Antisocial Media

Just got thrown in Facebook jail again. Some whiny little Trumpanzee bitch didn't like that I compared his (alleged) political philosophy to devolution, and while I'm appealing the whiny little bitch, I'm doing so from the proverbial time-out corner. And it's my third time there. The next time, I'm out for a month. Beyond that, I might even get the permanent banhammer from Fuckerberg. And at this point in time, I don't even fucking care if I do get the boot.

It just sickens me that I get called every name in the book by subhuman Trumpanzee trolls, and they get to walk away without punishment despite my reporting them for being vile and hateful bigots, but stand up to these knuckle-dragging mouth-breathers and it's time out for you, you bad man. Death threats? I get them. I know they don't amount to a hill of shit, so I call the Keyboard Commandos out – I think “Commode-os” might be a better term – and dare them to come get me, because I know that they're bullies. I'm pretty sure that I've been doxxed once or twice as well – I just smile and say “walk it like you talk it and come get me, bitch”. They never show up. Why? Because they're trying to bully me into silence, and every bully is just a coward that acts tough to hide their cowardice. Cowards never show up.

But I'm getting tired of it. I think it's time to just stop dealing with the pond scum. Time to just stop following news sites. Time to stop following anything other than my friends and closest interests – music, certain sports, and so on. Or maybe it's just time to get off social media altogether. When I found out that Fuckerberg hired a known right-wing news site to be the allegedly impartial judges of what is and isn't “fake news”, I think that was a sign for me to consider moving on.

I remember trying to talk my dad into joining Fuckerberg's cesspool, and he told me in so many words that he'd managed to live this long without it, why bother wasting the rest of his life with it? That, and he didn't want to have to talk to his sisters any more than absolutely necessary.

I think he may have been on to something.

Why Does The Democratic Party Deserve To Get Shit On After Losing America To Evil

This is from an exchange on Facebook this morning, after someone had earlier questioned my political awareness. And for the record, it isn't the person I wrote this post in response to: And the reason they do is because they deny the reality that is staring them in the face. Let me share my experience from the 2008 Presidential Caucus I mentioned previously.

My caucus consisted of two very distinct groups. There was the Obama group - who, while of various ages, were predominantly younger than myself (I'm 48), reasonably gender-balanced and of many different and/or mixed ethnic backgrounds. Meanwhile, the Clinton group was almost exclusively white, female, and beyond child-bearing age, save for one Southeast Asian couple that, judging by the look on the husband's face as his wife harangued him in their native tongue, was THIS close to either divorce or murder-suicide. Oh, and the Obama group dwarfed the Clinton group, and Obama won my precinct 31-7 on its way to winning the state via tie-breaking superdelegates.

In the wake of the caucus, the Nevada Democratic Party leadership whined to excess about how unfair the rules suddenly were - rules they'd created. The main whiners were Jill Derby and Dina Titus, Clinton dead-enders to the last. Despite gaming the system to benefit their preferred candidate, the system worked as it should and the correct candidate won.

Now repeat that on a national scale. Burned by the outsider campaign, the Clintonistas quietly set to work entrenching themselves even further into positions of power to further their goal of getting "their" candidate into office instead of the best candidate. Eight years later, Bernie Sanders is the outsider with a young, multicultural grassroots campaign that is energizing a nation like..... waitaminute - does this sound familiar to you? And we all know what happened. The DNC treated the Sanders campaign like trash and did everything they could to derail him, and in the end they only succeeded by the barest of margins.

Now I know what you're probably thinking - you're thinking "Oh, Joe's a Berniebro who's all butthurt that his guy didn't win the nomination and probably voted for Jill Stein or Gary Johnson". No, I'm not. I'm a Democrat. I voted for the Democratic candidate. He WAS the better candidate, but then again a dead jellyfish would've been a better candidate against a cocaine-fueled twitter-addict manbaby with a tiny flaccid orange penis. But Clinton won the nomination, and enough butthurt did exist out there, so all Putin had to do was just.... roil up the butthurt enough to get the Berniebros to either sit out the election or vote third-party in protest. And the cocaine-fueled twitter-addicted manbaby with the tiny flaccid orange penis won because there was just enough butthurt on the left to win otherwise traditionally liberal states by razor-thin margins - in total, about 70,000 votes over the handful of states that fell to the Murkan Xtian Republicanist scum.

Bernie Sanders would have beaten orange micropenis. How do I know this? When the Deseret News of Salt Lake City released polls that showed as such last summer. Think about it for a minute. Utah - DEAD RED UTAH supporting a Democratic candidate? That should've told the DNC everything they needed to know, but instead of doing the right thing, they doubled down on Clinton even though they knew all along that the Murkan Xtian Republicanist sheeple have been conditioned by decades of hate-talk to vote against anything with the name Clinton attached to it. And now we have a cocaine-fueled, twitter-addicted manbaby with a tiny flaccid orange penis running us into the ground on behalf of his master Putin.

For the record, I don't hate Mrs. Clinton. Not at all. I think she would have been a fine President, and in no way am I smearing her as either a candidate or as a person. Instead, I am criticizing the machine built in her name for failing to see that she wasn't the best candidate available. And on top of that, I am criticizing the people that were duped by Putin's false-news machine to either vote against her, or not vote at all. I know those people very well - conversations went like this:

THEM: We can't let (orange micropenis) win the election!

ME: So you'll vote for Clinton, then?

THEM: I'll never vote for her!

ME: Why not?

THEM: Because she's a dirty rotten cheater! And her emails! I wanna vote for Bernie Sanders!

ME: He didn't win the nomination. And didn't you hear her talk about her emails for eleven hours in front of a hostile Congressional panel?

THEM: That's not fair! I'll vote for him as a write-in candidate!

ME: Didn't you see him on TV yesterday saying "pretty-please vote for Clinton"?

THEM: They're paying him to say that! They're paying him to say that!

ME: So you're just gonna lay back and let (orange micropenis) fuck us all blind then, right?

THEM: No way! We can't let (orange micropenis) win the election!

ME: Didn't we just go over this, y'know, like thirty seconds ago?

Let's just say that I know from experience that you can give yourself a concussion from facepalming yourself.

That's why they get flack, Jesse. Because they killed the proverbial goose that laid the golden egg. Because they lacked the intestinal fortitude to make the right decision for America.

I should also point out that the Corporate (center-right) Democrats are continuing to shit on Progressives, and further alienate them from the party, which will only strengthen Putin's grip on America through his Murkan Xtian Republicanist proxies.

On Republicans And Scandal, or "Open Letter To A Wingnut"

A friend of mine on Facebook asked my I considered Republican criticism of President Obama to be racist. Here's my answer.

It's actually fairly easy to justify most conservative criticisms of President Obama as racist. Why is that, you ask? Because in so many words, almost all of those criticisms are pure, unadulterated bullshit, and swept away with little or no effort, which leaves you with white people being critical/disrespectful/hateful towards a black man for no reason whatsoever. Using Occam's Razor, the only logical answer is that those criticizing are racist. Let's debunk the major hysteria points:

“He's not a Real American”

Horseshit, people. Like it or not, Barack Obama was born in Hawai'i in 1961, with two separate Honolulu newspapers announcing the birth. Even WorldNet Daily eventually accepted that he's an American citizen. The ultimate irony is that Orly Taitz, the high priestess of the Birther movement, is not a natural-born American – she was born in France, and is a naturalized citizen. What it all boils down to is older white people frightened by the concept of an empowered black man. Although let's be honest for a moment: Bill Clinton was the first 'black' president. I would go so far as to suggest that Obama is actually our first nerd president. Ironic side note: Texas Senator Ted Cruz is rumored to be considering running for the Republican nomination for POTUS in 2016. Cruz is not legally eligible to become President, because he was born in Canada, regardless of his parents being Americans. Where do you think the nickname 'Calgary' comes from? An irrational love of Stampede Wrestling?

“He's not all that smart”

Uh, I don't recall Harvard Law School accepting just anyone, let alone handing out degrees to anyone. Please note that had it not been for politics, his career track as a constitutional law scholar had him pointed towards a career in jurisprudence. Which leads to the next point:

“He's a commie/nazi/socialist/librul”

Remember Harvard Law School? Obama was the editor of the Harvard Law Review, which has never been known for having a liberal bias. In fact, many of his more liberal colleagues were quite upset with him for not taking the Review in a more liberal direction, and for his surprisingly close associations with more conservative members of the Review.

Now let's look at those buzzwords for a moment. We've already eliminated 'librul', so let's move on to 'commie'. What makes him a communist? Is he, for example, making you stand in line for bread, or shoes? No. Do you even know what communism is? In its purest theoretical form, communism is democracy on steroids, as every person in the community (that's where the word 'communism' comes from, after all) has a say in everything the community does. Which is also why communism is simply unworkable at any level beyond say, a group of a hundred people. Lenin tried to install the collectivist principles of communism, but his stroke and eventual death from said stroke in 1924 pretty much ended the communist experiment, and Josef Stalin dressed up a megalomaniacal state-controlled apparatus replete with a massive personality cult centered upon himself (something Marx, Engels and Lenin found abhorrent) in Lenin's old suit and called it communism. Conservatives bring up this buzzword (as well as 'socialism') as the Obama administration has attempted to re-regulate the various sectors of the economy, something actually applauded by no less than the grand poobahs of deregulation and supply-side economics that set America on the path to economic collapse under George W. Bush.

Now let's look at 'socialism'. Do you even know what it means? Conservatives use it like they do 'communism', to paint the illusion of a megalomaniacal President trying destroy our freedoms. The funny thing is that the word 'socialism' is actually a put-down of states and governments that either fail to implement collectivist principles, or only go part-way in doing so. The term was actually created by communists to mock states and governments that didn't have the fortitude to finish the job.

And now, let's look at 'nazi'. People who call the President a 'nazi' make me laugh. No less than Rush Limbaugh has called the President a nazi, his reasoning being that the Nazis were socialists. I almost pissed myself laughing at that. Let's explain the fat guy's lunacy for a moment. “Nazi” is actually a diminutive word, essentially a nickname. Here's the full name of the Party (pardon my sucky German):

National-Socialist Deutscher Arbeitung Partei

That translates to “German National-Socialist Worker's Party”. Of those five words, the only two that accurately described the party were “German” and “Party”. The rest, to use the words of Geroge Carlin, was a marketing decision.

Let's go back in time a bit, to the time between the World Wars. The defeated Imperial German government was recast into a constitutional republic, with the organizational meetings held in the city of Weimar – hence the term for the period's government being the 'Weimar Republic'. The Republic was under threat almost immediately from communist agitators from within and without, as German communists attempted a coup d'etat in 1919. Hitler attempted his own coup (or putsch, in German) in 1923, and was promptly arrested for it. The governments of the Republic were usually left-of-center, mildly socialistic, and the German people generally liked the idea of 'socialism', though not really aware that the word itself was actually a perjorative as I mentioned above. Hitler came upon the idea of branding his party as “National-Socialists” in order to attract voters to his party, while portraying the actual Socialists as being secret tools of a foreign power trying to keep Germany down – any of this sound familiar?

The ironic thing is that this false branding isn't without precedent. In post-Czarist Russia, there was actually a brief attempt at democracy, with Communists winning a majority in the Russian legislative body known as the Duma. However, a split developed between the Communists, with a tiny minority breaking away from the larger bloc. This breakaway group contained all the major players of what was to come – Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky, Molotov, etc. - and they had the balls to declare themselves Bolsheviki – Russian for “majority”. And in a response that doomed them to history – not to mention firing squads – the larger bloc of Communists declared themselves Menesheviki - “minority”. Stupid, no?

But why use such words in the first place, when none of them are remotely true? Welcome to politics, Lee Atwater-style. Atwater's first rule was that if enough people repeat the lie often enough, eventually people will believe it to be the truth, no matter how audacious the lie is. Look around the darker corners of the conservative blogosphere, where you'll see bloggers making the most ridiculous accusations against the President, the First Lady, even their children. These accusations eventually bounce around the blogosphere, and those that gain the most traction among the faithful eventually move on the biggest manure spreader of all, FOX News. Case in point being the President's trip to India last year, and the accusation that this one trip alone cost the American taxpayers two billion dollars, when the reality was that the trip cost a tiny fraction of that. Calling the President a 'communist' and such is merely red meat thrown out to an audience conditioned to believe anything told them. And it's also safer than using the word many on the right wing prefer to use – you know, six letters, starts with an 'n', rhymes with my favorite resident of the Hundred Acre Wood. And we're not talking about Eeyore.

But here's the funny thing: if Obama is an unintelligent socialist/communist/nazi, then why is the economy improving? Why is unemployment going down, the Dow at record levels, corporate profits at all-time highs? If he's a socialist, he's the worst socialist ever. If you actually look at his voting patterns and policies, what you've got is an Eisenhower-era Republican, business-friendly and all about getting Americans back to work repairing our crumbling infrastructure. If only the party in opposition didn't consider putting Americans back to work in something other than minimum-wage jobs (oh, and the Republican-controlled House just voted to eliminate the forty-hour work week and overtime pay for hourly workers – remember that) to be part of some evil plot to destroy America.

“He's Coming To Take Our Guns!”

This is the current lie in vogue. Believe it or not, there actually are people on the Left who wish that somehow the President could just snap his fingers and presto! No more guns. We have words for people like that: ridiculous, silly, unrealistic. And here's the one that's most important to the current debate: IGNORED. The Second Amendment guarantees the right of the public to bear arms, that is without question. The problem is that conservatives consider this right to be God-given. God didn't write the Constitution, folks. The people who wrote the Constitution lived in a world where a trained marksman could maybe get off three or four shots a minute (I do count black-powder rifle enthusaiasts among friends, and I'd hope you all saw old Lou Huber demonstrate his love of muzzle-loaders in school). Modern military-grade weapons can fire dozens of shots in a second. Does the average American need access to military-grade firearms, or more importantly, why does the average American need access to such weapons? Is an invasion imminent? Are Chinese paratroopers descending upon us, like in the recent remake of Red Dawn? Oh, I know, the writers of the movie crossed out any references to China in the script, and wrote 'North Korean' over the top of those crossed-out references. But that's who they were thinking about.

So if there's no invasion a-coming, why on earth does Joe Sixpack need an M-16 and a thousand rounds of ammo stashed in the basement? Fear, people. Fear and paranoia. The commies are gonna get you! They're gonna steal your guns! ATF agents are going to parachute into your house and steal your guns, then those dirty libruls are gonna make you have gay sex and abortions, and.... and.... read books from people other than Ann Coulter or Sean Hannity! Yeah, that's right!

But why? Why be so afraid? Here's why. The genesis of the current gun hysteria actually has very little to do with the recent mass killings in Colorado and Connecticut. What it does have to do with is a United Nations arms treaty cracking down on the illegal arms trade that the current Administration is in support of. Now mind you, this treaty is about rogue nations (North Korea, Iran, et al) selling arms to terrorists, or arms dealers selling to backwater hell-raisers with armies of child-soldiers. But since this treaty is about restricting sales of arms, the NRA (who really is a mouthpiece for the arms industry and not you, Mr. Responsible Gun Owner) created the lie that this treaty will somehow make private gun ownership illegal, and is busy pushing the lie to any and all who will listen – even if they aren't interested. Here's the rub though – the UN matters about as much as a bag of beans when it comes to orderly democracies, and said treaty means exactly zilch in this country. But the NRA would rather you not know that, so instead they stoke the fear and paranoia, because making people think that the President will be personally parachuting into your front yard tonight with a hundred ATF agents in tow to steal your guns and rape your wife and daughters.

I wish I was kidding when I said that. But such is the state of the wingnut id, where darkest nightmares have become feverish, fetid reality. The funny thing is that no less than Ronald Reagan said that the American public had no need to own assault rifles, and as recently as ten years ago Wayne LaPierre himself said that extended background checks were more than copacetic with the NRA, to keep guns out of the hands of criminals. But now? THE BOOGEYMAN'S GONNA GET YOU!

So what does it all mean? It's trust issues for the most part. When their guy was in office, they figured that kind words would be enough to placate the masses without actually doing anything. Now that their guy isn't in charge, and the big scary black guy that isn't their guy in office might actually do something, it must be part of some commie plot to enslave the populace, right? Now that the other guy is in office, suddenly law enforcement is irrelevant if not in on the conspiracy, and that 'the only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun'. That's the job of police, not of paranoid vigilantes.

And even if somehow private gun ownership were to be banned in the US, how could it possibly be enforced? According to best estimates, there are over three hundred million firearms in the hands of private owners – which would probably make the American public the single largest army in the world. It would require an inconceivable amount of manpower to somehow go house to house and physically remove every firearm from every home, needing every soldier and policeman in the entire world and then some. Which – let's be honest here – is completely ridiculous, let alone unrealistic. This was why during World War II, Germany or Japan never even considered the idea of invading the continental US. When the great Japanese naval strategist Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto was asked in 1942 if an invasion of the continental United States would be successful, he was quoted as saying that an invasion would be doomed to failure because 'there would be a rifle behind every blade of grass'.

“But, but.... what about....”

Oh yes, you and your scandalmongering. Everything, every last little perceived slight is some sort of 'scandal' to you. Do you even know what a scandal is? Watergate was a scandal, a sitting president's plan to undermine his political enemies by quite literally stealing their secrets – never mind the fact that Nixon would've won the 1972 election regardless of whatever dirty laundry G. Gordon Liddy and his cohorts might have found. Iran-Contra was a scandal, selling weapons to repressive regimes and brutal insurgents (you know what they say, one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter), and financing the entire scam by inventing crack cocaine and turning it loose upon America's inner cities. Reagan only survived the scandal because in all likelihood, Alzheimer's Disease had robbed him of any serious mental capacity. By those standards, the 'scandals' of today's wingnuts are tempests in teapots, and for the most part they only exist in the minds of those who invented them. Obamacare is a scandal! The nerve of that idiot Marxist Kenyan usurper, how dare he propose legislation that might help us all, let alone get it passed!

“What about Benghazi, you librul prick?”

What about it? It might not have ever happened had GOP intransigence forced budget cutbacks – especially for embassy security! And what about the e-mails that suggested a cover-up? Well, it turns out that ABC – those who broke the story initially – they didn't even read the fucking things all the way through. Turns out that there was no cover up.

“What about the IRS investigating Tea Party groups?”

Gee, where was your manufactured outrage when your President let the IRS investigate liberal groups? It's okay when your guy does it, but it suddenly isn't when someone else does it, right? Hey, give Obama credit: he fired the head of the IRS when the incidents became public.

“What about the Marines?”

Oh, don't make me laugh. For those unaware, there are wingnuts out there claiming that the President somehow violated the rules of the Marine Corps by having Marines hold up umbrellas when a sudden downpour interrupted a joint press conference between himself and Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan. Uh, I hate to break this to you, but the Presidential cadre of Marines are under the President's personal control – if he asked them to start doing improv comedy for the crowd of reporters, they'd do it, because he's the fucking President, that's why!

It's just like I said in the beginning, when you boil away the lies and bullshit, you have white people hating a black man for no reason other than being told to. Sounds like naivete, fear, paranoia, and racism – a toxic mixture at that. And that's exactly what the people controlling you want from you, wingnut. They don't want you to think. They want you to be scared of the intelligent black man. They want you to be so scared of him, they created the lies they want you to believe. Never mind that the House Republicans just voted to end the forty-hour work week and eliminate overtime pay for hourly employees. Never mind that those same people are hard at work trying to eliminate voting rights. Never mind that they're busy undermining the rules and regulations that keep your food safe, your air and water clean, the products you use in every facet of your life safe for use. Never mind that they think it's perfectly okay to anonymously purchase weapons of mass destruction and thousands of rounds of ammunition for those weapons – weapons then turned on innocents, on children! None of that's important to you, is it? Not when there's some other imaginary scandal about!

I pity you, wingnut. I pity the people around you, the people who have to live with such a paranoid lunatic. But there is a cure for you. Turn off FOX News. Quit listening to Limbaugh, Hannity, Beck. Quit reading Drudge, Breitbart, Malkin – you do know that they're using you, right? The only reason they want you watching, listening and reading – aside from keeping you stupid and scared, of course – is to sell you things, sell you rip-offs and scams like credit-monitoring services and scrap-gold buyers that will give you maybe one-fifth of what your scrap gold is worth, all the while telling you that you're getting 'the best price available'.

I pity you. And if you don't like what I have to say, then fuck you. You're what's wrong with this country – not me, and certainly not our President.

Another Political Rant

This started out as a Facebook post about the national debt, then I kinda got fired up.

#####, both parties are plenty responsible for the national debt, but here are some facts. During the Clinton Administration's eight years, budgets were balanced, revenues increased, spending decreased, with budget surpluses the end result, and the national debt declined. Then came the eight years of Bush 43. Spending went through the roof, while revenues declined. On top of that, the economic bubble caused by a combination of thirty years of lax regulation and enforcement of those regulations still in effect on Wall Street finally burst, wrecking the global economy. Only at the very end of Bush 43's second term is when anyone started doing anything to fix the problems, something the Obama Administration has continued.

Now, BHO's tenure so far has seen the American auto industry saved , Wall Street reined in somewhat, and the economy has been slowly recovering since 2009 thanks to the stimulus, while by comparison most of Europe continues to suffer economically by choosing the path of austerity over stimulus. Could we have done better? Sure, if both parties were actively involved in getting things done. Congressional Republicans have refused to budge on anything, and have admitted that their stance over the last three-plus years is about one thing and one thing only: making Obama fail. Does the country matter? No, he must fail. Do jobs matter? No, he must fail. Do people's lives matter? No, he must fail. In the last three-plus years, the Republican party has shown that they simply don't care about anything other than removing one man from office by any means necessary. And the irony is that BHO has tried to engage Republicans every step of the way. What was their response?

Anyone remember "You lie!" from Rep. Joe Wilson (Asshole-SC)? That pretty much sums up the collective Republican response to BHO's attempts to reach across the aisle and find compromise. He must fail - nothing else matters. And now that all the Republicans' cards are on the table, that there must be more spending, less taxes, less regulations on business and more on people's private lives, it's clear where things stand now. It is no longer a choice between Left and Right - it is a choice between right and wrong, good and evil.

The Party of Lincoln is now a shambling zombie of phony hyperpatriotism and Xtianity (the fake Christianity that slavishly quotes the Bible at every turn while utterly failing to actually live up to those words - humility replaced by hubris, charity replaced with profligacy, love replaced with hate), devouring all in its path without any regards for consequence. All that matters to today's Republicans is the acquisition and maintenance of wealth and power for themselves and their backers, regardless of the cost to others. Because of them, we are now on the brink of a second Gilded Age, where far too much of the nation's wealth is in the hands of far too few people.

The choice is simple enough now - those who would make America better, or those who would make themselves better. I choose America. I choose Barack Hussein Obama.

An Open Letter To Republicans

Sorry that I've been neglecting this blog for so long. This post started out as a response to a Republican friend of mine on Facebook. If you decide to de-friend me after reading this, that's fine with me. You can't argue with a stone, after all.

The people have had enough of being lied to. Yet R-Money and his mini-me continue to belch forth the same old Reaganomics trope that if taxes are cut on the richest Americans and 'the shackles be cut away' from Big Business, that prosperity for all will come forth.

BULLSHIT.

You people don't get it. It didn't work then, it isn't working now, it'll never work. And trying to fix the mistakes of the past thirty-plus years is not somehow 'socialism'. Regulation - as in making corporations play by the rules and be responsible, respectable members of society - is not 'socialism'. It's just right, as it was when more honorable Republicans were President, like Eisenhower for example. Ike would never have suggested dismantling Social Security and Medicare into voucher systems that essentially turn working people's money into more gambling money for Wall Street. It is deregulation, the dismantling of seventy years of regulations – enacted after the Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression – that caused the economic collapse we are still experiencing today.

The irony is that our current President is essentially what used to be a moderate Republican - careful, patient, prudent, fairly conservative yet willing to compromise for the betterment of the country as a whole. Yet today's Rethuglicans call him a dictator, a tyrant, question his faith and nationality, and continue to do so despite having no proof whatsoever to their claims. Some even make veiled statements that should he be re-elected, it may be time to create a 'Second Amendment solution' to remove him from office. In other words, they're calling on their followers to assassinate the President. Why?

There has been no effort to curtail gun sales in the last three-plus years, and the Supreme Court rejected – and rightly so – the attempt to ban handgun sales in Washington, DC. Yet if you listen to the echo chamber, you'd think that the President is going to personally kick in your door and take your guns away from you - preferably while forcing your children to have gay sex and abortions at the same time. Why?

There has been no attempt to raise marginal tax rates on the wealthiest American to the levels that existed in the Fifties (well over 80%), yet even trying to let the top marginal tax rate of roughly 33% go back to 38% by letting the Bush tax cuts expire has been met with cries of 'class warfare' and of course, 'socialism'. Why?

The answer to all three question is simple – racism. Today's Rethuglican party has moved so far to the right, that it now gives tacit endorsement to voices and opinions that thirty years ago would've been the realm of lunacy and madness. Now it's the mainstream – the uneducated, violent, ugly mainstream. Just below the veneer of phony hyperpatriorism and their even phonier form of Christianity (let's just call it Xtianity) lies everything that Christianity stands against – racism, sexism, greed, hatred – are you getting the picture? That racism is what's driving minorities to vote Democratic in droves, effectively freezing the Rethuglicans out of meaningful inroads to Black and Latino voters who might otherwise be copacetic with other tenets of the party's social conservatism. And I have two words for you as to why women will vote Democratic: Todd Akin. Need I say more? Oh, I do need to.

The people are sick of being lied to. Yet the lies flow unabated from the politicians and hate-talk-radio spewers, aided and abetted by billions – yes, billions – of dollars from those who would seek to consolidate their wealth and power, and create a second Gilded Age, where the country's wealth is controlled by no more than a few hundred people who place themselves not only above society, but from the law. What ended the Gilded age was Progressivism – led by, of all people, a Republican. Theodore Roosevelt was the first Progressive President, remember? No, I'm sure you don't. Today's Rethuglicans would call Teddy a commienazisocialistlibrul – just like they do President Obama.

And here's one more thing that ought to really get your knickers into a twist – R-Money has no chance. Hell, he might not even make it out of the Convention. Y'see, despite his best claims to being a 'true Conservative', a lot of people in the inner workings of the Rethuglican Party aren't buying his bullshit, and plan to make their feelings known at the Convention. At the State level, many Rethuglican party organizations have been taken over by Ron Paul supporters, aka 'Paultards'. The Paultards want their man on top, and they see Romney as a fraud. Which is entirely accurate. The truth is that Romney is also a moderate Republican, yet forced to kowtow to the hate-mongering base of the party that wants war instead of compromise.

And should he make it out of the Convention as the nominee, he still has no chance. While national polling suggests a neck-and-neck race to the finish, national polling is utterly useless. State-by-state polling shows Obama winning the Electoral College by a wide margin, by winning the largest, most populous states easily (for example, Obama's constant lead in California polls is so wide that neither campaign is bothering to make any stops there) and taking enough swing states to make the difference. That's why the President has come to Reno (where I am right now) twice in the last four weeks.

In the end, it comes down to this: what would you rather have? A more equitable society, or a more inequitable one? It's very clear who would bring that equality, and who wouldn't.

That's why I'll vote for a second term for my President, Barack Hussein Obama. And if you don't like it....

FUCK YOU.

Downfall Of A Wiener

I'm sure you've heard about it all by now - ad nauseam - about the resignation of Rep. Anthony Weiner (D - New York) from the House of Representatives. Well, here's me piling on. It's a total shame - and not just for Weiner.

Let's start with what we know: he's sent questionable pictures of himself to a number of women who are not his wife, as well as various sexually-oriented messages. He was outed by a right-wing hacker who broke into his Twitter and Facebook accounts, and the data... somehow found its way to right-wing blogger Andrew Breitbart, who then proceeded to beat that proverbial horse to death until the sheep of the mainstream media began to pay attention. Oddly enough, Congressional Republicans were fairly quiet on the matter - perhaps because they'd just weathered a far worse scandal involving now-retired Senator John Ensign of Nevada, who'd had an affair with a campaign staffer, then bought her silence and that of her husband with money and jobs with lobbying firms, a scandal that looks to be revisited because of fellow Senator Tom Coburn's (R - Nebraska) apparent role in facilitating to cover up the initial scandal.

But Democrats throughout DC - including the President himself - were quick to condemn Weiner for his transgressions and demand his resignation. Why? Let's look again at what he's done that we know of so far - sending dirty pictures of himself and equally dirty messages to women who were not his wife, who just so happens to be pregnant. So far, nobody has stepped forward saying that they slept with Weiner, and as far as I've read nobody involved with the 'scandal' has even met with him face-to-face. Really? He was forced to resign over a 'sex scandal' when it seems that a sex act has yet to take place?

What really irks me about this is the phony, fraudulent, FAKE morality at work here. This isn't Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky back in the 90's, while Newt Gingrich had an affair (and not his first, either) while trying to run Clinton out of office over his affair. It wasn't John Edwards and his mistress in 2008, nor Gary Hart and his mistress (Donna Rice?) in 1984. What it is, is simple - it's almost election time, and in the build-up to a presidential election a little less than seventeen months away, both parties are tyring to beat their chests about how moral and upright they are, and god forbid anyone stray from the path of righteousness.

Bullshit.

Weiner has been a firebrand, a liberal-and-damn-proud-of-it who was more than willing to take on the stupidity of the right-wing echo chamber, and also not afraid to kick his fellow Democrats in the ass when they were too worried about Republican posturing and threats instead of actually doing their jobs - y'know, that whole helping-the-people thing? It seems clear to me that Weiner had become too much of an irritant to his own party, and the echo-chamber was only one part of what looks more and more to me to be a plot to get rid of him one way or another. The 'other' way it seems, was the threat of the House of Representatives actually putting Weiner on trial for ethics-code violations. Maybe they just got tired of the jokes from late-night TV. Face it, folks: a sex scandal involving a guy named Weiner? Pure comic gold.

There has been some speculation that when the State of New York calls the special election needed to fill his seat, Weiner may run for it either as a Democrat or as an Independent, on the presumption that while his own party may have drummed him out of office, the people may put him right back in. It's been dismissed by most, but I for one would like to see it. While he should be ashamed of himself for straying from his marriage, the outcry against him over his own personal transgression - one that has not cost taxpayers a single dime, or claimed lives, damaged property or started wars - is shameful to the entire nation, and especially shameful to Weiner's fellow Democrats for their cowardice in choosing to oust their colleague rather than help him recover from a terrible error in personal judgement and behavior. I for one would like to see Weiner stick it to the man.