Okay, all you progressives and centrists, I have something I need you to do…please let the righties, loonies, birthers, and the rest have their say…it has been one of their prime bitches that the mainstream media and the left are doing everything in their power to shut them up and they feel so aggrieved and put upon that they are willing to do some pretty crazy stuff to get their point (however pointless) across. So….let them talk..no, encourage them to talk…maybe even pay them to talk….since the best way to expose an idiot is to let him keep talking…just search for Rick Barber…a repub, Tea Party candidate from Alabama who, a couple of days ago, declared war on the US government using some of the founding fathers as surrogates…I’m not making this up….I’m just not that creative…geez…
Category Archives: Politics
I think it’s a long con….
Okay…I’m sure you’ve read about the concerted effort from the right to say that the most important thing for the economy right now is to address the deficits and the fear that inflation may be on the horizon. If you’ve studied economics at all, you know that in a recession, what needs to happen is that the government deficit spends to stimulate portions of the economy that the private sector can’t. This has worked in every recession/depression that the tactic was tried but what I see now is the repubs from David Brooks to Boehner and their ilk are calling for cutting government spending and have categorically rejected the latest call for federal funding to states and cities who are laying off people and cutting back services. Now, they may say that this is perfectly consistent with their conservative views but I see it as a plan for them to ensure that the Obama administration fails so they can go back to the tax-cutting, reward the rich policies that have led to where we are today. And they have done a great job of convincing the man on the street that government intervention for any reason is a bad thing. They use for the underpinnings of their argument that the stimulus package is not adding millions of jobs but only 41K in the last month but what they don’t say is that employment is always a lagging indicator, especially in a recession as severe as this one.
I’ll bet you didn’t believe I could work up any outrage today…I’m glad I could prove you wrong…
One thing I can believe is that these guys are using the misery of the unemployed for their own political gain…geez…
I was right about Obama’s speech…
Well….it only took two days for the righties to start attacking Obama for his speech in K’zoo Monday. I don’t want to gloat (well…yes I do) but I called that Monday while the speech was going on. Okay, I’ll be back after lunch to finish this…yep, just a teaser…you go to lunch, too, and there will something waiting for you if you’re not too motivated on hump day. More later…
Okay…I’m back….and I’m going call this idiot out from the Detroit News…Manny Lopez, in his column in the News Tuesday, made a huge point of the fact that the Kalamazoo Promise scholarships are funded by private donors and that Obama didn’t kiss their butts enough in his speech. His premise was that there is no need for any government involvement in higher education since “see, private funding works in K’zoo” but what he fails to admit or realize is the fact that it has been the gutting of government programs that help the middle and lower class afford college by the Repubs that made private funding necessary. Yeah, I agree it would be great if some of his repub buddies, for example the trader at Goldman that made a BILLION dollars in compensation, would give some back.
But, there is an underlying flaw in that logic that we all should be aware of, and that is that if it is private money, there can be strings attached to it that could advance the repubs agenda. What if a student that accepted the scholarship would be required to attend a specified and well-recognized conservative school that would do the same thing the righties are so scared of on the left; that is “indoctinate” them in the ideas that would perpetuate another class of leaders that won’t give a damn about the middle class.
Doesn’t anyone see that private funding would be just another instance where the lower and middle class will then have to go to the rich with their hands out and beg for a college education?
I’m sure they will say that that kind of stuff doesn’t happen in the private sector, that the market will decide and support the “right” ideas…well…all I have to say about their blind allegiance to the market and to the goodwill of the rich is to look back at Enron, BP, Goldman, AIG…and the list goes on and on.
We should not bet the future of the education of our children on the fleeting goodwill of people who are so insulated from the struggles of normal folk…
Manny…this is not about Obama’s agenda or your feared socialist takeover of the US..this night was about celebrating the fact that these kids had done something special, so special that the President of the United States saw the need to recognize that fact, and for you to politicize what is a wonderful part of America is the kind of cynicism and division we do not need right now…geez…
I’m astounded…
I have to comment on the latest attack on Obama from the righties…their latest “HUH” moment came a few days ago when the President was touring the gulf coast to get a first-hand picture of the damage from the oil spill. Do you know what the latest criticism is?…wait for it……that he was wearing “fancy clothes” while he was being filmed by the many news organizations that were there. “Fancy clothes?”…what is he supposed to wear? Torn sweats and a Bubba Gump Shrimp t-shirt? You have got to be kidding me….why is there anyone still paying attention to Fox News? Geez….
I’m going to predict….
Well…I have to predict the reaction of the righties to Obama’s speech tonight in K’zoo….he is indoctrinating our children into socialism, big government and subservience to the UN…I’ll bet a dollar on that..any takers?
Okay, here’s some outrage…
This is just a place holder for now until I get back from coffee…but I will touch on the fact that the Bushies have admitted torture and no one is prosecuting them for it. This one really pisses me off….more later…but not until I get the workout and a bike ride in…probably about 1 Eastern time….so, come on back…I know your work is boring at times (as I am) and I’ll bet you don’t have a window to stare out of…
Okay…looks like I’m having lunch with T again so the entry won’t be until 3 or so….come on back…
Back from a nice Lunch with T which tempers my outrage somewhat…but I still have enough of it from the happenings here in Gr last week. As you probably know, ole GW was here to speak to some organization or other and he reiterated his comments from many other occasions that he did. in fact, order the waterboarding of terror suspects and he glibly said that if he had the power, he would do it again to keep us safe. Sitting in the armchair on stage, with the smarmy little grin on his face, he admitted that he would commit a felony again, and again, and again. Doesn’t anyone see anything wrong with that? When they are locking up people for possession of marijuana for years, you have the one person who is supposed to uphold the Constitution saying he would repeatedly break the law, and admitting he had, being able to roam the country free and not being held accountable. I fault the Obama administration for making the political calculation that prosecuting the criminals would be unpopular; but that is not what the justice system is about. It is about the ideal of equal protection under the law and that there is no one that is above the law. But the Bushies never really cared about the law except when it was used to increase their power.
Doesn’t anyone remember that we hung Japanese interrogators after World War Two for doing exactly what Bush and his ilk approved….no wonder there is no respect for the US in the world anymore…geez…
Have to go after Newt again….
Well….I wish Newt Gingrich would get the hell out of Michigan and stop spouting his class warfare nonsense that has polluted our air here for the past few days. His latest prescription for the ills that were visited on Michigan by his repub buddies that were rewarded for moving jobs out of the US is to make anyone who is getting unemployment benefits work to get them. Doesn’t he get how stupid that sounds? If there were jobs for the people on unemployment, they would have them. Or does he think that people will lose their homes and devastate their lives to just cruise on the generous benefit of $300 a week? The next question that comes to mind is: whose work would they do? Newt’s answer is, of course, the jobs that union workers do now. Which goes along with his other suggestion that Michigan be made a right-to-work state for public employees which would destroy the gains that people have fought for since the early 1900′s. These guys don’t give a damn about anyone but their little, inbred world where they talk about merit but practice the ugliest form of preference to their own kind through connections that are passed from generation to generation.
Haven’t you gotten tired of these idiots who have never had to work a day in their lives telling you what’s best for you? I know, I’ve used that phrase before but I have to keep repeating it to make people understand.
One last comment that I have to pass on that came from ole Newt, someone that is supposed to be a spokesman for the Repubs: “Poor people respond to money and will turn to illegal activities if it’s not available through other means” Which is funny since I don’t think he knows any poor people and the ones I know (including me) work hard and just want the game to stop being rigged for the rich. Geez….
Cut, Cut, Cut….
well…reading the newspapers over the last few years has revealed a troubling theme the I just have to comment on. Even with the overall middle-class tax burden at it’s lowest point in the last 50 years, the prevailing wisdom is that the only way to get the states and federal budget under control is to cut services, to cut the wages and benefits of workers, and cut the gains that have made the middle class the engine of our economy. Just yesterday, ole Newt suggested in Michigan that the only way out of the problem is to cut benefits that teachers and other workers have fought for the last 50 years to get.
I just have to relay what one of my professors in grad school told our class; that you can’t cut your way to prosperity and growth, that a monkey can come in and take away benefits and lay off people…but that is all I hear today…cut, cut, cut….is this jealousy from the people that are now on the outside looking in without protection that comes from being part of a unionized workforce? Where is the shared sacrifice that made our country unique in the world? I truly believe that this is a plan by the righties to fragment the opposing powers that they have fought with for control of the profits of the economy; and they are winning the battle to demonize workers to the benefit of their corporate sponsors. Why is there no uproar on the right when their leaders champion the outsourcing of American jobs which puts downward pressure on the wages of the remaining workers here? Why doesn’t anyone think that a rising middle class in wages and benefits is a good thing? Who is going to buy the 40,000 dollar Suburban when the average wage is being pushed down to minimum wages level?
I think it’s sad that our supposed leaders have stopped leading us to the future and the ideals that have been part of this country since it’s inception; that we can do anything if we just work together and that the future will be better than today….small minds think small….geez…
Karl Rove is at it again….
Well…I hope you’ve heard of this last outrage from Karl Rove…he has a company that is going to funnel corporate money into repub campaigns with the express purpose of making sure that the companies have a hand in writing any new regulations that they will be subject to. Doesn’t anyone remember what happened the last time that Rove was involved in anything? And does no one remember what happened when Cheney wrote our energy policy behind closed doors with the only input being from those that were being regulated? Can you say Gulf oil spill and the meltdown of the financial markets due to deregulation? Well…these guys are promising more of the same; more running of the economy into the ground to benefit only the rich and the sad thing is that their voters, who were hurt the most by these shenanigans, are going to fall in line and buy into the propaganda that will be used to sell it as good for them and the economy….geez…
I don’t understand…
Well…was just sitting here thinking tonight..(yeah, I know, that’s dangerous) that I don’t really recognize what this country has become..or what it’s people have become over my lifetime….maybe it’s just a perspective thing on my part but I really do think we’ve lost our way. And, I think that some of the posts that I’ve written have added to the polarization that I think has taken away our Americanness and continues to be part of the wall that keeps us from finding our way back. That’s not to say that I’m going to stop writing about my particular way of looking at the world and venting my outrage…and won’t apologize about.
How have we allowed corporations to have so much power over our everyday lives? nope not feeling it right now…more later…okay…back now….
Corporations have the power to destroy our environment, to take away our jobs, to buy our elected officials, and run roughshod over American’s lives and the people that are getting screwed keep electing officials that help them do that. Have we become so stupid that we can’t even think in our own self interest?
This one is not as lucid that I envisioned when I started it…just not feeling as sharp as normal tonight….oh, well….