. Doubling this, sickness from the hundreds of people that they have to serve, not least amongst themselves. I stopped in to a Taco Bell a few weeks back, not only was one staffer waiting for a ride in the restaurant proper, sick, but quite a few of the people behind the counter, making food, were coughing and sniffling. That I didn’t catch something is a godsend.

The biggest argument the pro-minimum wage hikers have is that long ago, in a land far far away, a man named Henry Ford paid his employees double the wage rate at the time so that those who made his vehicles could afford to buy one. Our old libertarian friend, Lane Filler, comes through just in time for Christmas with a benumbing of an article attempting to defeat this argument.

This entire article is Lane Filler just wasting time, mostly. He doesn’t really disprove the point of those who drop the Henry Ford when talking about wages, and certainly in the context he’s framing his argument, he kind of makes the point for why fast food workers, especially McDonald’s employees should get paid a fair wage. Mr. Filler concludes that of the $5 he was paying his worker half of that was profit sharing. This is the entire argument of the pro-wage hike movement. McDonald’s could use just one billion of it’s four billion dollar annual profits, and pay their employee’s a decent wage, with benefits.
This faulty libertarian idea that the “free market” is a trap door under wages is absurd. Why this idea that perhaps paying wage earners a better wage would then lead to an overall better product is seen as absurd and a fallacy remains puzzling to me. At least Mr. Filler isn’t going all “minimum wage hikes = job killer”, so I can at least respect his attempt at perverting history to make a free market point.

Mr. Filler takes it further by saying that those places that do pay their workers more, like Costco for instance, aren’t interested in bettering their workers lives, just trying to push a better P.R.. This really doesn’t make much sense in the larger argument, and if anything just torpedoes the whole “free market decides all” mentality that infects the right-wing and by extension it’s libertarian practitioners. This is further deepened by Mr. Fillers use of “I think”. So, he doesn’t know, he’s just sort of guessing that this may be why, and not that paying your employees more has the added benefit of making an overall better product top to bottom.

The pro-minimum wage hike supporters argument is pretty simple. The anti-minimum wage folks only have one defense: small businesses will get destroyed. When pressed for examples, umm well, there’s that one place like in rural somewhereachussetts…and Obamacare. So they don’t really have an argument with any weight to it. Supply and demand ultimately decide the fates of most businesses, be they small or gigantic.

The billion dollar profit corporations that make the most money off their wage slave workers are the ones correctly in the cross-hairs here. It’s absurd just how rich these people are, that just taking a tiny fraction of their profits to better care for their employees would do absolutely nothing to their bottom line. It’s becomes an argument of just how much these people plan to take with them when they die? So instead of perhaps correcting this problem, the rich would rather pit middle class worker against middle class worker. These people will always be game to play along, because they are ignorant. They view fast food work as young person’s game, and something you do in the interim before the big job comes along. But what about that big job that never comes? Life gets in the way, any number of other things happen, and that fresh faced 17 year old is now 26 with two children and renting an apartment that he can barely keep ends together? Too often, as middle class people rise up the ranks they forget just how hard it can be at the bottom. This isn’t helped by a pundit class who’s mantra is “I got mine, fuck you, get yours!”, like Mr. Filler, who can write these kind of navel-gazing pieces that pad out their yearly quota.