Well…don’t know how long this one is going to be but I did want to comment on the supreme court and the ACA…aka Obamacare and the arguments that have been going on this week….one of the things that strikes me is how the conservatives have strayed from the traditional role of the court; deciding on whether a law is constitutional or not…with the questions that have come back from Alito et al…I can see the worst kind of judicial activism at work…where they are trying to set policy and write law when that is not their job, and I can see the ignorance of the roles of the three branches government that these conservative justices are showing. It is not their job to look at policy and implementation of laws and the effect of those policies, but that is what those on the right on the court have been doing during the arguments, usurping the traditional role of the legislative branch to write laws and placing themselves as equals to that lawmaking. We can see from the decisions that this court has made in Bush v. Gore, Citizens United, and now the ACA that the conservative justices feel they are only there to further the right-wing conservative agenda…ignoring precedent that reaches back to the founding of this nation for crass political advantage….now that we have seen this worst kind of judicial activism, it should make you realize that the court needs to be reformed…and the only way to do that is to re-elect Obama and hope that just one of the conservatives leaves the court so a justice who has respect for the law can replace him…geez…
Category Archives: Politics
The rich get even richer..
Well…if you didn’t think that there was something wrong with America and how the rewards of the economy are shared across all of it’s citizens…all you have to do is look at the recent study done by the University of California that revealed that in 2010 93% of all income growth went to the top 1% of earners…yep, you read it…the top 1% took away virtually all of the income growth while the other 99% of us were left to feed on the scraps that these folks have not figured out how to steal yet….I’ll come back for more later..but right now I need to read something else so I don’t fall into the pit of despair that these kind of numbers normally induce…geez…
Not much going on….
Well….someone needs to do something pretty soon or I am going to run completely out of things to write about….just haven’t been able to work up the outrage necessary to do these things justice lately….I could comment on the concerted effort on the part of police and prosecutors to cover their asses by smearing Trayvon Martin but the effort is so transparently self-serving that I can’t take it seriously….or I could comment on the open mike gaffe that Obama made a few days back talking to Medvedev where he said he’d have more flexibility to get things done after the election…and ole Mitt jumped on it as the president promising to give away our security if he’s reelected….I see it a little differently…Obama was just telling the truth of the political situation here in the US in front of the election…and truth is something that ole Mitt doesn’t even have a passing acquaintance with and can’t stand when he sees it….hmmmm…what else? That’s enough for now…I’m taking off out of here in a few to go shoot pool with Tom so it will be a while before I come back to add to this one….or I may do that sports one I talked about…
The republicans are just not serious…
Well…I have been struggling lately to come up with topics that really mean something and I think the problem may be that I have stopped reading the newspapers in the morning….but I have made a little cash lately so maybe I should resume going out…who knows? The one thing that I wanted to deal with today is the new budget proposal put forth by Paul Ryan in the last week or so and the fact that it is just more of the same nonsense that he proposed last year…more tax cuts for the rich, more safety net cuts for the middle class and the poor, and exploding the deficit that the repubs say they are concerned about but their actions say otherwise. This document just reeks of dishonesty with the most egregious lie or omission being how to pay for the tax cuts for the rich and corporations that he wants…saying “trust me” with some vague statement that waste and fraud can be eliminated to pay for them but does not say where that waste and fraud lies….and the cheers on the right for this piece of crap have been long and strong with the self congratulatory pats on the back and the attack line that the repubs produced a budget when the dems haven’t…but I think a bad budget proposal like this one is worse than not doing anything…but I do thank ole Paul for pulling the cover back on what American would look like if the repubs were in control….now, all we have to do is vote these idiots out of office…geez….
A few things….
Well…don’t really have a long form topic for today so I think I’ll just take a few things and add them into this one just to see where it goes…first, let’s look at the unintended consequences that are coming from many of the laws that the Koch brothers have sponsored through the right wing legislative organization called ALEC, whose sole purpose is to push the right wing agenda by writing laws that they hand to captive repub legislators across the US who then ram them through state legislatures. One of these laws is the “stand your ground” law in Florida that has been copied across 17 other states that says that people can’t be prosecuted if they shoot someone and claim self defense…the most recent case in Florida concerns an unarmed young black man that was chased by an armed citizen and shot and killed…with the killer claiming self defense…now, I’ve never seen anyone who thought they were in mortal danger run toward the person they felt was threatening…the NRA, ALEC, and the Florida legislators who passed this bill are as responsible for this young man’s death as the shooter. Okay….after that, the rest of the things I wanted to talk about seem pretty trivial so I’ll just leave it here….how can this happen in 2012 in the US?
Paul Ryan is still an idiot…
Well…just a short one on the new budget plan that ole Paul has put forth…I’m not going to bog you down with all of the numbers but just the two that define this mess that continues the repubs war on the middle class and poor….5.3 trillion dollars in cuts to programs for the poor and middle class…including gutting Medicare and social security…and guess who gets tax cuts? I’m sure you guessed it…the rich will get 4.3 billion in tax cuts…so, what this idiot has just said that we are no longer even going to pretend that we give a damn about anyone but the rich…and he justifies it by saying that anything that benefits the less fortunate will just take away their incentive to work and get ahead…never mind that the rich and corporations get much more in subsidies every year…does that mean that corporations will no longer have incentive to compete since they are getting corporate welfare? Oh, no….corporations are different since they are “job creators” so the rules don’t apply….as they don’t to the 1%…how did we get here? I am losing hope for our country if guys like this are allowed to stay in power…geez…
Who cares what the supreme court does on healthcare?
Well…I have been kind of interested in the implementation of the new healthcare law since it would allow me to buy insurance again that I can’t afford now…but, that’s not I want to talk about right now…I really want to talk about the political implications of the supreme court taking up the case for the individual mandate before the fall elections. Some of the pundits on the right think that no matter what the decision is, they have a winning issue for the general….but I see it differently…let’s take the either/or of the decision and see where that will take us. So, if the court rules against the individual mandate, I see the immediate result that the dems will be able to use the decision to connect it to the conservative debacle of Citizens United and say that this is an activist court that is not in the mainstream of American life…on the other hand, if the court upholds the law…the dems can say “see, I told you the law was legal” and hammer the repubs on their ignorance of the law and then start to shift the conversation back to the benefits of the law that the people will like once it is implemented….if a political novice like me can come up this off the top of my head…I’m sure we’re going to be able to deflate this issue quite easily in the fall…
A gaffe a day from these idiots…
Well…just a quick one on the daily gaffes that have been flowing out of the repub candidates and I’m not sure to laugh about them or just roll my eyes…is this shooting fish in a barrel? Yeah, it kind of is but it’s such a hanging curve ball I’m going to take a swing. Okay, I recognize that those last two were bad….Let’s start with ole Rick again, when asked about the unemployment rate, he answered that he “didn’t care about the unemployment rate” and his candidacy is about ‘freedom” and bigger issues than unemployment…how many ways is this one wrong? The one that I want to highlight is the fact that by this statement, Santorum has said that ideology and his right wing agenda is going to trump all of the rest of the problems the country faces…and there are issues that most of us think are more important than his war on everyone but conservative white people. Then, I have to say thanks to ole Mitt for another “let them eat cake” moment that came from questions about his desire to “get rid” of Planned Parenthood. When asked where poor women would go to get the health services that Planned Parenthood provides that they can’t afford to get anywhere else, the wonderfully obtuse Mitt replied “they can go anywhere, it a free country”….I really do wish I was making these up but I’m not…this is the quality of the field from the repubs and these are their ideas….so don’t let them dance around these issues…
Before I have lunch…
Well…just got back from the ride and thought I’d do this one before I get to making lunch…I guess I’ve never seen such a truth challenged bunch like the current crop of repub candidates…starting with ole Rick in Puerto Rico last week saying that for them to get statehood, they would have to comply with federal law that says they have to speak English…I don’t know if it ignorance or just stupidity but there is no such federal law on the books..nowhere…so that still leaves us with the fact that ole Rick is either ignorant of federal law, a great thing for a president, or he is just another of the repubs who are showing they are just not too bright. That brings us to the main event and the attack that ole Mitt made on Obama this week saying that is Obama’s regulatory overreach that is phasing out the incandescent light bulbs that are such energy wasters. First, Mitt, the law that is resulting in the demise of the old fashioned bulbs is contained in a law that was written and passed by a repub controlled congress and signed into law by ole GW himself…long before Obama even took office and long before any regulations on these bulbs could have been made by him. So, here we have supposedly the two best that the repubs have to offer both either showing their stupidity or deliberately lying just to mollify their base…what kind of governance should we expect from these guys? Geez…
This is growth of government?
Well…haven’t been able to write much lately and I’m not sure what the cause is just yet….it could be spring fever…who knows? What I did want to talk about today is the misconception that the repubs are trying to sell that the Obama administration has expanded government regulation more that any president in history and is taking away our freedoms and strangling business…blah, blah, blah…when the opposite is true. Just compare the the costs of the last three years of ole GW’s to the first three years of Obama’s and you’ll see that the regulatory costs and the sheer number of new regulations was significantly higher under ole GW…costing business and individuals billions of dollars and piling on the red tape. I know that none of this means anything to the fact-challenged repubs…they think lies repeated often enough magically turn into the truth….and how can you argue with that?