My God. What have you people done? Yesterday marked the beginning of what will henceforth be called The Time of Great Suckage (a term I’m borrowing from author John Ringo).
Where are we going, and why are we in this handbasket?
This country, the nation that pioneered mass-production, first invented the airplane, first split the atom, first sent men to the moon, invented the artificial heart, was the first to reach Mars, and even mapped the human genome, sometimes can’t seem to tie its own shoes.
You do realize, of course, that when our founding fathers started this nifty little experiment called America that the Electoral College was put together to prevent what James Madison called in his Federalist Papers “the mischiefs of faction” in an electoral system?
He defined a faction as "a number of citizens whether amounting to a majority of minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community". Plainly, that means we have a backstop to keep dumbasses from knee-jerk electing a complete asstard, supposedly. However…
See, they figured that the average Joe farmer in 1778 might not exactly be smart enough to not vote for, say, his own donkey. And they had a backup plan to keep that from happenning. Rather than directly voting for the President, our citizens cast votes for electors. Electors are technically free to vote for anyone eligible to be President, but in practice pledge to vote for specific candidates, and voters cast ballots for favored candidates by voting for correspondingly pledged electors.
Most states allow voters to choose between statewide slates of electors pledged to vote for the presidential tickets of various parties; the ticket that receives the most votes statewide 'wins' all of the votes cast by electors from that state. U.S. presidential campaigns concentrate on winning the popular vote in a combination of states that choose a majority of the electors, rather than campaigning to win the most votes nationally.
Methinks that the esteemed college was asleep at the wheel last night…and instead allowed the popular vote of the KoolAid-drunk masses to prevail. The Chosen One, The Messiah, The Anointed One, Barack Hussein Obama, was elected by you, the people.
Hey, America…your new President wouldn’t release his college transcripts, and his thesis on Soviet Nuclear Policy mysteriously vanished from Columbia University. How do you lose your thesis? How does NO OTHER COPY exist anywhere in the atmosphere? Me thinks that The Anointed One didn’t want anyone to see just how little he really knew when it came to foreign policy. Yet, you voted for him anyways.
Your Messiah has come right out and said that he’s all about redistributing your wealth to the poor huddled masses. Those same huddled masses now feel that they no longer have to work or pay their bills because The Chosen One will magically make it all go away. Meanwhile, who the hell is paying for it? The Rest of Us are. Why the hell should anyone try to succeed any more when, if we better our financial lot, the Feral Gummint™ will just tax the hell out of you to take care of those who just want handouts? And yet, you voted for him anyways.
It was shown unequivocally that The Chosen One had spent 20 years listening to the venomous hate speeches of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s anti-Americanisms, and he just back-pedaled and said “Gosh, I had no idea. He never did that when I was there.” And yet, you still voted for him.
It came out that after The Chosen One wanted to know how many houses his opponent owned because his wife is loaded, that the Chosen One Himself owned a $1.65 million dollar home purchased in a shady deal with convicted real estate developer and political fundraiser Tony Rezko. And yet The Chosen One seemed to not know who Rezko was. If I dropped over a million and a half bucks on a house I think I’d remember who was involved. And yet, you still voted for him.
The Chosen One has the weakest, most liberal voting record in the entire Senate, which seems to be his only real experiential qualification to be President, and yet you still voted for him.
The Chosen One wants us all to have free health care, yet won’t say how it will be paid for other than with higher taxes, and despite worldwide evidence that socialized medicine sucks by and large. Yet you still voted for him.
The Chosen One claims that there will be no new taxes, but what isn’t being said is that there will be a repealing of all the Bush tax cuts, so while they won’t be “new taxes”, they’ll just be the “old taxes” brought back. And you still voted for him.
When The Chosen One says he wants to only tax the people who make over 250K a year, bear in mind that those are the people who employ you. And if you work in a smallish company of, say, 10 employees and your employer suddenly finds his taxes going up 10 or 15 percent a year, well guess how he pays the taxes? He raises prices, cuts benefits to his employees, and has to let a couple of you go because he can’t afford you. Welcome to Unemployment, friend. And yet you still voted for him.
It came out that The Chosen One served on a community board with former 60’s radical and terrorist Bill Ayers, founder of The Weather Underground movement which set off a series of bombs at public buildings and killed a few people, and yet you voted for him.
The Chosen One claims that he’ll have all our troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan inside of 16 months of taking office. So, basically, he’s given Al-Q’aeda and the Taliban a timetable for when they can come back to power. All they have to do is hide in their caves for a year & a half and then wait us out, negating all the good work our troops have done and negating the sacrifices of nearly 5,000 troops who died to make that region safe for democracy. And yet you still voted for him.
It came out that The Chosen One has a questionable tie to noted Palestinian activist Rashid Khalidi, and that video of the two interacting at a 2003 farewell dinner for Khalidi is currently being suppressed by the LA Times until after The Messiah has been elected, lest the truth come out. And you still voted for him.
It came out that His Obamaness has an aunt from Kenya living as an illegal alien in government-subsidized public housing in Boston after her amnesty request was denied over four years ago. And you still voted for him.
It came out that Your Messiah has a half brother in Kenya named George who lives in a dirt-floor shack on about four dollars a month, a brother that he refuses to help as he sits in his $1.5M mansion in the Chicago burbs. He'll help all of you but won't help his own brother? And you still voted for him.
Remember that in and amongst all the crap The Chosen One spouted about “Change” without really saying what the hell that, specifically, his “Change” was, he said certain other things that you people didn’t hear over the sound of the Kool Aid being poured.
Things like:
He’ll “spread the wealth around.”
He’ll “raise taxes.”
He’ll “have a civilian police force as strong as our military”.
He’ll “cut our military”.
He’ll “bankrupt new coal plants”
He’ll make sure if his daughters “made a mistake they won’t be punished with a baby” in reference to abortion.
He voted against medical care for babies who survive botched abortions saying it would “burden the medical staff and question the woman’s original decision.”
He’ll “Look into drilling” when we need it now.
He’ll sit down one on one with the leaders of terrorist nations.
He did NOT originally condemn Russia’s invasion and aggression into Georgia. Rather, he felt both nations should come to an agreement.
He has called Jeremiah Wright a man who represents the “best the black church has to offer.”
And you still voted for him. And you've nearly elected a super-majority of Democrats into Congress. And when they FUBAR this country four years from now, they’ll blame-shift every single failure on their part solely on the previous administrations’ shoulders, telling you they need another four years to fix it all.
Oh well; we can vote him out in four years after we wake up and experience our Buyer’s Remorse. And since this election took about two years, we may as well start campaigning now. That way we’ll be prepared when we’re so far in the toilet that the Tidy-Bowl Man will have to call Roto-Rooter to come find us based on our last known position off the starboard bow.
A nation of so many accomplishments, and sometimes we can’t even tie our own shoes.
4 comments:
Good pictures.. Sad events...
How odd that you commented my blog! I was reading yours this morning and almost commented but decided not to because I didn't want to sound confrontational. But, since you opened the door, here goes...
1) Electoral College: I know folks who refuse to vote because the Electoral College has the ability to override their vote. This process is outmoded and is essentially not democracy. Americans are lied to and told from grade school age that they live in a democracy. We do not. We live in a democratic republic. There is a HUGE difference. I didn’t know this until I finally attended college for political science.
With technology being what it is (cell phones in most folk's hands), it's time for direct democracy. I say give every American a blackberry (or similar device) and allow them to use it for voting immediately on every single issue that they feel is worth their time. This can be done today, but then the folks working for the Republic would lose their power---tisk, tisk, tisk.
2) Chosen One: This is not a term that has ever been used by the Democrats (or the broader, ambiguous left). In fact, it is specifically used by the Right to put the Democratic candidate at odds with the ideals held dear by American Evangelicals. There can be only one Messiah (according to that famous work of fiction we call The Holy Bible), so by labeling Obama as such they automatically drive a wedge between so called Christians and the Democratic nominee (and winner of the election, btw).
3) Obama's College Transcripts: I can't speak for Obama (or for the administrators at his college). Maybe he wants to hide from us what classes he took under an American college curriculum, but this seems unlikely and wholly ridiculous.
What I can speak to is the fact that McCain graduated 5th from the bottom of his class, and received over 100 demerits per year (as evidenced by his membership in the "Century Club"). As if that wasn't enough, he destroyed 5 U.S. aircraft over the course of his training. With a record like that he should have been sent home with his tail between his legs. I know I would have been. But then, my father wasn't Admiral McCain.
4) Redistribution of Wealth: You're not the only one who says that Obama has "admitted" to supporting this concept. But, if you could actually show me a video or play me a sound clip that: A) isn't edited; B) isn't 10, 20, 30 years old---then you would be the first to prove it.
I'm not sure where you or your like minded peers come up with the idea that people like me who earn less than $10,000 per year have some sort of evil aversion to work. I've had 12 jobs since leaving the Navy 5 years ago. The simple fact is that $8/hr, which is roughly the standard pay rate in my town, will not put a roof over my family's heads, food on the table, clothes on our backs, and allow for us to retain a health care plan. I have two children. Do you think I enjoy waking up every day knowing that they can't even see a doctor?
Are you saying that I'm lazy? Because if you are, I've got news for you: I'm one of the hardest working people you'll ever meet. But I will not work for peanuts, nor will I conduct myself in doing busy work for a business owner who pays me less than 10% of what he takes home to his family. If I do all the work, why does he get all the pay? That's BULLSHIT, pure and simple. There is no other word for it. I'd like to see him making that much money without his employees. Which piece of that puzzle is more vital? Answer: neither.
Maybe my dad, who is a Vietnam Vet dealing with serious PTSD problems, while simultaneously being denied PTSD assistance from the VA, is lazy? Oh wait, he works two full time jobs just to pay for his student loans. See, he earned his law degree in San Diego and practiced law here in my hometown for a few years before his spiteful ex wives had him disbarred for alcoholism. Now, true, he drinks. But that is, in the VA’s own language, “…secondary to PTSD.” So, his ex wives took away his means of earning an income…leaving him with massive debt, but no means by which to earn the money he needs to repay it!!! Then, after taking away his source of income, they filed suits demanding that he pay child support. What kind of stupidity is that?
So what do you say to the two of us? We’re both veterans who have served during two of our nations most troublesome armed conflicts. We’re both essentially fucked by our circumstances (I too have massive debt, thanks to Right Wing, predatory lenders who saw a 19 year old kid with a promotion to E-5 as an opportunity to take money from me.) Again, I’ve held 12 jobs in the last 5 years…and I’ve not taken a single dollar of unemployment since I took that first job after leaving the Navy. But hey, I guess all I want to do is take all of your money and keep it for myself, right?
Tell me something…what can a rich man do with $100 Million that he can’t do with $10 Million? Does that money help anybody by sitting in a bank, or by being safely tucked away in bonds? Answer: no it does not. And guess what? Trickle down doesn’t work. Money only trickles down to those who own the means of production. If I make an hourly wage, I can only make as much as a 40 or 80-hour workweek will allow me to make, regardless of how well my company is doing. And what if I’m salaried? Well, unless my company practices profit sharing, the executives get millions and I still get nothing because hey, “[I’m] doing better than those hourly earners!” Whoopty fucking doo.
Have you ever tried to stand something on end that is hopelessly top heavy? Next time you go bowling try turning a pin over and standing it up on the head. Can’t be done, can it? And why? Because all of the work is being done by that part of the pin that has less to work with and stands to gain more from simply falling over than it does from really doing what it takes to make the pin stand up…which of course would mean changing the shape of that head. I suppose you’re probably rolling your eyes right now because I’ve used a metaphor, and metaphors are only good for bullshitting, right? Holy crap.
And when you say, “Who’s paying for it? The rest of us are,” are you even thinking before you speak? Are you even in the tax bracket that would wind up paying for lower class tax cuts? Probably not, and I can say that with some certainty because according to ABC news 59% of Americans who earn more than $200k per year voted for Obama. If they don’t see a need to clutch their money like greedy skinflints, then why do you and the rest of the middle class cry out against alleged redistribution of wealth as if they even have any wealth to redistribute? We’re not talking Communism here, where everything belongs to everyone. No, we’re talking about leveling the playing field.
People like me aren’t asking for a Mercedes in exchange for simply being born. We’re tired of working for pennies so that we can watch our employers retire to their million dollar homes in their Lexus, and meet their stay at home wife who does nothing but bake cookies and home school their perfect children every God damn day. Why should you try to succeed if the government is going to tax you? Um, maybe for the same reason that my father and I would like to succeed so that we can even be taxed!!! Oh, that’s right…I haven’t paid taxes since I left the Navy because I DON’T EARN ENOUGH---and this under Republican leadership, not Democratic. I would LOVE to make enough money to pay taxes, but I do not.
5) Reverend Jeremiah Wright: I’m sorry, is this man’s distaste for failed U.S. policy any worse than Pat Robertson pretending to heal people who are terminally ill on national television? Hello? I can’t afford cable, so I get 4 channels of interference-ridden dribble. One of those channels carries Pat Robertson during the day, against soap operas on the other three channels. Do you have any idea how pissed off I’m going to be if my children take away from that a silly, unrealistic belief that when something goes wrong all they have to do is turn on CBN and Mr. Robertson will just “heal” the problem away? Holy shit! The man should be arrested for perpetrating fraud against his viewers! How much of their hard earned money winds up in his slimy little hands? Yeah, the Right is soooooo much better than the Left, huh?
6) Million Dollar Homes: Okay, so Obama has an expensive home. Good for him. That’s what you would say about Joe The Plumber right? He worked hard to get what he has so, well and good for him. But, when John McCain is telling me---someone who earns less than $10,000 per year (and has done so for 5 consecutive years since leaving the Navy)---that the middle class begins at the $5 Million per year level, what am I to say?
“Holy shit, I’m REALLY poor!”
His definition of middle class doesn’t exactly give me a whole lot of incentive to “suck it up” and “pick myself up by the bootstraps.” Why drop a quarter into the pinball machine if you don’t even have any flippers to swat the ball around with? Obama has a nice home, okay. McCain has many several of them. This goes back to my previous question: What can he do with 5 million dollar homes that he can’t do with 1? He talks a big talk about fighting greed, yet the man isn’t satisfied with a single home. What percentage of Americans do you think own more than one abode? What percentage do you think own zero, like me? Or how about my Vietnam Veteran father who very nearly lost his home this year thanks to an ARM?
7) Senate Record: You’ll have to define “weakest record in the Senate.” If by this you mean that he opposed military operations that were based on lies and falsehoods (and no, you can’t change my mind on this one because if you recall I was a military intelligence analyst at the time of both the 9/11 attacks and the Iraq invasion and I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt that Iraq had zero to do with WMD, and zero to do with terrorism), then I guess you could call me weak as well. So be it. I don’t act on false information or half-truths…so I guess I’m beyond weak, right?
8) Socialized Health Care: As do most conservatives, you’ve propped this one up with a complete absurdity. Show me the evidence that verifies your claim that socialized medicine sucks, please. Or are you basing this claim on the fact that grossly over inflated medical practitioner salaries would decrease under such a system? You must know a lot of doctors that stand to lose their 3rd and 4th sports cars because of the liberal agenda to take away their right to charge way more for their services than they’re actually worth.
9) No New Taxes: Hmmmm…I recall somebody else who used those words, preceded by the statement, “Read my lips…” Yeah, Bush I made that promise and reneged. Bush II didn’t even try to lie about it…he just spouted the “Trickle Down” bullshit and kept on giving more and more to those who already have everything! I’d be willing to bet my annual salary (which isn’t much, mind you) that you haven’t even benefited under Bush’s tax cuts. So why do you defend them so vehemently?
10) $250k Tax Increase: On this issue, I cannot argue. If you increase taxes on business, so too do prices for goods and service rise. This is a very unfortunate failure of the capitalist free market. When government takes action to fix fiscal gaps, business turns around and passes those changes on to consumers who have no reasonable means by which to cope with the increase.
I would personally like to see legislature that closes this loophole. We, as Americans who support businesses by paying them for their goods and services, shouldn’t be the last stop on the “Pass The Buck” express. It should be made illegal for business to raise their prices based solely on tax hikes. Let us not forget that the market only works when we are all spending money and buying products and services.
A business has the exact same ability to lobby for change as an individual. If a tax hike would unfairly hurt their ability to operate (notice that I didn’t say anything about the tax hike cutting into executive salaries), they can seek change just as you and I can. In fact, if they really wanted to make their customers feel warm and fuzzy, they could appeal to them for change rather than just saying, “Okay, fine. Raise taxes on us, and we raise prices on you.” This is schoolyard bullshit, not workable economic policy.
11) Bill Ayers: Wow. This one makes me laugh every time. Mr. Ayers is now a professor at a prestigious university. Sure, he’s an ex-con. So what? Are you sure that you really want to open that can of worms? We could start talking about the Keating 5 if you like. Or perhaps the cohorts with whom McCain spent his time happily defying policy at Annapolis, or destroying taxpayer property without reprimand based on his family name.
But the one issue that really rips apart the whole Bill Ayers nonsense is the fact that McCain has his own terrorist friend. G. Gordon Liddy, a man who John McCain calls a “…good American” is also an ex convict who was involved in the Watergate scandal. Why do I call him a terrorist? Well, look at what he has said about our government:
· August 26, 1994 - Now if the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms comes to disarm you and they are bearing arms, resist them with arms. Go for a head shot; they're going to be wearing bulletproof vests." ... "They've got a big target on there, ATF. Don't shoot at that, because they've got a vest on underneath that. Head shots, head shots.... Kill the sons of bitches.
· September 15, 1994 - If the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms insists upon a firefight, give them a firefight. Just remember, they're wearing flak jackets and you're better off shooting for the head.
He was speaking about, and in a roundabout way to, the folks who died in Waco Texas. Are you going to tell me that the Branch Davidians were just honest, hard working folks who loved their country and recited the pledge of allegiance every morning? Ha! He was suggesting that a rogue, criminal faction should kill federal officers, and what’s more he was telling them how to do it. Yeah, Ayers is a real problem huh?
12) The Iraq Withdrawal Timetable: You’re right, of course, that a timetable for withdrawal is essentially an indicator of the “all clear” for Al Qaeda and/or other radical factions of Islam. But let us not forget that such an environment of hatred toward America already existed before we went into Iraq. The problem here is that Iraq had absolutely nothing to do with Al Qaeda or the terrorist attacks of 9/11.
Now, am I saying this because I’m a liberal, or because I held a Top Secret/SCI/TK (and a bunch of other acronyms that I’m not even allowed to enunciate without facing prison time) at the time, and I could actually see what was going on? You need to research the North Korean merchant vessel SoSan. WMD was not a concern of Bush’s, which was the only reason he offered for our invasion. No, Iraq just happens to be conveniently close to Iran. Let’s not call Iraq an effort to thwart terrorism. Let’s just call it what it is, a jumping off point for potential operations against Iran.
With the SoSan, we stopped missiles that could be tipped with unconventional munitions (CBR) from going to Yemen, a country that was signatory to the NNPT, and where we had been recently attacked. You do remember the USS Cole, don’t you? But it gets worse. After we seized the missiles and gave them back to Yemen, the SoSan made her way to Germany where she took on precursor ingredients for chemical weapons and took them back to North Korea unhindered.
Why is this bad? Because those chemical weapons wind up being loaded into North Korea artillery, which are pointed almost entirely at civilian targets in Seoul and at U.S. Soldiers stationed in South Korea. If Bush cared about our troops he wouldn’t have allowed the North Koreans to get those chemicals back home where they could be used to endanger our troops! He found it important enough to board the ship and take missiles that he then gave back (and later wound up in Libya btw), but never mind the 30,000+ U.S. Soldiers that have to worry every day about the fact that there is more artillery on the Korean DMZ, pointed at them and loaded with chemical agents, than anywhere else in the entire world!!! Yeah, now there’s a Bush victory for you.
13) Rashid Khalidi: I’ve never even heard this name, so I won’t attempt to wax philosophical on this particular item. Call this a concession if you must: 1 out of what, 15?
14) Change: Um, did you even attempt to research this one? Because all I had to do was actually take the time to read both the McCain website and the Obama website (I wrote a 13 page summary for both) to see that the only thing McCain had intentions on changing was his own bottom line, and that of his degenerate cronies (Liddy, Keating 5, Annapolis buddies).
Obama, on the other hand, listed item by item what he intended to do if he were elected. Of course, only a fool actually thinks that everything on a political candidate’s website is going to happen rapidly and precisely as is stated in writing. But then, the president doesn’t actually have the power to just make change. He has to bring the Senate and the House along with him. You do recall the tricameral nature of our government, do you not?
Cut our military? Ha! Again, McCain said right there on his own website that he intended to have another round of BRAC (Base Realignment and Closure) activity. Obama has never been so presumptuous. But for you to sit here and say that Obama will cut our military when McCain has very clearly stated that he intends to do just that is lunacy, and copasetic acceptance of inaccurate information!
I’ll stop addressing line items from your post here because some of what follows in your list is just a recap of what I’ve already spoken to. The one final thing that I would like to address from your post though is your closing paragraph.
“…And when they FUBAR this country, four years from now…”
Have you been living in a cave? Doing a little research to get into Bin Laden’s head, right? Got to live like Bin Laden to catch him? The last 8 years, 7 of which occurred under the stewardship of a Republican President and a republican Congress, have arguably been the worst in our nation’s entire 200 and some year history! And now, before they’ve even taken office, you’re blaming the whole mess on Democrats?
Now that’s what I call crazy, don’t you agree? Actually, that’s what I call blind partisanship. I’m sorry to see that as an intelligent man who once wore the uniform of this nation’s military you are willing to forgo reality for a little party line kowtowing. No worries though. I think that the next 4 (preferably 8 or 16) years will go much more smoothly than the last 8.
Good day, Steve.
You KNOW I'm not into politics. While Obama was not my "chosen" candidate (that would have been Hilary), I voted for him as the lesser of two evils and am content with the outcome. McCain + Palin = Big Time Scary Monsters in my book. Neither one of them were the perfect choice - both made some glaring mistakes. But it's been decades since a president has been handed the country in such a sorry state, and Obama will have a lot that he has to try to clean up from the current administration before he can F*ck up and call it his own FUBAR situation. You and I will just have to agree to disagree on this one - and just because we do not see eye to eye, does not make you any less my friend than before. If you remember correctly, someone kicked me off their list once because my choice was not theirs and by that choice I "obviously wanted to get more soldiers killed". Yeah, that was a great WTF moment - and you and I both know how big a retard that particular person is.
As always...XOXO...Mousie
jmk, I confess I didn't read all of your post. The language got too rough and it only seemed your anger got more fiery. I don't speak for steve, but I have two comments based on the part that i did read.
You said you make $8/hr and under $10,000. That means you work less than 25 hours per week. Yet you also you're one of hardest working people steve knows. Something doesn't add up.
You talked about your children not being able to go to the doctor. You should check into the s-chip program. In SC, it's called Family Connections. Depending on your family size (3 or 4?) with an income under $26,400 (maybe as high as $42,400) your children can get health care.
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