Category Archives: Lying bastards

Did anyone notice…

…that the very first thing out of Mitt Romney’s mouth at tonight’s national security debate was a lie?

…that every candidate erroneously put her/his hand over her/his heart during the National Anthem?

…Herman Cain can’t remember what Libya is, but can use Newspeak: “targeted identifcation” instead of “racial profiling”?

…that Michele Bachmann doesn’t respect legal process? She claims that the underwear bomber should not have had his Miranda rights read to him.

…that Mitt Romney didn’t apologize for his latest campaign ad in which he claims a statement from a McCain campaigner was made by Obama?

…the “audience questions” that Blitzer asked for came the likes of Mike Gonzales (the communication director of the Heritage Foundation — one of this debate’s sponsors)? that another “audience question” came from an American Enterprise Institute (the other sponsor) scholar by the name of Danielle Pletka? and another “audience question” was from Paul Wolfowitz? This is nothing but a right-wing handled event, and CNN is playing right along.

…Jon Huntsman‘s warning about “listening to the generals” about Afghanistan that could cause another Vietnam?

~~~

Welcome to another managed Republican debate, deftly attempting to lull the public into complacency. And welcome to CNN, yet another corporate meatpuppet.

Fuck you, CNN. Fuck you very much.

“Choco ration’s going up!”

When Parsons announces this rumor Winston Smith in 1984, he neatly illustrates the Orwellian concept of Newspeak. Later that day Smith’s work at the Ministry of Records requires him to edit past editions of the news so that the “current” ration becomes 20 grammes rather than the real ration of 30 grammes.

When the official news announces at the communal meal that the ration is “going up” to 25 grammes, everyone applauds.

Republican policymakers have learned that lesson quite well.

The secret here is to take a grain of truth, spin an elaborate lie about, say it often enough to make a talking point out of it, and then it takes on a “truth” of its own.

 

“What do the simple folk do?”

This song title, from Camelot, is a musing by the king and queen as to what poor folk do with their time and money.

Republican presidential nominees don’t seem as curious.

~~~

Herman Cain:

Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain has been touting his “new” tax plan as a way to get the U.S. economy moving again. He calls it the 9-9-9 plan, and its main components are a 9% personal federal tax rate, a 9% corporate federal tax rate, and a 9% national sales tax.

Cain claims this plan will straighten out the economy and stimulate job creation, although when pressed he cannot begin to tell anyone exactly how it will do that.

That’s okay, Herman, The Tax Policy Center has done your work for you. Here’s the result of the changes in the individual federal tax structure, broken down by income level:

Note that two charts are required to show the magnitude of the tax cut for the very wealthy.

Under this tax plan, those making less than $200,000/year will see a moderate tax increase, while those in the $200,000-$1 million bracket will see a substantial tax decrease. Those making more than $1 million/year will see an average savings of over $400,000. Must be nice, being rich.

~~~

Mitt Romney:

Governor Romney’s tax plan is this niftykeen idea to eliminate all taxes on capital gains. The Tax Policy Center has done the numbers on that one as well:

So, an average household making $50,000 would get a $54 tax break if capital gains taxes were eliminated (0.1%). Those who make a $1 million would see $141,005 (14.1%).

Compare this to one of President Obama’s suggested tax relief programs, reviled by Romney as a “temporary band-aid”, that would give middle-class households a tax break of $800-$1000.

~~~

Michele Bachmann:

In her own words:

“In my perfect world, we’d take the 35% corporate tax rate down to nine so that we’re the most competitive in the industrialized world. Zero out capital gains. Zero out the alternative minimum tax. Zero out the death tax.”

In other words, enrich corporations and the rich, and to hell with everyone else. ‘Nuff said.

~~~

Rick Perry:

In his own words:

“We’re dismayed at the injustice that nearly half of all Americans don’t even pay any income tax.”

That’s true. A family of four with a $30,000/year income pays no net federal taxes due to the tax structure. However, such a family does pay state income taxes, sales taxes, excise taxes on gasoline and liquor, and (most importantly) payroll taxes for Medicare and Social Security. Perry proposes to increase federal taxes so that everyone pays them, but he balks at increasing any taxes for the rich:

“Spreading the wealth’ punishes success while setting America on course for greater dependency on government…”

~~~

The Republican pack running for their party’s nomination are all aiming at the target of raising taxes for the poor and middle-class, while attempting to lower taxes for their rich corporate masters.

Gee, I guess taxes aren’t as hard to figure out as it seems as long as you know what your goals are — the further enrichment of the wealthy at the expense of everyone else.

“We fight, because we believe.”

The Spouse is so smart. She finds cool things for me to post and grouse about.

From U.S. Representative Peter King, the gentleman who spent some time earlier this year channeling Joe McCarthy with his Islamophobic witchhunts and repeated accusations of class warfare on the part of the middle class, referring to the Occupy movement:

“[W]e have to be careful not to allow this to get any legitimacy…I’m taking this seriously in that I’m old enough to remember what happened in the 1960s when the left-wing took to the streets and somehow the media glorified them and it ended up shaping policy…We can’t allow that to happen.”

That statement, bundled with King’s retelling of rumors (“I don’t have facts to back this up, but…”), prompted this gem:

So per Representative King, the people have no business taking action that might shape national policy.

That sounds rather oligarchical.

Doesn’t it?

“Now that we’re done with civics for the day, it’s unreasoned homophobia quiz time!”

Apple is rather obnoxiously picky about how an app gets included into the iTunes Store.

However, the Android app store needs to pick up a little more pickiness. There is an app out there, in the “20 Questions” neighborhood, that is supposed to show whether or not your son is gay.

No, really. Here are the questions, along with the answers my parents would have given:

  • Before he was born, did you wish for a girl? (no, my parents didn’t)
  • Has he ever been in a fight? (no)
  • Does he read the sports page in he newspaper? (no)
  • Is his best friend a girl? (yes)
  • Does he like team sports? (no!)
  • Is he modest? (yes)
  • Is he a fan of divas (Madonna, Britney Spears)? (not really)
  • Does he spend a long time in the bathroom? (inordinate amounts of time)
  • Does he have piercings in his tongue, nose or ears? (no)
  • Do you wonder about your son’s sexual orientation? (yes)
  • Are you divorced? (no)
  • Does he like musical comedies? (hate ‘em)
  • Has he ever introduced you to a girlfriend? (yes)
  • Is his father a very authoritarian person? (yes!)
  • Within your family, is the father absent at all? (yes, somewhat)
  • During his childhood, was he timid or discreet? (yes)
  • Does he have a complicated relationship with his father? (yes)
  • Does he take a long time to do his hair? (yes)
  • Does he like to dress well: is he very careful when choosing his outfits and selecting brands? (no)
  • Does he like football? (no!)

(I flunked 13 out of 20. That doesn’t make me gay — and I’m not.)

The saddest thing about this pitiful attempt to determine a son’s sexual orientation is not that it helps parents avoid the personal, trusting relationship that would allow open communication about a child’s preferences. It’s also not the childishly inept attempt to classify sexual preference based on clumsy, inexact, meaningless questions that perpetuate stereotypes and promote unreasoned fear about whether a son likes or dislikes something as meaningless as football (FFS!).

The saddest thing about the app is this picture of the mother that comes bundled with the app:

"The horror! The...horror!"

Note the carefully staged photography, showing a terrified mother on the brink of a horrible discovery about her son. Her expression is that of someone who’s about to open the closet door and find her child performing some morally bankrupt ritual such as…admiring the shiny bedspreads in the Sears catalog.

What utter bullshit.

Whoever paid for and spearheaded this app’s creation richly deserves the Dumbass of the Day Award.

Newspeak, Rick Perry style

As is so common in this national election cycle, the GOP candidates lack the courage of their convictions. Gingrich, Bachmann, and now Perry make pitiful attempts to walk back their more outrageous proclamations when the cold light of day shows how ridiculous they are. They waffle, walkback, and ignore questioning. Dodge and evade and reinterpret are the watchwords of the day.

Case in point –Rick Perry’s gibberings about Social Security. From Perry’s book Fed Up (no, no link for this piece of nonsense), published last year:

“Social Security is something we have been forced to accept for more than 70 years now. Because of that, as Nobel laureate economic Milton Friedman wrote, the program “is one of those things on which the tyranny of the status quo is beginning to work its magic. Despite the controversy that surrounded its inception, it has come to be so much taken for granted that its desirability is hardly questioned any longer.
“And there stands a cumbling monument to the failure of the New Deal, in stark contrast to the mythical notion of salvation to which it has wrongly been attached for too long, all at the expense of respect for the Constitution and limited government.”*

This is followed up by comments made in a Daily Beast interview from last month:

“I don’t think our founding fathers when they were putting the term “general welfare” in [the Constitution] were thinking about a federally operated program of pensions nor a federally operated program of health care. What they clearly said was that those were issues that the states need to address. Not the federal government. I stand very clear on that.”

Now, however, Perry’s handlers, including campaign spokesman Perry Spox , are walking him back from Perry’s own spoken record on the subject (which, BTW, is full of factual errors):

KEYES: Does the governor still think that Social Security exists at the expense of the Constitution?
PERRY SPOX: In the book he never said — he didn’t say it was unconstitutional. Is that what you’re getting at?
KEYES: Well, just that he wrote that Social Security exists at the expense of the Constitution.
PERRY SPOX: He believes Social Security is a Ponzi scheme and that we’ve got to address it. We’re starting a national conversation.

*The New Deal (within which Social Security was but a small portion) was a smashing success. It put people back to work (the Works Progress Administration), it created such technology and physical marvels as the Hoover Dam and the Tennessee Valley Authority, it built up America’s infrastructure of roads, bridges, sidewalks, and other constructions, and it put the kibosh on the devestation of the Great Depression. Social Security was created because the bank failures caused the October 1929 stock market crash — which were caused in turn by unregulated bank activities — to wipe out 85% of work pension plans across the country. SS was constructed to be a stop-gap measure to help insure that retired Americans had something to live on. (It was not built, however, to be a permanent substitute for pensions, which unfortunately it has become.)

Newspeak spoken here!

Remember how Michele Bachmann wanted to harshly cut veterans’ benefits, particularly benefits for disabled vets? She proposed $4.5 billion in cuts back in January.

But hey! that was January. Now it’s September, and it’s a different world. For Michele Bachmann, anyway. Speaking before the national American Legion convention last week:

“One point on my discussion list was a $4.5 billion proposal that would affect payments made to our veterans. That discussion point has received a lot of attention and I have decided to remove it from consideration. The problem of government spending must be solved, but not on the backs of our nation’s war heroes. I have always been a proud supporter of the United States military and I continue to stand with our veterans.  In the months ahead I look forward to working with our Veterans Service Organizations to ensure that we fulfill our commitments to those who sacrificed so much in their brave service for our country.” (emphasis mine)

When you live in 1984 she thinks you can say anything today, contradict it tomorrow, and get away with it. When she says, “I have always been a proud supporter of the United States military”, she seems to be really saying, “I’m looking for a way to suck up to the Tea Party, and here’s my latest poorly thought-out gibber. I will likely contradict myself the first time I can make campaign hay out of it.”

“My dick’s bigger than your dick!”

“Dick” Boner John Boehner is out there proving to the White House and American people that his dick is bigger than anyone else’s.

President Obama asked to speak to a joint session of Congress. His office cleared the date of 7 September with Congressional calendars before Obama made the format request of Speaker Boehner and Senate majority leader Harry Reid.

“Dick”‘s response to the formal request? “No.“

Claiming there “wasn’t sufficient time” to pass a joint resolution (which would officially ask for the joint session) and get a security sweep of the House chamber done, “Dick” suggested that the speech be given on 8 September instead.

It just slipped “Dick”‘s brain when he forgot to mention that there just happened to be a Republican presidential candidate “debate” on the 7th (and I use the term “debate” extremely loosely). Just spaced it out, I guess.

“Dick” also claimed to have bipartisan agreement on the request for the 8th; Nancy Pelosi, minority leader of the House, announced that “Dick” lied through his teeth when she simply stated that Democratic leadership in the House was not consulted about the speech’s date.

(Historically, Congress has responded favorably with every request every President has ever made about addressing a joint session of Congress, and has never once refused suggested times and dates.)

You have to love “Dick”‘s little sting at the end of the end of his response letter:

“We look forward to hearing your ideas and working together to solve America’s jobs crisis.”

Just what the hell Boehner thinks the Rethuglicans have done to create jobs is anybody’s guess. So far, all they’ve done is cut jobs and reduce budgets on government programs.

Oh, and made rich benefactors and donors richer.

UPDATE: President Creampuff caved. Figures.

“We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason.”

The ghost of Joseph McCarthy is wandering the halls of government. Again.

Congresscritters don’t like to be asked tough questions at town hall meetings these days; the apparatchik-style responses they give don’t satisfy people who could cause them to lose their phoney-baloney jobs.

Webster (left) and Griffin

The latter is not very successful, and the former is tough for someone who lacks the courage of their convictions. (Or they don’t really have those convictions in the first place.)

An interesting twist on this situation has arisen. Two freshman representatives, Daniel Webster (R-FL) and Tim Griffin (R-AZ), are having their staff compile lists and files of people who ask those difficult “gotcha” questions (“gotcha” being defined as “questions far too embarrassing to answers honestly”). Those lists and files are being distributed from Webster’s and  Griffin’s office in an effort to manipulate the media to discredit those asking the questions.

These files contains questions such as:

  • Have you ever run for political office in Orange County?
  • Have you now, or ever been, a leader, or a member, or a supporter of OrganizeNow.org, OranizeFlorida.org, or any other Progressive Left group?
  • Have you ever served as a “Spokesman” for the “Services Trade Council”?
  • Did you work on the Barack Obama Presidential Campaign in 2008?

Those who are old enough to remember will likely get a frisson of horror while reading this. Some of us can all hear the distinct echoes of the former senator from Wisconsin intoning, “Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Communist Party of America?”

Who the hell do these people think they are?

I am sick of the new McCarthyism that has sprung onto the American scene. It is bad enough that the Islamaphobes have seized the attention of the American public. Now we have our own legislators making intimidation lists, just as McCarthy did, to try to stifle the free expression of the people who oppose those in power.

Here’s a little food for thought, from Good Night, and Good Luck:

(Thanks to The Spouse for this marvelous tip.)

“Ya *think*??”

The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) is that wacky bunch of fun-loving law enforcement types who love to dress up in full battle armor and go knocking down the doors of houses in the middle of the night and shoot a bunch of stuff, sometimes even including innocents when their lettres de cachet…er, I mean legally issued warrants had incorrect addresses.

The DEA recently sounded off about a subject about which they are imminently unqualified to make noise. It denied a 9-year-old petition to reschedule marijuana based on documents such as this. So according to the DEA, marijuana needs to stay in the same drug schedule as heroin, a demonstrably physically addictive drug that wreaks demonstrable damage on the human body–something marijuana does not do.

There has never been a documented human fatality from an overdose of  tetrahdrocannabinol (THC, the active ingredient of marijuana). Ever.

It is estimated that an average grown male would have to smoke 1500lbs of marijuana within 14 minutes in order to reach an LD50 dosage of THC.

Ja might lige da ganja, man, but ja don lige id dat mooch.

So now today the federal government steps in to say that there might be some possible medical use for “individual components of the cannabis plant”.

Ya think?

Let’s ask Phil the fibromyalgia sufferer, who smokes legally dispensed medical marijuana so that he can get out of bed long enough to get dressed in the morning. Let’s ask Jo the cancer survivor on her third round of chemotherapy, who can’t even keep water down unless she’s smoked enough of her legal marijuana to belay the nausea that racks her body for days after a chemo infusion. Let’s ask George, who’s allergic to most drug treatments for his acute glaucoma and has to smoke weed so that he won’t go blind.

Maybe the DEA is just the tiniest bit afraid of losing a chunk of their reason to exist by putting marijuana on an even keel, legally speaking, with booze?

Ya think?

The latest moral outrage, part 1

Frank Zappa nailed it on the head many years ago when he feared that a “fascist theocracy” based upon Christianity dogma would attempt to command first American society, and then American government.

An Iowa group called The Family Leader has placed one more brick into that wall of fascist theocracy. This group of Christian pinheads has formulated a 14-point document entitled “The Marriage Vow”.

There are so many moral outrages contained within this short missive that I’m gonna take this puppy down in several posts.

First up–the intro!

We kick things right off with “proving” that “faithful monogamy” is the core of proper morality by invoking the Holy Quartet–scripture, philosophers (obviously these people have never read Herr Nietzsche), “natural law” (nature has nothing to do with volitional morality), and the American founding fathers. I’m surprised they didn’t toss in Mom and apple pie while they were at it.

~~~

Next up: race!

“Slavery had a disastrous impact on African-American families, yet sadly a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African-American baby born after the election of the USA‟s first African-American President.”

Really? Really?? Slave marriage was not recognized by the government of any state that observed legal slavery. Mothers, fathers, and children were separated at the whim of slaveowners and the demands of economics, including those slaves owned by American founding fathers.

And note the not-so-subtle racial dig at Barack Obama. There was no need to mention his race in that statement, and yet there it is. Don’t let it be said that fundie Christians are color-blind, because a lot of them are of the “well, you know that family is…*that* color” level of bigotry.

~~~

And now, a Trifecta! Gays, divorce, and infidelity!

“Social protections, especially for women and children, have been evaporating as we have collectively “debased the currency” of marriage. This debasement continues as a function of adultery; “quickie divorce;” physical and verbal spousal abuse; non-committal co-habitation; pervasive infidelity and “unwed cheating” among celebrities, sports figures and politicians; anti-scientific bias which holds, in complete absence of empirical proof, that non-heterosexual inclinations are genetically determined, irresistible and akin to innate traits like race, gender and eye color; as well as anti-scientific bias which holds, against all empirical evidence, that homosexual behavior in particular, and sexual promiscuity in general, optimizes individual or public health.”

No reputable study I’ve ever read says that homosexuality is genetic in nature. Of course, claiming that being gay is not something you inherit is seen as an open door to “Oh! then they must choose to be that way”. Wrong, bunky. No one knows what causes one person to feel attraction toward another of the same gender, and that includes you.

So, it seems that, according to The Family Leader (can I hear a sieg heil?), if we all just get married, and stay married (never mind that black eye and broken cheekbone he gave you last month), and have children (poor infertile couples!), and not be gay, America will be great. This is just one more pisspoor attempt to foster some mushroom-eater’s view of what the world ought to be. But it’ll never be that way…

…because we’re human, goddammit! with human frailties. And the only healthy way to get over the frailties is to find the moral fiber within ourselves to do the things that are good, and not to do the things that are bad. We should NEVER allow someone to persuade us that God, or Allah, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster for that matter, will show us how to be good people. Good comes from within, not without.

~~~

…and in our next thrilling episode: the 14 points, and how to sign the pledge AND worm out of the points of the pledge–all in one place!

DEFCON Lavender!

Marcus Bachmann is the president of Bachmann and Associates, a Christian-based organization that offers discredited “cure the gay” therapies. He claims to be “ex-gay”.

He is also the spouse of GOP presidential contender Michele Bachmann.

The two of them have earned virtually no money in their working lives that didn’t come from the public trough:

  • Medicaid payments for his clinic, which has violated the clinic’s charter by using faith-based therapy methods
  • state money for fostering teenaged girls with eating disorders (which nets the family a higher per diem) and who acted as free baby-sitters for the Bachmann children
  • Michele clerking in an IRS tax office (despite her having passed the law bar)
  • Michele as an elected public official
  • Hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in farm subsidies from land inherited by Mr. Bachmann

All of this from a GOP candidate that tirades again “welfare governments”.

Here are excerpts from a radio interview with Mr. Bachmann from a little while back:

(BTW, the American College of Pediatricians, mentioned in the interview, is a private religious organization that has nothing to do with the professional American College of Pediatrics.)

So, gays are “barbarians” who must be “disciplined”, eh? Take a good listen to that man’s voice and vocal mannerisms. He sets off gaydar by walking into a room, baby.

The long and winding road

This cartoon has been all over the ‘tubez the last few days, so I figured “what the heck”:

Is the cartoon too edgy? It’s no edgier than Matthew Shepherd being murdered, or people claiming that homosexuals should be persecuted and murdered en masse, or that sexual preference should be used as a pretense for denying civil rights and due process.

It’s exactly the same situation as we faced with miscegenation laws from the ’40s and ’50s. And I feel confident that sanity will force this country to leave the religious-minded bigotry of the 14th century and enter the 21st.

It’s just gonna be a long, laborious journey.