I got some heat from several people for my last post where I recommended relaxation of concealed carry permits. Karen Duda (Duda – that’s Spanish for doubt, but much more likely a Slavic surname) commented the following:
But allowing everyone to carry a gun does NOT make us safer. Case in point: when Gabrielle Giffords was shot and nine others injured by a nut job who never should have been able to get a gun, there was a young man in the crowd who had his gun, for which he has a legal permit, on him. He did not use it to try to stop the attack. He later said that he was afraid if he pulled out his (legal) gun people would have thought he was the shooter or an accomplice. So the fact that he had a gun did NOTHING to protect anyone that day.
I replied thusly:
Karen, I agree, allowing everyone to carry a gun would not make us safer. And you bring up a very good and important point about the Giffords incident. Not only that but, in a situation like the Giffords one, besides the risk of being mistaken for a homicidal maniac, if a person with a legal permit and gun did decide to shoot at the person who started the shooting -- assuming he knew for sure who started the shooting -- he might risk hitting innocent bystanders by mistake, like those trained and authorized cops did by the Empire State Building in Manhattan some months ago when that nutjob decided to shoot and kill his former boss. You also bring up a very good point about 'accomplices.' Can you imagine the havoc some crazed killers could produce if two or more of them started blasting away in a crowd where everyone had a legally authorized gun? More guns, less crime? If I sound like I'm contradicting myself, I can understand that. But I can explain my position, and I will, in my next post.
Well, I won’t be able to explain my position in detail this time because I want to use this post to get my policy recommendations out before Obama presents Biden’s task force recommendations. Let me say this for now; guns are a double edged sword. In some instances they can do good. They can prevent crimes and even save lives. They can diffuse dangerous situations. Of course in other instances they can do great harm. They can make dangerous people and situations exponentially more dangerous. And the more dangerous and lethal those guns are, the more dangerous and lethal those people and situations become.
The biggest obstacle, that I see, preventing us from achieving the healthiest and safest society we can is the refusal of the most passionate of us, on both sides of the gun issue, to see and acknowledge the reality of guns’ double edged nature. Our emotional biases tend to allow us to see only the side that comforts, supports and reinforces those biases. Acknowledging the other side of the sword is crucial in figuring out the best things to do.
Here are my policy recommendations:
1. Relax concealed carry laws. Ultimately, local governments/authorities are and should be the deciders of if and how to implement these laws but I would strongly recommend that they be relaxed with specific and stringent safeguards in place.
2. Put in place an immediate moratorium on the production and sale of all firearms.
3. Require that all guns in circulation be accounted for and registered by the owners.
4. Confiscate all illegal guns. That’s right, I said ‘confiscate.’ I agree with Wayne LaDouchebag, the executive vice president of the National Rifle Association (who always says how that no good tyrant President of ours – who was twice elected by a majority of the voting public – is responsible for the gun massacres because of his absolute refusal to enforce the laws that are already on the books because he wants things to get so bad that he will then use that as the excuse to take away all guns from everyone except for the blue helmeted UN forces in the black helicopters who will now be in charge of running the US of A.) I think it’s about time the government started enforcing the laws that are already on the books.
5. Here are the ‘well regulated’ parts: Require a license to buy, own and carry a gun that includes a background check, the passing of a training class and the registration for each and every gun and…
6. Redesign all new guns manufactured to strict specifications that limit the trigger speed, caliber/velocity of bullets and magazine size and…
7. Finally, dare I say it; limit all purchases to one gun per person.
Sound crazy Wayne? Well then call me crazy!
Sound farfetched? Naïve? Of course it is. How could we possibly stand up to the ferocious rage of the heavily armed gun nuts who would love nothing better than to finally get to use all of that fire power that they’ve been stockpiling for all of these years? Plus, who the hell is going to listen to me? But if anyone with any influence were to listen to me I could give a series of tactics and a strategy that might actually make these proposals seem much less farfetched.
These would include lessons on how to frame and win the debates with the anti-gun control side.
Removing the credibility of the NRA by pinning the blame for these gun deaths on the NRA’s depraved indifference to the consequences of their efforts to sabotage any and every effort to regulate guns.
Conceding on concealed carry permits is also a crucial tactic, but not a Machiavellian one. This is the one single argument that the pro-gun people have that would probably save lives if important safeguards are taken.
One other tactic may be the single best strategy for getting these proposals enacted: present these proposals to the American people to be voted on, yes or no, in a national referendum! If the American people vote yes and the gun nuts want to fight the will of the people, well who are the tyrants now? The gun nuts would have no choice but to overthrow themselves!
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
Friday, January 4, 2013
The NRA Created the Problem That Requires the Solution They Always Wanted
In the same way the Republicon Party deliberately drove up the debt in order to use it as the excuse to get rid of the social programs they’ve always despised, the NRA deliberately caused the country’s gun problem in order to use it as the excuse to get rid of the gun laws they’ve always despised.
The Republicons drove up the debt with a strategy they called ‘Starve the Beast.’ This economic policy was implemented by the Reagan and Bush Jr. administrations by cutting any and every tax they could get their hands on while hugely increasing spending. They grew the Beast to mammoth proportions and simultaneously cut off its food supply. Now they are saying we need to solve the problem of the debt by getting rid of those programs they hate. A conservative’s dreams come true.
The NRA’s strategy was to ferociously oppose, thwart and sabotage any and every gun control law that ever came up. They worked together with the gun manufacturers to flood the country with a dizzying array of diabolical weapons, some of which can kill a hundred people in seconds. Thanks to the NRA, these weapons are unregistered, unaccounted for and easily obtained by any criminal and homicidal maniac who wants one. Now they say we need to solve this problem by allowing guns to invade every single space in our lives. A gun lover’s dreams come true.
Both of these groups circumvented the will and the wellbeing of the general public. They both used specious, fallacious and underhanded arguments to support their positions and attack their opponents. They both employed the unfair and undemocratic use of money to target politicians who wouldn’t bend to their will. They both pursued policies that only benefited their own narrow self-interests while damaging the health and wellbeing of both the people and the economy. And they both appear to be on the verge of accomplishing their goal of imposing their extremist views on the entire country, the vast majority of who oppose those views.
(An interesting aside. The radical-right is always accusing the Government of being tyrannical whenever it does something they don’t like. That’s why they say we need guns in the first place. To ‘take out’ the politicians ‘we’ think are tyrannical. But why would ‘we’ want to ‘take out’ the politicians we voted into office? Well, of course ‘we’ wouldn’t. The ‘we’ is actually ‘they’ and the ‘they’ is actually the radical-right nutbags. And what is those nutbags’ definition of ‘tyranny?’ Like I said, it’s whatever policy they don’t like, which happens whenever they lose an election. Here’s a better definition of tyranny: two unelected creeps – Wayne LaPierre and Grover Norquist – pay themselves millions of dollars and then circumvent the democratic process in order to impose their harmful and dangerous minority views on the entire country, depriving citizens of their Constitutional rights in the process. What a couple of scumbags.)
There is one major and unfortunate difference, though, between the Recons’ ‘Starve the Beast’ policy and the NRA’s ‘unfettered access to any kind of gun they feel like having’ policy. There is a much better and fairer alternative to the ‘Starve the Beast’ policy of even more tax cuts for the rich and service cuts for everyone else. That would be significant spending cuts to the Military, a single-payer universal healthcare system and a restoration of the Clinton-era tax rates, for everyone, with higher added brackets for the super-wealthy that top out at 50%, the same top rate as Reagan’s first term when the conservalibertarians bragged that that tax rate got us out of the second worst recession since the Great Depression and created millions of jobs.
However, in the case of gun-control policy, because of the terrible predicament that the NRA has put this country in, there is no better alternative than to allow guns to invade every single space in our lives, and by this I mean allowing law-abiding citizens to carry guns in places many of us might think to be inappropriate, repugnant or downright crazy. As hard as it is for many of us to admit, the logic and the evidence of concealed carry permits seems irrefutable. Most Americans realize this. This is why the NRA has been winning the debate so far. (Their positions on other forms of gun control are a completely different story, though.) The sad truth is guns have already invaded every single space in our lives. The NRA never allowed our society to adjust from the 18th century world when the 2nd Amendment was written to the modern one we live in today. The NRA forced us to live in a wild, wild, west society where the gun-nuts and the free market rule us and our gun control laws are a ridiculous joke. And, instead of muskets or even six-shooters, we have gun manufacturers making and selling with impunity the most lethal 21st century weaponry devised by man. Under those circumstances, it’s better to have a gun yourself than not to.
I’m not the only liberal to come to this conclusion. I recently saw an interview with Craig R. Whitney, a former reporter and editor at The New York Times, about a book he wrote called “Living With Guns: A Liberal’s Case for the Second Amendment.” Jeffry Goldberg wrote an article in the Dec. issue of The Atlantic titled “The Case for More Guns (And More Gun Control).” Ezra Klein recently hosted Rachel Maddow’s show where he covered the same ground and interviewed a criminologist named Richard Rosenfeld. All of these persons elaborated on some of the points I made in this post, plus they offered policy recommendations that go beyond relaxing certain gun restrictions like concealed carry.
I agree with and appreciate most of what they said. They all acknowledged some realities that most liberals find very hard to accept. I give them a lot of credit for this. This is the first step in formulating a best course of action. Goldberg, in particular, wrote a very good article. However, I do have some complaints. These have to do with things they didn’t say and the way they said some of the things they did say. Also, they didn’t go far enough in their policy recommendations.
In upcoming posts I will outline specifically what these things said and not said are. I will also give my own policy recommendations. And I will give my explanation of why the NRA has been winning the debate on guns despite the fact that their gun policies (except for concealed carry) are completely insane.
The Republicons drove up the debt with a strategy they called ‘Starve the Beast.’ This economic policy was implemented by the Reagan and Bush Jr. administrations by cutting any and every tax they could get their hands on while hugely increasing spending. They grew the Beast to mammoth proportions and simultaneously cut off its food supply. Now they are saying we need to solve the problem of the debt by getting rid of those programs they hate. A conservative’s dreams come true.
The NRA’s strategy was to ferociously oppose, thwart and sabotage any and every gun control law that ever came up. They worked together with the gun manufacturers to flood the country with a dizzying array of diabolical weapons, some of which can kill a hundred people in seconds. Thanks to the NRA, these weapons are unregistered, unaccounted for and easily obtained by any criminal and homicidal maniac who wants one. Now they say we need to solve this problem by allowing guns to invade every single space in our lives. A gun lover’s dreams come true.
Both of these groups circumvented the will and the wellbeing of the general public. They both used specious, fallacious and underhanded arguments to support their positions and attack their opponents. They both employed the unfair and undemocratic use of money to target politicians who wouldn’t bend to their will. They both pursued policies that only benefited their own narrow self-interests while damaging the health and wellbeing of both the people and the economy. And they both appear to be on the verge of accomplishing their goal of imposing their extremist views on the entire country, the vast majority of who oppose those views.
(An interesting aside. The radical-right is always accusing the Government of being tyrannical whenever it does something they don’t like. That’s why they say we need guns in the first place. To ‘take out’ the politicians ‘we’ think are tyrannical. But why would ‘we’ want to ‘take out’ the politicians we voted into office? Well, of course ‘we’ wouldn’t. The ‘we’ is actually ‘they’ and the ‘they’ is actually the radical-right nutbags. And what is those nutbags’ definition of ‘tyranny?’ Like I said, it’s whatever policy they don’t like, which happens whenever they lose an election. Here’s a better definition of tyranny: two unelected creeps – Wayne LaPierre and Grover Norquist – pay themselves millions of dollars and then circumvent the democratic process in order to impose their harmful and dangerous minority views on the entire country, depriving citizens of their Constitutional rights in the process. What a couple of scumbags.)
There is one major and unfortunate difference, though, between the Recons’ ‘Starve the Beast’ policy and the NRA’s ‘unfettered access to any kind of gun they feel like having’ policy. There is a much better and fairer alternative to the ‘Starve the Beast’ policy of even more tax cuts for the rich and service cuts for everyone else. That would be significant spending cuts to the Military, a single-payer universal healthcare system and a restoration of the Clinton-era tax rates, for everyone, with higher added brackets for the super-wealthy that top out at 50%, the same top rate as Reagan’s first term when the conservalibertarians bragged that that tax rate got us out of the second worst recession since the Great Depression and created millions of jobs.
However, in the case of gun-control policy, because of the terrible predicament that the NRA has put this country in, there is no better alternative than to allow guns to invade every single space in our lives, and by this I mean allowing law-abiding citizens to carry guns in places many of us might think to be inappropriate, repugnant or downright crazy. As hard as it is for many of us to admit, the logic and the evidence of concealed carry permits seems irrefutable. Most Americans realize this. This is why the NRA has been winning the debate so far. (Their positions on other forms of gun control are a completely different story, though.) The sad truth is guns have already invaded every single space in our lives. The NRA never allowed our society to adjust from the 18th century world when the 2nd Amendment was written to the modern one we live in today. The NRA forced us to live in a wild, wild, west society where the gun-nuts and the free market rule us and our gun control laws are a ridiculous joke. And, instead of muskets or even six-shooters, we have gun manufacturers making and selling with impunity the most lethal 21st century weaponry devised by man. Under those circumstances, it’s better to have a gun yourself than not to.
I’m not the only liberal to come to this conclusion. I recently saw an interview with Craig R. Whitney, a former reporter and editor at The New York Times, about a book he wrote called “Living With Guns: A Liberal’s Case for the Second Amendment.” Jeffry Goldberg wrote an article in the Dec. issue of The Atlantic titled “The Case for More Guns (And More Gun Control).” Ezra Klein recently hosted Rachel Maddow’s show where he covered the same ground and interviewed a criminologist named Richard Rosenfeld. All of these persons elaborated on some of the points I made in this post, plus they offered policy recommendations that go beyond relaxing certain gun restrictions like concealed carry.
I agree with and appreciate most of what they said. They all acknowledged some realities that most liberals find very hard to accept. I give them a lot of credit for this. This is the first step in formulating a best course of action. Goldberg, in particular, wrote a very good article. However, I do have some complaints. These have to do with things they didn’t say and the way they said some of the things they did say. Also, they didn’t go far enough in their policy recommendations.
In upcoming posts I will outline specifically what these things said and not said are. I will also give my own policy recommendations. And I will give my explanation of why the NRA has been winning the debate on guns despite the fact that their gun policies (except for concealed carry) are completely insane.
Thursday, December 20, 2012
Will Someone Please Tell Obama How to Negotiate
Towards the end of George W's second term, going into the presidential campaign season of 2008, the Republicon Party had dealt the Democrats an unbeatable hand; a Royal Flush.
Stunningly, the Democrats never played that hand. They couldn't even recognize that they were holding an Ace, King, Queen, Jack and 10, let alone that they all happened to be in the same suit.
Four years later, with the Dems still holding the same cards while going into the ‘fiscal-cliff’ negotiations over the budget, they were given a second opportunity to play that hand when the Republicons went full-bore far-right-lunatic-fringe Kenyan-birther community-organizer hip-hop-barbeque apologizing-for-America terrorist-sympathizing-appeaser Muslim-infiltrating black-helicopter death-panel Hitler-socialist second-amendment-remedy mooching- 47% legitimate-rape Acorn-stole-the-election Obama-is-the-Anti-Christ nuts and blew their chance to take over Government. (See my previous post for an elaboration)
However, in one of the most disgusting displays of political ineptitude in American history, Obama and the Dems decided to discard their Ace, King and Queen in order to play a pair of fucking Jacks!
My card playing example may not be a perfect metaphor for the game of negotiating – in the game of poker the players keep their cards hidden before playing their hands. But only a terrible negotiator keeps his cards hidden before negotiating.
The strategy of poker is to keep your cards hidden until the final wager so that you can bluff the other players. Keeping your cards hidden is what makes your position stronger.
The strategy of negotiating is to put all of your cards on the table before you start negotiating. Exposing your cards beforehand is what makes your position stronger.
I do think, however, that my metaphor works pretty well as far as illustrating how utterly inept Obama and the Dems are at the game of negotiating. The best example of this is President Obama’s obsessive compulsion in making the compromise position his starting position. He seems to do this all the time. And then from that point he concedes more than half way to the outrageously unreasonable ultra-far-right position! This is infuriating.
Then, to add insult to injury, Obama gets called a Stalinist dictator by the right-wingers.
Here are some perfect examples.
During the healthcare reform negotiations we had a situation where, due to the huge gaping inadequacies of the free-market model of health insurance, millions of Americans were uninsured, resulting in the premature deaths of thousands of people every single year. You’d think this should be a cause of concern for everyone, regardless of whether or not they had adequate insurance themselves. Yet at the time the Republiconservatives were telling us that the USA had the best and greatest healthcare system in the world and nothing needed to be changed -- except for the money we were spending on the uninsured poor. That needed to be cut drastically.
Now there was a very simple and very proven solution to this problem. It’s called single-payer universal healthcare. Every other civilized country in the world has it. They cover all their citizens at about half the cost we do for only covering some. This solution would not only have solved the uninsured problem, it would have solved our Medicaid and Medicare problem too. It would have solved the problem of preexisting illnesses and losing your insurance if you lost your job. It would have covered every American young, old, poor or sick. It would have been the equivalent of a humongous tax cut for businesses and corporations by relieving them from the burden of providing health insurance to their employees. (Just imagine what a boon this would have been to small businesses) It would have solved the deficit/debt problem in one fell swoop. How? By cutting our medical costs – the biggest driver of future federal spending -- in half!
How the fuck do you lose an argument like this with those facts on your side?
Well, the most surefire way is to not even make the argument in the first place.
Instead of making single-payer his starting position, like he should have, Obama made what should have been the compromise position, the Public Option, his opening bid. Then he caved on that and settled for a convoluted mess that subsidizes private companies with tax-payer money, forces Americans to purchase a defective product and does nothing to lower healthcare costs. And here’s the kicker. This monstrosity was concocted by that bastion of conservatism, The Heritage Foundation. (That’s the think tank where the notorious ultra-right-wing reactionary Jim DeMint left his Senate seat to head) Even though ‘Obamacare’ maintained the conservalibertarian preference of putting a money-hungry private company between you and your doctor, the right called it socialism.
Another perfect example is the Royal Flush which sixteen years (Reagan and Bush Jr.) of supply-side/starve-the-beast economics handed the Dems.
These policies caused most of the problems that we face today and that fact should have been enough to totally discredit the Republicon Party. But the Dems were unable to fully explain to the American people the implications of these policies, including the damage they caused. This failure allowed the Recons to actually put the Dems on the defensive by blaming these problems on out of control big government spending, the ‘welfare state’ and ‘the entitlement culture.’
The Recons have used this narrative very effectively for a long time to brow beat Dems and libs with. They have convinced most people that this is true. We’ve heard it so many times it must be true. But the facts, which are borne out by the statistics, show that supply-side/starve-the-beast policies are to blame.
The fallacy of the Republiconservative narrative was never fully dissected by the Dems. They allowed themselves to be intimidated by those arguments for many years, which allowed the Recons to go unchallenged. Only late in this recent campaign season did the libs and Dems start to present the facts that refuted the Republiconservative rhetoric.
There are many aspects to the Republicon policies that started with Reagan, each one of which requires a separate post to explain. The first one I plan to tackle is tax policy since that is the one thing that the Recons fight the hardest about as evidenced by the current budget negotiations.
The single most cherished belief of Republiconservalibertarians is the fantasy of an infallible, magically powered ability of tax cuts to cure everything from cancer to hoarseness.
The utter, miserable failure of the Bush tax cuts to produce any of the wonderful things that the Republiconservalibertarians swore that they would – except for putting tons more money in the hands of the ‘job creators’ -- is the Ace in the hand that the Recons dealt the Dems.
Stay tuned for my next post where I will give a close examination of the disparity between Republiconservalibertarian rhetoric and reality.
Stunningly, the Democrats never played that hand. They couldn't even recognize that they were holding an Ace, King, Queen, Jack and 10, let alone that they all happened to be in the same suit.
Four years later, with the Dems still holding the same cards while going into the ‘fiscal-cliff’ negotiations over the budget, they were given a second opportunity to play that hand when the Republicons went full-bore far-right-lunatic-fringe Kenyan-birther community-organizer hip-hop-barbeque apologizing-for-America terrorist-sympathizing-appeaser Muslim-infiltrating black-helicopter death-panel Hitler-socialist second-amendment-remedy mooching- 47% legitimate-rape Acorn-stole-the-election Obama-is-the-Anti-Christ nuts and blew their chance to take over Government. (See my previous post for an elaboration)
However, in one of the most disgusting displays of political ineptitude in American history, Obama and the Dems decided to discard their Ace, King and Queen in order to play a pair of fucking Jacks!
My card playing example may not be a perfect metaphor for the game of negotiating – in the game of poker the players keep their cards hidden before playing their hands. But only a terrible negotiator keeps his cards hidden before negotiating.
The strategy of poker is to keep your cards hidden until the final wager so that you can bluff the other players. Keeping your cards hidden is what makes your position stronger.
The strategy of negotiating is to put all of your cards on the table before you start negotiating. Exposing your cards beforehand is what makes your position stronger.
I do think, however, that my metaphor works pretty well as far as illustrating how utterly inept Obama and the Dems are at the game of negotiating. The best example of this is President Obama’s obsessive compulsion in making the compromise position his starting position. He seems to do this all the time. And then from that point he concedes more than half way to the outrageously unreasonable ultra-far-right position! This is infuriating.
Then, to add insult to injury, Obama gets called a Stalinist dictator by the right-wingers.
Here are some perfect examples.
During the healthcare reform negotiations we had a situation where, due to the huge gaping inadequacies of the free-market model of health insurance, millions of Americans were uninsured, resulting in the premature deaths of thousands of people every single year. You’d think this should be a cause of concern for everyone, regardless of whether or not they had adequate insurance themselves. Yet at the time the Republiconservatives were telling us that the USA had the best and greatest healthcare system in the world and nothing needed to be changed -- except for the money we were spending on the uninsured poor. That needed to be cut drastically.
Now there was a very simple and very proven solution to this problem. It’s called single-payer universal healthcare. Every other civilized country in the world has it. They cover all their citizens at about half the cost we do for only covering some. This solution would not only have solved the uninsured problem, it would have solved our Medicaid and Medicare problem too. It would have solved the problem of preexisting illnesses and losing your insurance if you lost your job. It would have covered every American young, old, poor or sick. It would have been the equivalent of a humongous tax cut for businesses and corporations by relieving them from the burden of providing health insurance to their employees. (Just imagine what a boon this would have been to small businesses) It would have solved the deficit/debt problem in one fell swoop. How? By cutting our medical costs – the biggest driver of future federal spending -- in half!
How the fuck do you lose an argument like this with those facts on your side?
Well, the most surefire way is to not even make the argument in the first place.
Instead of making single-payer his starting position, like he should have, Obama made what should have been the compromise position, the Public Option, his opening bid. Then he caved on that and settled for a convoluted mess that subsidizes private companies with tax-payer money, forces Americans to purchase a defective product and does nothing to lower healthcare costs. And here’s the kicker. This monstrosity was concocted by that bastion of conservatism, The Heritage Foundation. (That’s the think tank where the notorious ultra-right-wing reactionary Jim DeMint left his Senate seat to head) Even though ‘Obamacare’ maintained the conservalibertarian preference of putting a money-hungry private company between you and your doctor, the right called it socialism.
Another perfect example is the Royal Flush which sixteen years (Reagan and Bush Jr.) of supply-side/starve-the-beast economics handed the Dems.
These policies caused most of the problems that we face today and that fact should have been enough to totally discredit the Republicon Party. But the Dems were unable to fully explain to the American people the implications of these policies, including the damage they caused. This failure allowed the Recons to actually put the Dems on the defensive by blaming these problems on out of control big government spending, the ‘welfare state’ and ‘the entitlement culture.’
The Recons have used this narrative very effectively for a long time to brow beat Dems and libs with. They have convinced most people that this is true. We’ve heard it so many times it must be true. But the facts, which are borne out by the statistics, show that supply-side/starve-the-beast policies are to blame.
The fallacy of the Republiconservative narrative was never fully dissected by the Dems. They allowed themselves to be intimidated by those arguments for many years, which allowed the Recons to go unchallenged. Only late in this recent campaign season did the libs and Dems start to present the facts that refuted the Republiconservative rhetoric.
There are many aspects to the Republicon policies that started with Reagan, each one of which requires a separate post to explain. The first one I plan to tackle is tax policy since that is the one thing that the Recons fight the hardest about as evidenced by the current budget negotiations.
The single most cherished belief of Republiconservalibertarians is the fantasy of an infallible, magically powered ability of tax cuts to cure everything from cancer to hoarseness.
The utter, miserable failure of the Bush tax cuts to produce any of the wonderful things that the Republiconservalibertarians swore that they would – except for putting tons more money in the hands of the ‘job creators’ -- is the Ace in the hand that the Recons dealt the Dems.
Stay tuned for my next post where I will give a close examination of the disparity between Republiconservalibertarian rhetoric and reality.
Sunday, December 2, 2012
As Limbag Looks for Excuses the Truth Is Ignored
Conservatives have been telling us for a long, long time that the U.S. is a center-right country. This mantra has been repeated endlessly over the years by the number one conservative propagandist; right-wing radio blowhard, Rush Limbag. Rush’s talking points are accepted as absolute truth by the conservative community then disseminated throughout the media and the Republicon Party and then repeated at every possible opportunity.
At many times Mitt Romney seemed to be quoting Rush verbatim during his campaign and even echoed Rush’s explanation for why Obama won the election: he bribed the mooching takers with even more gifts and presents than they already suck out of the pockets of the producing makers.
Rush has now been calling Obama Santa Claus and playing Christmas song parodies of Obama telling the lazy parasites not to work because Obama Clause has a sack of free money and cell phones for them. The flat screen TV’s are already on their way. What a brilliant satirist that Mr. Limbag. No wonder why they pay him 60 million dollars a year. That only comes out to 1.5 million per song parody. What a bargain.
More proof of Rush’s brilliance is how he can ‘earn’ millions without even lifting a finger. He doesn’t even write those lame parodies himself. He gets someone else to do it for him. In other words, he ‘didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.’ Rush is kind of like a mooching parasite in that way. He takes the credit and the millions but does none of the work. Will someone please give that genius another well deserved tax cut?
There are lots of reasons to be gratefully thankful to Rush. He’s very, very rich for one. This automatically puts him in that class of special people who are owed our worship and adulation -- job creators!
Besides benevolently, just for us, creating all of the jobs all by themselves, they do all of the work and pay all of the taxes, too. But don’t cross them because they’ll fire their employees so fast your head will spin. So please give Rush and his fellow conservative job creators a tax cut fast, before they fire someone out of spite!
Never mind about that huge deficit/debt that was caused in large part by all of the previous tax cuts that failed to produce a single net job over the course of eleven years. We’ll just take it out of the freebees that the government doles out to all those Americans who are freeloading sloths.
But I digress.
As far as the U.S. being a center-right country, this is one of the many ‘untruths’ that has been repeated so often by the right that it eventually becomes a ‘truth.’ They will point to the polls that ask Americans to describe themselves as conservative/independent/moderate/liberal. More people self identify as conservative than as liberal, therefore America is center right, correct? That’s good enough proof for Mr. Dimbulb and his ditto-heads but of course that’s not at all reliable evidence considering the decades long conservative campaign to demagogue the word liberal. What’s much more telling is how people poll on the issues. And those show that, on most issues, Americans are -- and have been for a long time --to the left of center on most issues, and sometimes by large margins.
Another thing they would point to is what they imagine to be the ‘dominance’ of elected Republicon politicians. However when you examine that alleged ‘dominance’ more closely you can see that it has been more of a slight edge. This is because those periods of dominance have always been followed by a loss of their majority, something Republiconservatives conveniently forget. Here’s another interesting fact; even during the Republicon ‘landslides’ of ’94 and 2002, more total votes were cast for Democrats. Republicons won more elections because of the demographic distribution of Republicon voters. Democrat voters tend to be concentrated in cities and in the coastal states while Republicons are spread out in the less populated central states. This also explains the larger number of Republicon Governors.
Do you notice a pattern here, regarding how conservatives describe political reality? Using evidence that only appears to support your biases while ignoring the evidence that refutes it? Many Republiconservatives use this same analytic technique when they examine the results of the recent election. Those of the Limbag variety have been rationalizing every excuse in the book except for the truth. Before the election Rush was saying that Romney was going to win very big with a large majority of the popular vote and over 300 electoral votes because, of course, America is a center-right country and the conservative voters were much more motivated than the libs (no doubt due to his supreme truth-telling abilities.) He justified his gut feelings by pointing to the polls which had more Republicons expressing interest, enthusiasm and commitment to vote than Dems. But after the loss he said it was because the takers now outnumber the makers (the percentage of gift-receiving takers who voted for Obama was 51%, Romney’s 47% estimate was too low [but exactly the % that voted for Romney, ha!]) But then when Rush saw the data that showed that Romney got some-odd million less votes from registered Republicans than McCain did, he blamed that on the ‘soft’ Republicans (the reasonable non-delusional ones) who tried to distance themselves from the more "severely conservative" candidates (the crazy nutbags) and were too cowed by the libs to use the same vitriolic extremist rhetoric that Rush preferred.
I shall now lay out the evidence of what I think is the truth.
Despite the growing demographic shift in favor of the Dems, the electorate is still very evenly divided. The extremist, conspiracy-laden hate-filled rhetoric that comes from the far right does motivate those with that personality trait. But it turns off more people than it turns on, including a sizable number of conservative Republicans (the reasonable non-delusional ones) who would have voted Republican, and those moderates who might have. This is the same reason that, despite his popularity, more people dislike Rush than like him. This is why Romney got less votes from registered Republicans. Those Republicans either stayed home or voted libertarian.
I think the mistake those looking at the ‘enthusiasm’ data made was to extrapolate that enthusiasm to all Republicans. They didn’t consider the Republicans who were turned off. As for the Democrat side, while enthusiasm for Obama might have been less than four years ago, revulsion for Romney and the Republicons must have been at an all-time high. This might be why Democrat turnout was higher than the Republiconservatives thought it would be.
Consider this, Rush; Obama presided over the weakest economy since the Great Depression. No President has ever won reelection (except FDR, and Obama is no FDR) with this high an unemployment rate. He should have lost.
The Recons weren't aggressively conservative enough? That's almost as ludicrous as you are fat and stupid.
Never in my lifetime have we seen so many nutty goofball candidates espousing the kind of extreme, vitriolic, conspiracy-filled rhetoric that one would think could only survive on the fringes of society. Your side has forced this point of view into the mainstream of the Republican Party. You've saturated the media with this hyperbolic nonsense. You can't turn on the radio or TV or open a newspaper or magazine without being assaulted by some hysterical warning about socialism, death panels, the theft of liberty, the destruction of the country and on and on and on. The nation has heard your message loud and clear.
So if my analysis is correct, and I feel confident that it is, Romney and the Recons lost because they were too much like you, Rush, not because they weren’t enough like you. A reasonable Republican candidate would have won and reasonable Republicans would have gained seats not lost seats. Some of the most extreme Republicon candidates lost, like Akin, Mourdock and Allen West; and Michele Bachmann almost lost.
Michele Bachmann actually won the Iowa straw poll, remember? But when faced with an electorate that was not stacked with far-right ultra-conservatives, she almost lost her own district! What does that tell you, Dimbulb? It was because of you, your rhetoric, your positions and the candidates you spawned that your side lost, you delusional shithead.
At many times Mitt Romney seemed to be quoting Rush verbatim during his campaign and even echoed Rush’s explanation for why Obama won the election: he bribed the mooching takers with even more gifts and presents than they already suck out of the pockets of the producing makers.
Rush has now been calling Obama Santa Claus and playing Christmas song parodies of Obama telling the lazy parasites not to work because Obama Clause has a sack of free money and cell phones for them. The flat screen TV’s are already on their way. What a brilliant satirist that Mr. Limbag. No wonder why they pay him 60 million dollars a year. That only comes out to 1.5 million per song parody. What a bargain.
More proof of Rush’s brilliance is how he can ‘earn’ millions without even lifting a finger. He doesn’t even write those lame parodies himself. He gets someone else to do it for him. In other words, he ‘didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.’ Rush is kind of like a mooching parasite in that way. He takes the credit and the millions but does none of the work. Will someone please give that genius another well deserved tax cut?
There are lots of reasons to be gratefully thankful to Rush. He’s very, very rich for one. This automatically puts him in that class of special people who are owed our worship and adulation -- job creators!
Besides benevolently, just for us, creating all of the jobs all by themselves, they do all of the work and pay all of the taxes, too. But don’t cross them because they’ll fire their employees so fast your head will spin. So please give Rush and his fellow conservative job creators a tax cut fast, before they fire someone out of spite!
Never mind about that huge deficit/debt that was caused in large part by all of the previous tax cuts that failed to produce a single net job over the course of eleven years. We’ll just take it out of the freebees that the government doles out to all those Americans who are freeloading sloths.
But I digress.
As far as the U.S. being a center-right country, this is one of the many ‘untruths’ that has been repeated so often by the right that it eventually becomes a ‘truth.’ They will point to the polls that ask Americans to describe themselves as conservative/independent/moderate/liberal. More people self identify as conservative than as liberal, therefore America is center right, correct? That’s good enough proof for Mr. Dimbulb and his ditto-heads but of course that’s not at all reliable evidence considering the decades long conservative campaign to demagogue the word liberal. What’s much more telling is how people poll on the issues. And those show that, on most issues, Americans are -- and have been for a long time --to the left of center on most issues, and sometimes by large margins.
Another thing they would point to is what they imagine to be the ‘dominance’ of elected Republicon politicians. However when you examine that alleged ‘dominance’ more closely you can see that it has been more of a slight edge. This is because those periods of dominance have always been followed by a loss of their majority, something Republiconservatives conveniently forget. Here’s another interesting fact; even during the Republicon ‘landslides’ of ’94 and 2002, more total votes were cast for Democrats. Republicons won more elections because of the demographic distribution of Republicon voters. Democrat voters tend to be concentrated in cities and in the coastal states while Republicons are spread out in the less populated central states. This also explains the larger number of Republicon Governors.
Do you notice a pattern here, regarding how conservatives describe political reality? Using evidence that only appears to support your biases while ignoring the evidence that refutes it? Many Republiconservatives use this same analytic technique when they examine the results of the recent election. Those of the Limbag variety have been rationalizing every excuse in the book except for the truth. Before the election Rush was saying that Romney was going to win very big with a large majority of the popular vote and over 300 electoral votes because, of course, America is a center-right country and the conservative voters were much more motivated than the libs (no doubt due to his supreme truth-telling abilities.) He justified his gut feelings by pointing to the polls which had more Republicons expressing interest, enthusiasm and commitment to vote than Dems. But after the loss he said it was because the takers now outnumber the makers (the percentage of gift-receiving takers who voted for Obama was 51%, Romney’s 47% estimate was too low [but exactly the % that voted for Romney, ha!]) But then when Rush saw the data that showed that Romney got some-odd million less votes from registered Republicans than McCain did, he blamed that on the ‘soft’ Republicans (the reasonable non-delusional ones) who tried to distance themselves from the more "severely conservative" candidates (the crazy nutbags) and were too cowed by the libs to use the same vitriolic extremist rhetoric that Rush preferred.
I shall now lay out the evidence of what I think is the truth.
Despite the growing demographic shift in favor of the Dems, the electorate is still very evenly divided. The extremist, conspiracy-laden hate-filled rhetoric that comes from the far right does motivate those with that personality trait. But it turns off more people than it turns on, including a sizable number of conservative Republicans (the reasonable non-delusional ones) who would have voted Republican, and those moderates who might have. This is the same reason that, despite his popularity, more people dislike Rush than like him. This is why Romney got less votes from registered Republicans. Those Republicans either stayed home or voted libertarian.
I think the mistake those looking at the ‘enthusiasm’ data made was to extrapolate that enthusiasm to all Republicans. They didn’t consider the Republicans who were turned off. As for the Democrat side, while enthusiasm for Obama might have been less than four years ago, revulsion for Romney and the Republicons must have been at an all-time high. This might be why Democrat turnout was higher than the Republiconservatives thought it would be.
Consider this, Rush; Obama presided over the weakest economy since the Great Depression. No President has ever won reelection (except FDR, and Obama is no FDR) with this high an unemployment rate. He should have lost.
The Recons weren't aggressively conservative enough? That's almost as ludicrous as you are fat and stupid.
Never in my lifetime have we seen so many nutty goofball candidates espousing the kind of extreme, vitriolic, conspiracy-filled rhetoric that one would think could only survive on the fringes of society. Your side has forced this point of view into the mainstream of the Republican Party. You've saturated the media with this hyperbolic nonsense. You can't turn on the radio or TV or open a newspaper or magazine without being assaulted by some hysterical warning about socialism, death panels, the theft of liberty, the destruction of the country and on and on and on. The nation has heard your message loud and clear.
So if my analysis is correct, and I feel confident that it is, Romney and the Recons lost because they were too much like you, Rush, not because they weren’t enough like you. A reasonable Republican candidate would have won and reasonable Republicans would have gained seats not lost seats. Some of the most extreme Republicon candidates lost, like Akin, Mourdock and Allen West; and Michele Bachmann almost lost.
Michele Bachmann actually won the Iowa straw poll, remember? But when faced with an electorate that was not stacked with far-right ultra-conservatives, she almost lost her own district! What does that tell you, Dimbulb? It was because of you, your rhetoric, your positions and the candidates you spawned that your side lost, you delusional shithead.
Saturday, November 10, 2012
Whew!
(Note: I wrote this the day after the election but haven't gotten to post it 'till today because the hurricane knocked out my access to the World Wide Tubes. That's all fixed now so I'm back to surfing the tubes like it wasn't shit!)
I tend to be a pessimist and a worrier. The thought of the Republicons gaining more power and control of government made me feel ill. At times during the campaign season it seemed possible that the Recons could actually take control of the Presidency, the Senate, the House and thus, the Supreme Court. Even after the results of the election, just writing those words fills me with dread.
I never felt confident about how things would turn out even when Obama had what seemed like a comfortable lead.
Like most pessimist/worriers I tend not to be a gloater. But after the results of the election began to sink in, I just couldn’t help the feeling of satisfaction that began to dominate my mood as I thought about all those pompous blowhards on the right who were telling us how the pollsters were purposely manipulating the data in order to discourage Republicons from going to the polls.
It is an obvious and accepted fact among most conservatives that all polling organizations (just like the media and every other institution that has the ability to present information that displeases conservatives) are liberal hacks that will do anything in order to get Obama elected. The only exceptions to this rule are the Rasmussen polls and Fox News. Conservatives know that they can trust these two organizations because they consistently report the news that supports conservatives’ emotional biases.
These pompous blowhards were telling us that the methodology these polling organizations were using was wrong because they weren’t producing the kind of data that conservatives wanted to hear. They were absolutely certain that more people wanted to vote for Romney and that fact would be proven on Election Day. So, at the same time they were hysterically accusing the pollsters of making Obama win the election, they were guaranteeing that the pollsters were wrong and Romney would win. Some of these obnoxious jerks, like Dickhead Morris, were so sure of themselves that they predicted with absolute certitude that Romney would win by a landslide.
No one promotes the idea that polls are always fixed in favor of Democrats as much as right-wing radio windbag, Rush Dimbulb. One of his very favorite and often used conspiracy theories is that the pollsters, who are always liberal (except for Rasmussen), purposely alter the data in order to make things look good for Dems and bad for Recons in order to discourage Republiconservative voters. This theory is very useful whenever Recons are down in the polls. This is why, every election cycle, he tells his audience not to believe the polls if they don’t favor Recons.
As conservatives were feeling the angst from seeing Romney’s temporary lead melt away just before the election, Rush was telling his audience not only to disbelieve the polls (after saying ‘I told you so’ when Romney pulled ahead) but not to listen to any of the other bad news that had been coming out and that the only information they could trust was from him and Fox News. Mr. Dimbulb said this within minutes of telling his audience that one of the many, many things wrong with liberals is how they live in an information bubble. Really. He actually said that. On his Nov. 6 show.
How does that saying go? None are so blind as those who will not see?
Rush never explained why having Romney down wouldn’t motivate conservatives more, not less, or why having Obama comfortably ahead wouldn’t make Dems and libs complacent and less likely to bother to vote, thus benefiting Romney. He also never explained why the pollsters suddenly put Romney ahead after the first debate, thus validating what the entire ‘liberal media’ was saying relentlessly about Obama’s ‘terrible’ and ‘pathetic’ performance. That must have been discouraging to Dems and libs. Then Gallup had Romney up by 7 points with just a few weeks left, allowing the pundits to point out that no presidential candidate had ever lost after being up by that much that close to the election. You’d think that would devastate Obama supporters’ motivation.
Why would the ‘in the tank for Obama,’ liberally biased pollsters do such a thing?
Another question: why would a polling organization, which is in the business of predicting polls and competes against all the other Polls, not want to be the most accurate organization?
Rush’s answer: __________________________________ .
Hmmmm.
Also left unexplained was how Rush could be telling his audience that the pollsters were fixing the election for Obama by dampening conservative enthusiasm while at the same time telling them that conservative voters were much more enthusiastic about voting than libs because they knew they were right about everything and would never allow a socialist like Obama to take away their freedoms by forcing his malignant liberal policies on the American people (who, by the way, just voted Obama in for his second term.)
Interesting thing about that Gallup poll. I was reading an article in the New York Times about how Gallup (seemingly in response to the conservative critics) had changed their methodology to give more weight to the factors that conservatives wanted. In the end, Gallup and Rasmussen, the only polls that Rush said could be trusted, were off by the most.
Also, right before the election, all the polls had it practically tied (at least within the margin of error.) So you’d think that would make it a fair fight, wouldn’t you, Rush? How do you explain the results now, Rush?
Well, I listened to Rush’s show today and he suggested voter fraud.
Ah, ha ha ha.
Did Limbag just call that army of patriotic poll watchers a bunch of incompetent boobs?
So, as loathe as I am to gloat, I just can’t help myself with these jerks.
I tend to be a pessimist and a worrier. The thought of the Republicons gaining more power and control of government made me feel ill. At times during the campaign season it seemed possible that the Recons could actually take control of the Presidency, the Senate, the House and thus, the Supreme Court. Even after the results of the election, just writing those words fills me with dread.
I never felt confident about how things would turn out even when Obama had what seemed like a comfortable lead.
Like most pessimist/worriers I tend not to be a gloater. But after the results of the election began to sink in, I just couldn’t help the feeling of satisfaction that began to dominate my mood as I thought about all those pompous blowhards on the right who were telling us how the pollsters were purposely manipulating the data in order to discourage Republicons from going to the polls.
It is an obvious and accepted fact among most conservatives that all polling organizations (just like the media and every other institution that has the ability to present information that displeases conservatives) are liberal hacks that will do anything in order to get Obama elected. The only exceptions to this rule are the Rasmussen polls and Fox News. Conservatives know that they can trust these two organizations because they consistently report the news that supports conservatives’ emotional biases.
These pompous blowhards were telling us that the methodology these polling organizations were using was wrong because they weren’t producing the kind of data that conservatives wanted to hear. They were absolutely certain that more people wanted to vote for Romney and that fact would be proven on Election Day. So, at the same time they were hysterically accusing the pollsters of making Obama win the election, they were guaranteeing that the pollsters were wrong and Romney would win. Some of these obnoxious jerks, like Dickhead Morris, were so sure of themselves that they predicted with absolute certitude that Romney would win by a landslide.
No one promotes the idea that polls are always fixed in favor of Democrats as much as right-wing radio windbag, Rush Dimbulb. One of his very favorite and often used conspiracy theories is that the pollsters, who are always liberal (except for Rasmussen), purposely alter the data in order to make things look good for Dems and bad for Recons in order to discourage Republiconservative voters. This theory is very useful whenever Recons are down in the polls. This is why, every election cycle, he tells his audience not to believe the polls if they don’t favor Recons.
As conservatives were feeling the angst from seeing Romney’s temporary lead melt away just before the election, Rush was telling his audience not only to disbelieve the polls (after saying ‘I told you so’ when Romney pulled ahead) but not to listen to any of the other bad news that had been coming out and that the only information they could trust was from him and Fox News. Mr. Dimbulb said this within minutes of telling his audience that one of the many, many things wrong with liberals is how they live in an information bubble. Really. He actually said that. On his Nov. 6 show.
How does that saying go? None are so blind as those who will not see?
Rush never explained why having Romney down wouldn’t motivate conservatives more, not less, or why having Obama comfortably ahead wouldn’t make Dems and libs complacent and less likely to bother to vote, thus benefiting Romney. He also never explained why the pollsters suddenly put Romney ahead after the first debate, thus validating what the entire ‘liberal media’ was saying relentlessly about Obama’s ‘terrible’ and ‘pathetic’ performance. That must have been discouraging to Dems and libs. Then Gallup had Romney up by 7 points with just a few weeks left, allowing the pundits to point out that no presidential candidate had ever lost after being up by that much that close to the election. You’d think that would devastate Obama supporters’ motivation.
Why would the ‘in the tank for Obama,’ liberally biased pollsters do such a thing?
Another question: why would a polling organization, which is in the business of predicting polls and competes against all the other Polls, not want to be the most accurate organization?
Rush’s answer: __________________________________ .
Hmmmm.
Also left unexplained was how Rush could be telling his audience that the pollsters were fixing the election for Obama by dampening conservative enthusiasm while at the same time telling them that conservative voters were much more enthusiastic about voting than libs because they knew they were right about everything and would never allow a socialist like Obama to take away their freedoms by forcing his malignant liberal policies on the American people (who, by the way, just voted Obama in for his second term.)
Interesting thing about that Gallup poll. I was reading an article in the New York Times about how Gallup (seemingly in response to the conservative critics) had changed their methodology to give more weight to the factors that conservatives wanted. In the end, Gallup and Rasmussen, the only polls that Rush said could be trusted, were off by the most.
Also, right before the election, all the polls had it practically tied (at least within the margin of error.) So you’d think that would make it a fair fight, wouldn’t you, Rush? How do you explain the results now, Rush?
Well, I listened to Rush’s show today and he suggested voter fraud.
Ah, ha ha ha.
Did Limbag just call that army of patriotic poll watchers a bunch of incompetent boobs?
So, as loathe as I am to gloat, I just can’t help myself with these jerks.
Sunday, November 4, 2012
Romney: The Most Ridiculous Presidential Candidate Ever?
Has there ever been a
more ridiculous presidential candidate in American history than Mitt
Romney?
Maybe Pat Paulson? What about Lyndon LaRouche? There was that time some
party ran a pig.
But if you think about
it, Pat Paulson, like most satirists, was a pretty sharp guy. Plus, despite the
farcical nature of his ‘campaign’, everyone knew what he really meant and he
was much more trustworthy at telling the truth than Mitt.
LaRouche was pretty damn
wacky but consider this: remember Romney’s ‘private’ fundraising dinner where
he slandered 47% of the American people, the one where he thought that only his
real base (rich white people) was listening? That’s when we saw and heard a
much different Mitt than the one we’re used to seeing and hearing. Rather than the
stiff, forced, robotic, phony bullshit artist Mitt, we saw an amazingly relaxed
and natural seeming Mitt. Almost as if he was saying what he really thought.
Well, at one point
during that very informative ‘talk,’ he said, regarding his plan to improve the
economy, that he wouldn’t have to do
anything at all. He said that just his winning the election would be enough to
create more jobs. (Mitt was referring to what Paul Krugman calls the
‘confidence fairy’) You know, instant job creation. That’s what happens whenever a conservative-Republican,
pro-business, pro-growth, tax-cutting supply-sider with a hawkish foreign
policy comes into office. Just like it did when the Bush/Cheney administration
got elected. Remember?
So, I can see a strong argument that LaRouche is less
ridiculous than Mitt.
But what about that pig?
The big fat stupid smelly fucking pig?
Ok, you got me. Mitt
Romney was the most ridiculous presidential candidate in American history,
except for Rush Limbag – I mean the pig. (I don’t know why I thought of Rush
Limbag. My apologies to the pig.)
Has any other candidate
ever changed positions so drastically so often and on so many issues
as Mitt? How many times have we seen the tapes of Mitt issuing a
clear and unambiguous position only to see another tape where
he states the exact opposite position? The only thing I can think of
which surpasses Mitt's penchant for contradicting himself would be his
complete willingness to make false statements.
All politicians bullshit
and Obama is no exception, but I would love for someone to tabulate all
the false statements Mitt has made during his political career and see if
anyone else has even come close. I'd wager that his world record total
would be as untouchable as DiMaggio's 56 game hitting streak. He's the Lance
Armstrong of political bullshit.
He's incorporated every
off the wall, completely wrong, right-wing talking point in the book as part of
his political rhetoric. In one of the most amazing ironies in political
history, the Republicon Party nominated a former Governor who is the first
politician to implement the very healthcare plan that practically all of his
fellow Republiconservatives describe as an oppressive, overreaching big-government takeover of
healthcare that violates the Constitution. .
Here's a more accurate
description of Romney/Obamacare from a previous post of mine:
“So the Dems gave up and
decided to settle for a piece of garbage (a wasteful taxpayer subsidy to a
seriously flawed private health insurance system) that is based on a plan
devised by the Heritage Foundation, a longstanding bastion of Conservatism.
That's right; Obamacare is the brainchild of Conservatism.
This plan, including the individual mandate, was used by Republicans in the 90's as a counter to Hillarycare.
It was endorsed by numerous conservatives including Gingrich.
And of course Romney adopted it for Massachusetts.”
That's right; Obamacare is the brainchild of Conservatism.
This plan, including the individual mandate, was used by Republicans in the 90's as a counter to Hillarycare.
It was endorsed by numerous conservatives including Gingrich.
And of course Romney adopted it for Massachusetts.”
So,
what was originally an honest attempt by conservatives to address the problem
of millions of uninsured Americans (while preserving a free market model of
insurance by introducing the Individual Mandate) is now vilified by the crazies
on the right as Obama’s ultimate act of totalitarian liberal-socialism.
Oh,
hey, did you notice that Romney is now proposing the public option for
Medicare?
According to conservatives, the public option was supposed to result in the end of life as we know it.
According to conservatives, the public option was supposed to result in the end of life as we know it.
But what does this say about the Republicons who nominated this guy in the first place? And what about all those Republiconservative nuts who see Obamacare as a Stalinesque act of big-government freedom-crushing oppression, even though it was concocted by conservatives and supported by Republicons in the past?
How are they able to brush these facts aside? How are they unable to recognize the idiocy of this thinking?
Well, idiotic thinking is one of the primary symptoms of Obama Derangement Syndrome.
Then there’s Mitt the ‘job creator.’ Have you read David Stockman’s brilliant article on Romney, Bain Capital and job creation in the Oct 22 issue of Newsweek? Stockman was Reagan’s budget director and as a private equity investor himself, knows this business well. Here’s how he summed up Romney’s tenure at Bain:
“Bain did considerably better, of course, but the reason wasn’t business acumen. The secret was leverage, luck, inside baseball, and the peculiar asymmetrical dynamics of the leveraged gambling carried on by private equity shops... Needless to say, having a trader’s facility for knowing when to hold ’em and when to fold ’em has virtually nothing to do with rectifying the massive fiscal hemorrhage and debt burdened private economy that are the real issues before the American electorate. Indeed, the next President’s overriding task is restoring national solvency—an undertaking that will involve immense society-wide pain, sacrifice, and denial, and that will therefore require ‘fairness’… And that’s why heralding Romney’s record at Bain is so completely perverse. The record is actually all about the utter unfairness of windfall riches obtained under our anti-free market regime of bubble finance.”
Isn't that lovely? And if you think that these kinds of "job creators" pay too much in taxes, don't worry because if Romney gets elected the Republicons will drop the capital gains rate to zero! Yeah!
Friday, October 12, 2012
Romney's Post Debate Conference
Note: See my previous post for the pre-debate conference.
The following is a fictional account of Romney's post-debate conference with his three debate coaches.
However, it is based on best assessments and most likely scenarios of what probably happened.
A stunned Mitt Romney, still in a state of shock after leaving the debate stage, approaches a conference room to confer with his coaches. He can hear the sounds of urban-style hip hop music. He opens the door to the sight of his three debate coaches dancing in celebration. A surprisingly limber and nimble Roger Ailes is putting on an amazing display of krumping. Sean Hannity is on his back spinning like a top on the floor. Bill O'Reilly is locking, popping and moonwalking across the room. A half empty bottle of Macallan whiskey, dated 1926, which Ailes had purchased at Christie's for $30,000, is on the table along with four glasses. The three rush Mitt, hooting and hollering, slapping high-fives. Hannity spikes that stupid football he's always tossing on his TV show.
Mitt: "I can't believe it. He didn't bring it up."
O'Reilly: "This is a miracle! There must be a God after all! There's no other explanation!"
Hannity: "I told you O'Reilly! God's on our side. Prayer works every time it's tried!
Mitt: "But I still can't believe it. They had me on tape calling 47% of the American people -- most of whom are honest, hard working people who contribute tremendously to society and the economy -- nothing but a bunch of self-entitled, dependent moochers who can't even take care of themselves. I practically called them all lazy, worthless scum."
O'Reilly: "You know, Mitt might be on to something. With all the evil we've been doing for all these years. The lying, the cheating, the hypocrisy. The plot to drive up the debt so that we can use it as the excuse to take away all of the social programs that benefit the poor and middle class..."
Ailes: " Starve the Beast baby!! Starve it 'till it's small enough to drown in the bathtub!!"
O'Reilly: "... then we have the unmitigated gall to hold the country hostage for even more tax cuts for the rich, even though all those Bush tax cuts produced zero jobs and only blew up the debt. Let's face it, we're a bunch of scumbags. Why would God do this for us? Could that be possible? Was it really God?"
A suddenly nervous looking Ailes: "Well, Bill, you said it yourself, 'there's no other explanation.'"
O'Reilly: "That's right. There is no other explanation... unless... [Ailes is now twiddling his thumbs and whistling while looking up to the ceiling.] Ailes, you didn't! You couldn't!"
Mitt: "Didn't? Couldn't? What are you talking about, O'Reilly?"
O'Reilly: "Ailes, you made a deal with the Devil! A Faustian bargain!"
Ailes: "OK, OK. You got me. I made a pact with Satan." [shocked disbelief around the room]
Mitt: "Roger, how could you!!?"
Ailes: "It's easy Mitt. I have Lucifer on speed-dial. How do you think I got so many people to believe that Fox News is 'fair and balanced?'
We report, you decide! [Hannity and Ailes bust out laughing] Besides, I only promised him Sean's first born son."
Mitt: "Oh God, Sean, I had no idea!"
Hannity: "Don't worry Mitt. As long as Obama and taxes for the rich both go down, it's worth it."
[A shaken Romney slumps into a chair. Ailes pours a glass of whiskey and hands it to Mitt]
Ailes: "I know it's a shock, Mitt. Drink this, it'll make you feel better."
Mitt: "I'm a Mormon, Roger. We don't drink alcohol."
Ailes: "You're in shock and you're upset. You're trembling, Mitt. This is medicinal. It's like Xanax, only better."
O'Reilly: "A lot better. Give me another glass of that $30,000 whiskey."
[Mitt takes the first drink of whiskey in his life. He gags on the first gulp but then pours the rest down his gullet and then shudders.]
O'Reilly: "Roger, I gotta admit, when they made evil geniuses they broke the mold after they made you."
Ailes: "Let me propose a toast. To Mitt's great performance and Sean's brilliant tactics."
[They all clink glasses]
Ailes: "Sean, I loved the way Mitt pulled off that line you gave him; 'Look, I've got five boys. I'm used to people saying something that's not always true, but just keep on repeating it and ultimately hoping I'll believe it.'
Not only did he get to use that on Obama before Obama got to use it on him -- even though Obama's telling the truth and Mitt's the one repeating the lie -- but he got to use the 'boy' dog whistle too!"
[everyone is laughing as they hoist another drink]
O'Reilly: "I'm a little nervous about that dog whistle, though. Don't you think the libs are going to notice that and use the race card by calling it racial innuendo?"
Hannity: "Plausible deniability, O'Reilly. You always call your sons boys, don't you Mitt?"
Mitt: "Sean, my sons are all over thirty, I have way too much respect for them than to call them boys."
[Everyone busts out laughing. High fives and another round of drinks.]
Ailes: "Wait a minute, then why do you always call us boys? [An inebriated Ailes ponders that thought for a moment.] Why you mother fucking Mormon bastard!" [Ailes charges at Mitt before O'Reilly and Hannity wrestle him to the ground. Then, everyone busts out laughing again. A growing wet stain appears in his pants as Ailes loses control of his bladder.]
O'Reilly: "Hey Roger, don't I get any credit for the Big Bird put down?"
Ailes: "That was smart too, Bill. It was a great nod to the nutbag base, to let them know Mitt hasn't gone socialist on them. They HATE PBS."
Mitt: "Hey this is starting to taste pretty good. Give me another glass. AND TURN UP THE MUSIC!"
The sounds are blasting, Ailes is krumping, Sean is breakdancing, Bill is moonwalking and even Mitt is getting his groove on by, fittingly, doing the Robot.
Before long, Mitt has removed his pants and is now dancing in his magic underwear. One more glass of whiskey later and Mitt has removed his underwear and is simulating the act of coitus on a bent over Ailes while pretending to spank his rear end.
Another toast. "TO LUCIFER!!!"
The following is a fictional account of Romney's post-debate conference with his three debate coaches.
However, it is based on best assessments and most likely scenarios of what probably happened.
A stunned Mitt Romney, still in a state of shock after leaving the debate stage, approaches a conference room to confer with his coaches. He can hear the sounds of urban-style hip hop music. He opens the door to the sight of his three debate coaches dancing in celebration. A surprisingly limber and nimble Roger Ailes is putting on an amazing display of krumping. Sean Hannity is on his back spinning like a top on the floor. Bill O'Reilly is locking, popping and moonwalking across the room. A half empty bottle of Macallan whiskey, dated 1926, which Ailes had purchased at Christie's for $30,000, is on the table along with four glasses. The three rush Mitt, hooting and hollering, slapping high-fives. Hannity spikes that stupid football he's always tossing on his TV show.
Mitt: "I can't believe it. He didn't bring it up."
O'Reilly: "This is a miracle! There must be a God after all! There's no other explanation!"
Hannity: "I told you O'Reilly! God's on our side. Prayer works every time it's tried!
Mitt: "But I still can't believe it. They had me on tape calling 47% of the American people -- most of whom are honest, hard working people who contribute tremendously to society and the economy -- nothing but a bunch of self-entitled, dependent moochers who can't even take care of themselves. I practically called them all lazy, worthless scum."
O'Reilly: "You know, Mitt might be on to something. With all the evil we've been doing for all these years. The lying, the cheating, the hypocrisy. The plot to drive up the debt so that we can use it as the excuse to take away all of the social programs that benefit the poor and middle class..."
Ailes: " Starve the Beast baby!! Starve it 'till it's small enough to drown in the bathtub!!"
O'Reilly: "... then we have the unmitigated gall to hold the country hostage for even more tax cuts for the rich, even though all those Bush tax cuts produced zero jobs and only blew up the debt. Let's face it, we're a bunch of scumbags. Why would God do this for us? Could that be possible? Was it really God?"
A suddenly nervous looking Ailes: "Well, Bill, you said it yourself, 'there's no other explanation.'"
O'Reilly: "That's right. There is no other explanation... unless... [Ailes is now twiddling his thumbs and whistling while looking up to the ceiling.] Ailes, you didn't! You couldn't!"
Mitt: "Didn't? Couldn't? What are you talking about, O'Reilly?"
O'Reilly: "Ailes, you made a deal with the Devil! A Faustian bargain!"
Ailes: "OK, OK. You got me. I made a pact with Satan." [shocked disbelief around the room]
Mitt: "Roger, how could you!!?"
Ailes: "It's easy Mitt. I have Lucifer on speed-dial. How do you think I got so many people to believe that Fox News is 'fair and balanced?'
We report, you decide! [Hannity and Ailes bust out laughing] Besides, I only promised him Sean's first born son."
Mitt: "Oh God, Sean, I had no idea!"
Hannity: "Don't worry Mitt. As long as Obama and taxes for the rich both go down, it's worth it."
[A shaken Romney slumps into a chair. Ailes pours a glass of whiskey and hands it to Mitt]
Ailes: "I know it's a shock, Mitt. Drink this, it'll make you feel better."
Mitt: "I'm a Mormon, Roger. We don't drink alcohol."
Ailes: "You're in shock and you're upset. You're trembling, Mitt. This is medicinal. It's like Xanax, only better."
O'Reilly: "A lot better. Give me another glass of that $30,000 whiskey."
[Mitt takes the first drink of whiskey in his life. He gags on the first gulp but then pours the rest down his gullet and then shudders.]
O'Reilly: "Roger, I gotta admit, when they made evil geniuses they broke the mold after they made you."
Ailes: "Let me propose a toast. To Mitt's great performance and Sean's brilliant tactics."
[They all clink glasses]
Ailes: "Sean, I loved the way Mitt pulled off that line you gave him; 'Look, I've got five boys. I'm used to people saying something that's not always true, but just keep on repeating it and ultimately hoping I'll believe it.'
Not only did he get to use that on Obama before Obama got to use it on him -- even though Obama's telling the truth and Mitt's the one repeating the lie -- but he got to use the 'boy' dog whistle too!"
[everyone is laughing as they hoist another drink]
O'Reilly: "I'm a little nervous about that dog whistle, though. Don't you think the libs are going to notice that and use the race card by calling it racial innuendo?"
Hannity: "Plausible deniability, O'Reilly. You always call your sons boys, don't you Mitt?"
Mitt: "Sean, my sons are all over thirty, I have way too much respect for them than to call them boys."
[Everyone busts out laughing. High fives and another round of drinks.]
Ailes: "Wait a minute, then why do you always call us boys? [An inebriated Ailes ponders that thought for a moment.] Why you mother fucking Mormon bastard!" [Ailes charges at Mitt before O'Reilly and Hannity wrestle him to the ground. Then, everyone busts out laughing again. A growing wet stain appears in his pants as Ailes loses control of his bladder.]
O'Reilly: "Hey Roger, don't I get any credit for the Big Bird put down?"
Ailes: "That was smart too, Bill. It was a great nod to the nutbag base, to let them know Mitt hasn't gone socialist on them. They HATE PBS."
Mitt: "Hey this is starting to taste pretty good. Give me another glass. AND TURN UP THE MUSIC!"
The sounds are blasting, Ailes is krumping, Sean is breakdancing, Bill is moonwalking and even Mitt is getting his groove on by, fittingly, doing the Robot.
Before long, Mitt has removed his pants and is now dancing in his magic underwear. One more glass of whiskey later and Mitt has removed his underwear and is simulating the act of coitus on a bent over Ailes while pretending to spank his rear end.
Another toast. "TO LUCIFER!!!"
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)