Vote For Prosperity

"Demos research associate Sean McElwee's post this week reviews economic research showing that "Democrats make the pie bigger for everyone, while Republicans redistribute income toward the rich and whites." But you already knew that. Still, McElwee's link-filled column at Aljazeera compiles a lot of supporting studies in one convenient location."

The quote above is from Tom Sullivan's post of 2/28/2015 on Digby's Hullabaloo.  It is entitled "Prosperity vs. Being Picked Last In Gym Class."  This is well worth reading, as is Mr. McElwee's post.  It is really difficult to understand why anyone who knows anything about economics and is not a billionaire would vote for a Republican.  Unfortunately the people who do vote for Republicans are not going to read this blog or Digby's Hullabaloo or Aljazeera or anything else written by someone who thinks facts matter.

Rudy Rude

Rudy Giuliani must have recently visited Florida to look at the ass prints he left there on the road to the white house. I say this because his envy over where President Obama resides is all too apparent. When Mr. Giuliani said that President Obama does not love this country or you or me he really meant that President Obama does not love white America to the exclusion of the rest of America! For some reason, Mr. Giuliani cannot grasp why President Obama thinks he should represent all Americans.

Sorry Rudy, we do not mean to confuse you. I also know better than to try to change you. So go home to your bomb shelter, light up a non-filtered Lucky Strike, put on some bebop, and lament the passing of the worst features of that era. The rest of us will celebrate the good things, such as the rise of the middle class and the prosperous world economy America did so much to create back then. We will also celebrate Brown v. Board of Education, the Civil Rights Act of 1957, President Eisenhower enforcing school integration by sending troops into Little Rock Arkansas, and all of the progress we have made in trying to create fairer society for all of our people. We will celebrate those difficult things, sometimes with tears in our eyes over the pain so many suffered for the sake of justice, and we will continue to dedicate ourselves to the uncompleted task of making this the society it must become.

Although we know change can be painful, we dedicate ourselves to the cause of justice because we love America, not because we loath America.  True love is never blind love, and the true patriot is the person who strives to make his or her country better!

Stale Jokes

Jon Stewart's announcement that he is leaving the Daily Show has me thinking about how terribly difficult it is to sustain a show that depends on political humor. One of the problems today is that the crap in the federal legislature has only changed to the extent that the voters for some inexplicable reason decided to pile it higher and deeper by giving the Republicans control of the Senate as well as the House. I will grant you that making fun of stupid is always in fashion, but the Republicans seem to be determined to confirm the definition of insanity by doing the same stupid shit over and over and over until what there is to say about it, funny or otherwise, has been repeated ad nauseam.

How many times have the Republicans voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act? The only reason people are not laughing about that is because we have run out of funny things to say about it! There is also an element of potential tragedy looming because the worst Supreme Court in the history of this nation has another opportunity to deprive millions of people of affordable health care by destroying the act, and that is not funny.

Now the Republicans are putting the entire country at risk by threatening to kill the Department of Home Land Security if President Obama does not rescind his executive order regarding immigration. If another 911 attack happens because Homeland Security was not there to detect and stop the plot it will not be just the Hispanics of this country that will want to lynch the Republicans. But not to worry because the Republicans say that if this ploy does not work they will keep embedding the same poison pill in all budgets and other bills this country really needs to have Congress pass. Which means they will shut down the government again!  All right, so there might be some humor stemming from the fact that in their effort to piss off the Hispanic voters they say they need to win the next election the Republicans are doing the very things that will piss off almost everyone, regardless of race, ethnicity or gender; I wish I could also say regardless of ideology and idiocy.  

So far the Republicans have actually been rewarded for doing terrible things to this country, but that cannot last forever. Only in the dark and very smelly universe of Fox are people delusional enough to believe that the Democrats are the ones who are responsible for defunding Homeland Security. Reasonable people understand why Democrats refuse to eat the soup after watching the Republicans piss in it. Similarly, there is something about the trickle down theory and the GOP's efforts to destroy labor unions that will keep all but the most mentally challenged from believing Lyin' Ryan and Ted, the Texas turd, when they blame President Obama for the great disparity in the distribution of the wealth of this nation. Unfortunately, the blatant hypocrisy of Republicans spewing such Orwellian garbage has become so old that most people do not laugh at the absurdity any more!  The GOP truly is the party of the exploiters and the exploited idiots.

About the only chuckles I still get from politics come from people like Scott Walker who refuse to answer questions about evolution because an honest answer would upset the morons who vote for them. I would like to say I also find Walker's approach to global warming funny, but we all know that Walker is pulling his answers to questions about global warming straight out of the Koch brothers colostomy bag; do I need to tell you how much that stinks?  In addition to false equivalencies, the Republicans are great at using anti-intellectual ignorance.  The usual answer the Republicans give in regard to ignoring scientific evidence they do not like is that they are not scientists. Apparently their ability to understand what scientists are telling them is so seriously impaired that one has to wonder how they are able to function in the information age.  But the fact that Republicans do not see that as a problem is really more disturbing than it is funny.

What I have to say to millennials is that it is still all right to laugh at this shit, even though it has become old shit. What is not all right is to let it stand! This insanity is only funny when sane people put forth the effort needed to minimize the damage at the very least.  As we used to say in the sixties: If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem!   

Trans-Pacific Partnership

TPP is the black hole of trade agreements. Everyone knows it is out there, but no one seems to know what is in it or how many of our high paying manufacturing jobs we will lose to it! Furthermore, there is an effort to keep us from finding those things out by bypassing the normal procedures for gaining the consent of the Senate for this trade agreement. Bypassing the normal procedures is called fast tracking, and it forestalls any disclosure of the terms of the agreement and any public debate about the agreement. The fact that neither the Republicans nor the Big Corporations are raising a fuss about this fast tracking tells me the oligopoly is looking forward to some very cheap foreign labor. If that sounds paranoid to you consider the fact that NAFTA and the other trade agreements we have entered into have cost us far more in the way of good paying jobs than we have gained as a result of the much touted increase in trade.

If you are not skeptical about the benefits of TPP ask yourself a very simple question: what would you think if the kid who burned down your shed was reaching for the matches again and would not tell you what he intended to do with them? Frankly, I am damn sick of getting burned by Milton Freedman's free trade economics.  We, the people, have a right to know what the hell is in that agreement and what it is likely to cost us! If the President and the Republicans insist on fast tracking the TPP agreement the Democrats should filibuster it, and we should let any Democrat who would vote for cloture know it will cost him or her in the next election. Please e-mail your Senator today.

67 Times!

The Republican congress has now voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act for the sixty-seventh time.  I guess you do that sort of thing when the economy defies your doom and gloom predictions in spite of your best efforts to make things worse.   Hell, Paul Ryan is so desperate that he is even accusing Democrats of embracing his (Ayn Rand) theory of economics, and he is making that sound like the horrible thing it would be if it were true.  By accusing President Obama of practicing "trickle down economics" Ryan, this so called intellectual of the Republican Party, is demonstrating that he either has no idea what "trickle down economics" means or  he is finally acknowledging that it does not work and is trying to blame the very people who have been saying it does not work.  Unlike trickle down, the Affordable Care Act is working!

It is difficult to imagine a political party surviving the stupidity the Republicans are putting on display.  If this does not tell you how unwise it is to sit at home and let the idiots who watch Fox news decide elections, I give up!