Well…this will be a short one but I think it is an important development in the ongoing tax nonsense by the repubs…the other day, a bunch of millionaires tried to get to the deficit “supercommittee” and ask them to tax them more…I was shocked but heartened when I heard this…maybe some of the rich do have consciences….and maybe there are some people in his country that are finally starting to think? I think that the repubs are going to be in for a big surprise next year in the elections….this country is starting to wake up to their ruinious tactics and their fealty to Grover Norquist and his anti-tax pledge. But, one thing I do fear is that the dems have not learned anything and will give in again to the repubs extortion..then, the only hope will be winning the election and reversing what happens over the next couple of months.
Oh, one other thing, I am starting to hope that the supreme court will overturn the healthcare law…then we can go back to the best idea…a single payer system that will allow us to cut the insurance companies and their egregious profits out of the equation…that will save 20% right from the start….
Well….if you had any doubt of the outcome of the court challenges to the new healthcare law, all you have to do is take a look at who was dining with the the major challengers of the law. The other day, both justices Thomas and Scalia dined at a dinner that was sponsored by the law firm that will be challenging the law in court…yep, you heard it right, the justices that are supposed to be the most impartial and held to the highest standards of any court in the land are out rubbing elbows with not only the law firm that will be arguing in front of them but with trade associations who are financially backing the suit. Doesn’t this look like a conflict of interest to anyone else? This doesn’t even include that justice Thomas’s wife is a leading proponent of repeal and makes millions of dollars as a lobbyist for the repeal crowd. This isn’t even the first time these two have done something that is, by statute, not illegal, but still stinks of influence coming from the big money folks on the right…they have been regulars at the Koch brothers sponsored events for years…and I don’t care how much they protest that they will still be objective, all you have to do is read some of their opinions to see that the right’s machine has friends on the court. Geez….
Well…when I was out on the bike today, I heard this lyric by Peter Gabriel..”the place where I come from is small town, they think so small, they use small words…” and it made me think of the current crop of repub candidates…I can’t remember a smaller bunch of politicians…I don’t mean small in the physical sense but in the size of their ideas. Over the course of the debates so far, there has not been one of them with any ideas on how to make the country greater…to move us to the next stage…they are all a just of counterpunchers that just say no, that just say what can’t be done, and who only parrot the failed ideas of the repub party of the past thirty years. Where is the person from the conservative end of the spectrum that can think for themselves and not just channel Grover Norquist? What happened to the time honored approach to foreign policy that said “politics end at water’s edge” and that the president should be supported when he deals with the rest of the world?
This group of tiny politicians remind me of a pack of Pekinese yipping and yapping around the ankles of the greats….geez…
Oh, and one last thing that should disqualify them all….at the debate a couple of days ago, every one of them has vowed to violate the Geneva conventions by the use of torture on terror suspects…and commit a felony at the same time…what a bunch of idiots…
Well…one of the funny things that came out of the repub debate from a couple of days ago falls under the heading of “can Mitt be this stupid” and made me laugh like crazy. When ole Mitt was spouting the usual talking points of repealing “Obamacare”, he made mention of a comparison that the left has been making for decades now…that every other industrialized country in the world pays less for healthcare than the US does…and he attributed the extra cost to the government being involved. But, what he fails to realize is that every other country that he noted has some form of a single-payer system that the government runs. So, now, Mitt…are you for or against a single-payer system? Or are you going to be against it today and for it tomorrow? Or, are you saying that the lie you and your repub cronies are spouting is just a cynical ploy to ensure that the insurance companies can continue to steal from the country?
Which is it, Mitt? Or,is it both…or is it neither? And, what will it be tomorrow?
Well…finally some good news for the country with the defeat of the radical right wing agenda in both Mississippi and in Ohio…in Mississippi…the people came to their senses and stopped the nonsense of “personhood” which would have set the cause of women’s rights back to the bad old 60′s….one of the right’s biggest goals…to repeal or continue to chip away at reproductive rights that women have had to fight with their lives for…in Ohio, the Koch brothers attack on organized labor and the middle class was soundly defeated by the overturning of the draconian law that the extreme right jammed through the legislature against the will of the people. It’s one of those things that the right just doesn’t get…that just because they win an election, it doesn’t mean they can only govern for their own supporters and the rich and corporations who bought them the election. With the advent of the “Occupy” movement and these election results…there may be a glimmer of hope that the 99% of us that can’t buy elections may be able to take our country back….I hope so anyway…
Well…just a short one for now…kind of a reminder of what the repubs think is important….they make quick work of the “In god we trust” resolution and other nonsense that has no meaning to ordinary citizens…like the two bills in the house and one in the senate that would instill “personhood” on a fertilized egg and restrict women’s rights to control their own bodies…but not one bill to create jobs or to help the middle class out of the crises that was created by their cronies..so, this may turn into a daily thing…but that would be cheating so I may just include this count up in the morning one….let’s say this together…it has been 308 days since the repubs have taken control of the house of representatives…and not one bill to help the un and underemployed here…geez….
Well…I think most of you should be glad that you don’t live here in Michigan with the nonsense that is going on in the repub controlled senate….in case you haven’t heard…a couple of repub senators inserted language into an anti-bullying law here that would allow bullying if it was a result of “a deeply held religious conviction”…yep, you heard it right…in a bone thrown to the religious conservatives here, these two idiots gutted the anti-bullying law that had support on both sides of the aisle just to make sure they continue to have the support of the tea party crowd…never mind the fact that religion should have nothing to with any law here in the US, these are the same people that introduced legislation preventing Sharia law from being used as the basis for any legislation here in the US…but, I guess it’s okay to have religious law if it is Christian law…again, nonsense and hypocrisy from the repubs here and across the country….
Well…thought I’d come back and do this one up right but the outrage I felt last night has mostly dissipated…but not completely…I think the theme was something like this…over the past few decades, going all the way back to Nixon, the repubs have repeatedly shown their disdain for the law and have felt they only have to follow the ones they agree with…Nixon felt that he was above the law (I think his quote was “if the president does it, it’s not against the law”) during Watergate and this theme tracked through the signing statements of ole GW that asserted that he would only enforce laws that he agreed with. Now, we have the right rolling out the big guns to attack the women who have come forward to reveal ole Herm’s reprehensible behavior toward women. I find it funny that the “law and order” party abandons the law as soon as someone asks them to follow it….and that the repub controlled congress spent millions and millions of dollars investigating Clinton for exactly the same sort of allegations….can the right get any more hypocritical?
Well…I know I said that I wasn’t going to do a political one today but this little thing popped into my head and I had to comment on it…to all of you out there that are in the working class and you are against unions, there is only one reason that you need to be for unions….they force companies to share the bounty of profits with everyone, with the hard workers that make the profits possible, not just the executive officers of the company. One of the reasons for the increasing disparity of income in this country is the decline of union membership over the past thirty years; form 25% down to the paltry 7% we have now.And, one of the worst offenders here in the US is Walmart who viciously opposes unionization of it’s North American workforce but allows it in every other country…well, not allows it but many other countries force them to allow their workers to unionize…or they are not allowed to be in those countries…not a bad idea for here, either…so, you tea partiers that have it in for unions and their members, it is you that is helping these thieves steal what is rightfully yours…..how does that feel you idiots?…..geez….
Well…from the start, I have been a supporter of the “Occupy” movement but I am starting to see some things I don’t really like…in Oakland yesterday there were some idiots who thought it would be a good idea to smash windows and do other acts of vandalism and I think it will hurt the movement in the long run if these folks are allowed to continue this lawlessness. It is a first amendment right to gather and protest, but it is just criminal behavior to allow these people to continue this nonsense. I don’t really place the blame on the “Occupy” organizers, since with any movement you get the outlier idiots that take it too far, but if they want to be taken seriously, some plan to find and remove these people should at least be in the works. I think we need to remember the right wing tricks of the sixties where people that were not members of the protests were sent in by the repubs to act badly and give the right excuses that could then be used to tar the whole movement. So, I would counsel vigilance at this point…to keep an eye out for this kind of shenanigan and to end it quickly when it happens….