Uprising

Tunisia? Egypt? Wisconsin?! The Middle East is not the only place they're taking to the streets. Teabagger Governor Scott Walker is attempting to cut the wages and break the union of Wisconsin's state employees. To make sure they don't strike, he's willing to bring in the National Guard to "prevent disruptions."

However, some teachers, along with their students, went to the capitol and staged a peaceful protest. How many? Estimates ranged from 13,000 to 30,000. Result? Now Walker and the Republicans are considering some changes.

As for the Middle East, it's interesting to note that people suffering under authoritarian regimes are rising up and toppling those regimes one after another with no involvement from us.

Adventures in stupidity

If this was fiction, it would be edited out for being too stereotypical, but it's real:

I tell ya, we’ve got some new problems in Washington. Big problems. Just today, Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta said people in America are not eating enough fruits and vegetables. They want to give all the power to the federal government to force you to eat more fruits and vegetables. This is what the federal, CDC, they gonna be calling you to make sure you eat fruits and vegetables, every day. This is socialism of the highest order!

GzeroP Rep. Paul Broun of Georgia.

Seriously, people? You want them back in power?

If Republicans take Congress in November

The fine folks who shut down government for an extramarital blowjob vow more of the same if they regain the majority:

According to Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., the House Republicans should exercise their power to subpoena and hold continuous hearings. Speaking to a gathering for the GOP Youth Convention on July 22 in Washington, D.C., she emphasized this point.

“Oh, I think that’s all we should do,” Bachmann said. “I think that all we should do is issue subpoenas and have one hearing after another. And expose all the nonsense that is going on. And it’s very important when we come back that we have constitutional conservative leadership because the American people’s patience is about this big.”

Did you get that? No legislation, no efforts whatsoever to solve the nation's problems, just one witch hunt after another for at least two years. These people still love George W. Bush and think he did a fine job. These are the stakes for this election.

Spill, Baby, Spill!

How's that oily, drilly, thing workin' for ya? Currently spewing oil at the rate of four Exxon Valdez's every week, our newest poster child for corporate greed is threatening the Gulf coast with an environmental and economic disaster. Not surprisingly the greasy fingerprints of Halliburton are all over this, and there's more to come.

Just another Republican atrocity that'll be blamed on the Democrats.

Almost forgot, picture credit: NASA/Earth Observatory/Jesse Allen, using data provided courtesy of the University of Wisconsin’s Space Science and Engineering Center MODIS Direct Broadcast system. That's right, you can already see this from space.

Liars being honest for once

A cluster of admissions today gives us a glimpse of how much we can trust our leaders:

Republican congressmen say, "everybody thinks that Iraq was a mistake." I guess you were too busy strutting and chest-bumping to let us know that.

John McCain says he never considered himself a maverick. Sheesh, after building an entire persona around that?

Our military brass covered up two sickening incidents, just now admitting the cold-blooded murder of two pregnant women and a teenage girl, among others, then attempting to hide the evidence in an especially grisly way. The other is a 2007 video posted by Wikileaks from a helicopter gunship slaughtering 12 people, including two Reuters employees, with the crew celebrating.

Every now and then the mask slips and we see the rot underneath.

Finally done

Health insurance reform legislation passed in the Senate today after more than a year of wrangling between progressive and corporate Democrats, and an all-out effort among Republicans to derail it. The Teabaggers and other right-wingers throughout the country reacted with their usual grace and sophistication: racist and homophobic slurs, vandalism, threats, envelopes of white powder in the mail and other charming instances of the spittle-flecked, purple-faced rage that spills over whenever a small, long-overdue step towards social justice is achieved.

The ignorance and incoherence of the Right was in full flower during the past year, what with cries of "keep government hands off my medicare," attacks on medical patients and children, and the comparison of Obama to Hitler in the apparent belief that attempting to solve the healthcare crisis is equivalent to exterminating millions of people.

The spectacle was similar to school integration in the 60's when the desire of dark-skinned children to have a better educations was a crime worthy of capital punishment by vigilante mobs.

It would have been nice to have a single-payer system or at least a public option for all this effort, but when you want something more than your opponent does, you are at a disadvantage in the negotiation process.

There is good to be had out of this, with the closing of the Medicare donut hole, the ending of discrimination against pre-existing conditions, ending limits on coverage, and of course, extending coverage to more people. I also hope that this ordeal has finally convinced Democrats that Republicans care about nothing but regaining power and will never negotiate in good faith.

Happy New Decade

The first decade of the 21st century is now in the books. It can be remembered as the decade that conservatives were given everything they wanted. They were given all three branches of government by the branch they already owned; the Supreme Court. Osama Bin Laden gave them the war they always wanted with a bonus war, Afghanistan, thrown in. Phil Gramm, Alan Greenspan and others gave them the economy they always wanted. They were also given the energy policy they wanted (drill, baby, drill), the gun control policy they wanted, (none), the unitary executive they wanted, and the media they always wanted(Fox Noise).

They went on a binge and we were left with the hangover. We were told that they knew what they were doing and to sit down and shut up. We're now currently enjoying the results. It was only when we ignored that admonition that we could slow the destruction. Something to consider in the upcoming decade.

Who lies?

The douchebag who called Obama a liar during his speech last night is a major recipient of health insurance industry lobby money. What a surprise. It's a classic Rovian tactic to accuse the other side of what you are doing. Fight back here.

Family values

From the OC Weekly:

SACRAMENTO--Freshmen legislators arriving in Sacramento receive advice from veteran
 politicians about the intricacies of working in California's capital. One of those tips is to remember that microphones broadcasting legislative debates can also capture embarrassing, career-ending personal admissions if a politician isn't careful. Michael D. Duvall, Orange County's 72nd Assembly
District representative, must have forgotten the warning.

In July--two days after Assembly Speaker Karen Bass and Republican leader Sam Blakeslee put Duvall on the Rules Committee that oversees member ethics--the second-term, conservative, Republican assemblyman sat in a public hearing and vividly described lewd details about his trysts with a female lobbyist whose clients had business before another committee on which
 Duvall sits.


Duvall, speaking to a relatively mum Republican colleague seated to his left, apparently had no idea his dais microphone became live beginning about a minute before the start of a cable-televised committee hearing. He was captured in the middle of recounting portions of an affair.


"She wears little eye-patch underwear," said Duvall, who is married with two children. "So, the other day she came here with her underwear, Thursday. And
 so, we had made love Wednesday--a lot! And so she'll, she's all, 'I am going 
up and down the stairs, and you're dripping out of me!' So messy!"

He's also cheating on his girlfriend with another woman. He's anti-gay, too. Apparently hypocrisy is a family value.

Update: Buh-bye!

The Empire strikes back

The authoritarian right is regrouping. The Party of no is adding exclamation points. Even though they are hated more now than last November, they've drawn a line in the sand over health care reform. Generously funded by the insurance companies, aided by the media they own, the right wing has given their minions their marching orders to disrupt debate by any means necessary.

When the Right was in power, they tightly controlled their interactions with the public and stifled debate. Now that they're out of power, they are open in their intent to stifle debate. They know that true health care reform would benefit Democrats for decades and they don't care what they have to do to stop it.

How far will they take it? There have been vague but ominous threats as to what they'll do if they don't get their way on Election Day.

Unreachable

A wingnut explains global warming.

An Obama Birther disrupts a Republican's town hall and the crowd is on her side.

These are the people who still supported Bush last year. They cannot be reasoned with, and there is no common ground between me and them. The only way to deal with them is to show the world how insane they are, and to use the ballot box to stop them cold.

Oh, come on!

This is becoming ridiculous. These Republican 2012 hopefuls are just getting silly. Still, I'm going to miss her. She's been comedy gold platinum.

Another one bites the dust

At this rate, the GOP is going to have to put out a Craigslist ad for somebody to run against Obama in 2012.

C'mon in, the water's fine

The long collapse of the GOP into a regional fringe party heard another big crash today as Arlen Specter, one of the last Republicans with any interest in legislating, became a Democrat. To be honest, he didn't really have a choice, with polls showing he would get clobbered in the primary. By jumping ship, however, he kept his hopes alive for winning in the general, provided the Democrats support him. Certainly he worked that out with Harry Reid before this announcement.

Still, this shows how crazy the Republicans have become by forcing all the moderates out. With the eventual seating of Al Franken, the Democrats will have a filibuster-proof 60-seat majority in the senate. The Party of No has to talk to the hand now.

That's it, I'm done

Obama should have everything fixed by now, and it's not. Therefore the only thing left to conclude is that the Republicans were right and we should all be free-marketeers. Sarah 2012!

An honest Republican

Nobody, Barack. But that won't stop some people from saying it. Via the Plum Line, Patrick McHenry, R-NC, speaks plainly:

“We will lose on legislation. But we will win the message war every day, and every week, until November 2010,” said Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., an outspoken conservative who has participated on the GOP message teams. “Our goal is to bring down approval numbers for [Speaker Nancy] Pelosi and for House Democrats. That will take repetition. This is a marathon, not a sprint.”

They don't give a damn about you, me or the country. Getting back in power is all they care about. That's why they miss this guy.

Now it's personal

My boss had to cut everybody's hours at work. We're all taking one unpaid day off per week in the hope of avoiding layoffs. While there is no shortage of work to do around the house and I'll have more time to do it, a 20% pay cut hurts. Especially with a California mortgage. This economy hasn't hit bottom yet, so my pay might still get cut again, maybe by 100%.

Lee J and I have done our part all these years. Our mortgage is one we could afford, with 20% down and a fixed rate. We don't have any other debt except for a modest amount on the credit card. I put my 15% into retirement savings every single pay period and Lee J went back to school and begun a new career. The Republicans took a surplus of hundreds of billions of dollars and squandered it into a trillion dollar hole. All they can say is "more tax cuts" while arrogant executives spend our bailout money on cruises and manicures. Overpaid and unregulated Masters Of The Universe showed they had no idea what they're doing and were rewarded anyway.

President Obama, members of Congress, here's my take on the stimulus. Right now, I'm not gonna spend a dime unless it's necessary. No going out, no purchasing of gadgets, toys, treats, goodies or anything. A tax cut won't mean a damn thing. If I can't be reasonably sure I'm still going to have a job, any tax savings will go into the bank, or to the aforesaid mortgage. I'm not helping the overall situation this way, but I've got my own ass to worry about. Democrats, we donated money, worked the phones and pounded the pavement for you. Do your part. Shut the Republicans up and do this right.

Smell the bipartisanship

He wined them. He dined them. They still spit in his face. Obama courted House Republicans for their votes on his stimulus plan and didn't get any. Not one. It still passed, thanks to the voters who elected enough Democrats. Now the bill goes to the Senate where it is automatically assumed to be filibustered unless the Democrats can peel two skittish Republicans off or Obama guts the bill completely. I hope he learns from this.

Republicans don't care about anything but returning to power. They want Obama to fail. Their leader said as much. Karl Rove is still thumbing his nose at Congress. Republicans cannot be reasoned with. Obama will have to go around them or through them if he wants to get anything done.

The mask is off

Republican voters are showing their true colors:

More examples of compassionate conservatism here, here, here, here, and here.

Susan Eisenhower leaves the Republican Party

Ike's granddaughter realizes the party of Lincoln has become the very thing her grandfather feared.