GOP Decides Slow Starvation of the Poor Will Ensure Them Victory:
The Rude Pundit thinks that the day starts for most Republicans in Congress like this (and, in this scenario, the Republican is a male): After waking up and jacking off to the Syrian chemical weapon attack videos (especially the ones of the gagging children), Dick Republican showers, scrubbing his skin with a Brillo pad; he shits out a tight little turd ball; and he shaves his face so close that his beard is afraid to grow. He drinks a cup of coffee, punches his wife in the tit, backhands his two children across the face, and heads out to the car waiting for him. On his way to work, he has the driver go through the shittiest areas of DC, like Anacostia or Congress Heights. He stares through the tinted windows at the poverty and deprivations of the people there, fondling himself the whole time, thinking about how much he just wants to take a flamethrower to entire blocks in front of him. He ponders how much their suffering gets him off. He gets an idea on how to fuck with the poor today, and he texts it to the Heritage Foundation or one Koch-run superpac or another. When he gets approval from those in charge of him, usually by emoticon because they're so goddamned busy, he knows he's ready to run with it.
For how else, in any way that we could define as "rational," could a member of Congress not just allow the food stamp program to get a cut by $5 billion tomorrow (because a recession stimulus program is ending) but also vote in favor of slashing the program in half, by $40 billion over ten years, as the House GOP did in September? The only way it makes any sense at all is if hurting people in poverty was like porn for Republicans.
You wanna know what class warfare actually looks like? It ain't telling the rich pukes with houses in the Hamptons that they might have to buy a couple less cases of Chateau de Suckanass Grand Cru for their parties next summer so we can have bridges that don't fall down. No, it's telling a family with disabled kids that they have to figure out how to fucking eat starting next week. It's slashing a program where 87% of the recipients "live in households with children, seniors, or people with disabilities." It's making people decide if they want to eat or have heat during the winter in order to keep the overpriced wine market well-financed.
Republicans want the usual worthless bullshit: drug tests and work rules for participants. Of course, they want this without providing child care, health care, job training, or, you know, jobs for people, as if somehow this will all just magically materialize for people once their kids are starving at Christmas, just like Jesus wanted them to.
If you need a face to put with your bile and disdain, well, you could pretty much toss all the Republicans you despise up there: Paul Ryan, Steve King, Marsha Blackburn.
But let's narrow it down to this cockface: Frank Lucas of the completely chimpfuck insane state of Oklahoma. The chair of the House Agriculture Committee, Lucas crowed like he just ejaculated in a donkey's anus when the House passed the cuts. Only 6% of the people in his district receive food stamps, so, you know, fuck them.
When the first food riots happen, probably sometime around Thanksgiving, let's make sure that these brave Republicans are manning the barricades. Sure, they might end up eaten as meat by the end, but that's more good than they've done in Congress.
10/30/2013
Why Not Take a Victory Lap on Obamacare, Republicans?
Why Not Take a Victory Lap on Obamacare, Republicans?:
C'mon, Republicans in the House and Senate. Get up off those fat asses and sashay yourself down to the National Mall and do a group victory lap around the Reflecting Pool to celebrate ensuring that the Obamacare enrollment effort was about as messy and disturbing as a clown orgy. Fuck, yeah. After all that time you spent working out at the congressional gyms that stayed open during the shutdown, you need to show off. High five, do an endzone dance, spike the motherfuckin' ball, something to show the United States just how proud you all are of your efforts.
After all, who was it who told Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to shove her repeated requests for more funding to implement the Affordable Care Act up her coochie? It was congressional Republicans. Even as late as April of this year, with the ACA a Supreme Court-approved law, Republicans were laughing at the idea that they would give more money to make sure that Obamacare was a success.
Let's let Sebelius herself explain why the Obama administration was asking for $1.5 billion to get the ACA exchanges going at the federal level. It's in answer to a question from Rep. Todd Young, an Indiana Republican, about the request for extra cash at a hearing on April 12, 2013: "When this bill was passed in 2010, the Congressional Budget Office estimate was a $10 billion administrative cost to full implementation of the law. And you are correct: In the law itself, there was $1 billion appropriated, a tenth of what the nonpartisan CBO recommended be the cost. I think we have done an extraordinary job, frankly, here in 2013 allocating and using judiciously the $1 billion that we had. We do have about $230 million of those dollars left. We will use those and some additional resources in 2013. And we have asked for additionally 1.5 billion (dollars) in 2014, and that's really to get the IT hub, the call center, the IT up and running." Then Young cut her off, of course.
You got that? Sebelius asked for more money to get "the IT up and running." It was still way less than was recommended, and that $10 billion was if all the states created exchanges. The Republicans in Congress told her to go fuck herself. She added at the hearing, "We are using every opportunity we have to look at my transfer authority within HHS, and dollars that we have." In other words, she was going to string together scraps of funding in order stretch the HHS budget and get it working. Sebelius also went to private companies to get them to contribute to efforts to get Americans to enroll in the exchanges, which also caused monkey rage on the right because...oh, fuck, do monkeys need a reason?
Let's bottom line this: Kathleen Sebelius and the Obama administration said they needed more money to get the website right. Congress said no. And now Kathleen Sebelius has to look these same motherfuckers in the face and answer their stupid ass questions about why the website has had so many failures. She should just hold up a goddamn mirror as her response to every question.
Bully to you, Republicans. You got the Obamacare you wanted, one that has people frustrated and angry. You've tried to defund it, challenged it in court (which you're still doing), stopped states from making their own functioning exchanges (which is one of the big reasons the cluster has been fucked) and not accepted expanded Medicaid, outright lied about shit, and were total assholes about encouraging people to sign up.
Please, don't pretend you care about making it all work better. Shit, that's like a terrorist saying that he's gonna help rebuild the embassy he just blew up instead of claiming responsibility and threatening to bomb more places. Own it. The fuck-ups are yours at least as much as they are the Obama administration's. Arguably, more so.
So take a fuckin' bow. You deserve it, you obstructionist twats. After all, we probably wouldn't even be talking website breakdowns if, instead of throwing the wrench into the machine, you had used it to tighten the bolts.
As you're taking that lap, just make sure that you give a thumbs-up to all the people who will be dicked over on their health care because you worked so hard to make sure they got dicked over.
C'mon, Republicans in the House and Senate. Get up off those fat asses and sashay yourself down to the National Mall and do a group victory lap around the Reflecting Pool to celebrate ensuring that the Obamacare enrollment effort was about as messy and disturbing as a clown orgy. Fuck, yeah. After all that time you spent working out at the congressional gyms that stayed open during the shutdown, you need to show off. High five, do an endzone dance, spike the motherfuckin' ball, something to show the United States just how proud you all are of your efforts.
After all, who was it who told Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to shove her repeated requests for more funding to implement the Affordable Care Act up her coochie? It was congressional Republicans. Even as late as April of this year, with the ACA a Supreme Court-approved law, Republicans were laughing at the idea that they would give more money to make sure that Obamacare was a success.
Let's let Sebelius herself explain why the Obama administration was asking for $1.5 billion to get the ACA exchanges going at the federal level. It's in answer to a question from Rep. Todd Young, an Indiana Republican, about the request for extra cash at a hearing on April 12, 2013: "When this bill was passed in 2010, the Congressional Budget Office estimate was a $10 billion administrative cost to full implementation of the law. And you are correct: In the law itself, there was $1 billion appropriated, a tenth of what the nonpartisan CBO recommended be the cost. I think we have done an extraordinary job, frankly, here in 2013 allocating and using judiciously the $1 billion that we had. We do have about $230 million of those dollars left. We will use those and some additional resources in 2013. And we have asked for additionally 1.5 billion (dollars) in 2014, and that's really to get the IT hub, the call center, the IT up and running." Then Young cut her off, of course.
You got that? Sebelius asked for more money to get "the IT up and running." It was still way less than was recommended, and that $10 billion was if all the states created exchanges. The Republicans in Congress told her to go fuck herself. She added at the hearing, "We are using every opportunity we have to look at my transfer authority within HHS, and dollars that we have." In other words, she was going to string together scraps of funding in order stretch the HHS budget and get it working. Sebelius also went to private companies to get them to contribute to efforts to get Americans to enroll in the exchanges, which also caused monkey rage on the right because...oh, fuck, do monkeys need a reason?
Let's bottom line this: Kathleen Sebelius and the Obama administration said they needed more money to get the website right. Congress said no. And now Kathleen Sebelius has to look these same motherfuckers in the face and answer their stupid ass questions about why the website has had so many failures. She should just hold up a goddamn mirror as her response to every question.
Bully to you, Republicans. You got the Obamacare you wanted, one that has people frustrated and angry. You've tried to defund it, challenged it in court (which you're still doing), stopped states from making their own functioning exchanges (which is one of the big reasons the cluster has been fucked) and not accepted expanded Medicaid, outright lied about shit, and were total assholes about encouraging people to sign up.
Please, don't pretend you care about making it all work better. Shit, that's like a terrorist saying that he's gonna help rebuild the embassy he just blew up instead of claiming responsibility and threatening to bomb more places. Own it. The fuck-ups are yours at least as much as they are the Obama administration's. Arguably, more so.
So take a fuckin' bow. You deserve it, you obstructionist twats. After all, we probably wouldn't even be talking website breakdowns if, instead of throwing the wrench into the machine, you had used it to tighten the bolts.
As you're taking that lap, just make sure that you give a thumbs-up to all the people who will be dicked over on their health care because you worked so hard to make sure they got dicked over.
10/29/2013
Very Brief: New Jersey Democrats in Congress Are Sick of GOP Bullshit on Obamacare
Very Brief: New Jersey Democrats in Congress Are Sick of GOP Bullshit on Obamacare:
The Rude Pundit has a hellishly busy day today, so just a quickie:
Sure, you've seen New Jersey Democratic Congressman Frank Pallone roll his eyes and voice, calling the Republican-led House Committee on Energy and Commerce's Obamacare hearing a "monkey court." Pallone was responding to shitkicker extraordinaire Joe Barton of Texas.
Now, sit back, relax, and enjoy another New Jersey Democrat, Bill Pascrell, make Arkansas Republican Tim Griffin his bitch in a House Ways and Means Committee hearing. It's so good, you might want to loosen your pants to masturbate to it:
Oh, yeah, that felt nice. Keep on, Jersey Democrats. You don't win the new Civil War by being civil.
The Rude Pundit has a hellishly busy day today, so just a quickie:
Sure, you've seen New Jersey Democratic Congressman Frank Pallone roll his eyes and voice, calling the Republican-led House Committee on Energy and Commerce's Obamacare hearing a "monkey court." Pallone was responding to shitkicker extraordinaire Joe Barton of Texas.
Now, sit back, relax, and enjoy another New Jersey Democrat, Bill Pascrell, make Arkansas Republican Tim Griffin his bitch in a House Ways and Means Committee hearing. It's so good, you might want to loosen your pants to masturbate to it:
Oh, yeah, that felt nice. Keep on, Jersey Democrats. You don't win the new Civil War by being civil.
10/28/2013
Dead Rock Artist
Dead Rock Artist:
"Something flickered for a minute and then it vanished and was gone."
Lou Reed's New York, his 1989 album, hit the Rude Pundit like fist in the solar plexus. It's hard to remember that era, over 24 years ago, in a nation that had been dragged back to a crueler time by the unregulated capitalism and ruthless pseudo-imperialism of the Reagan administration, heading into the dim era of Bush the First. The poor had been turned into a pestilence by the rhetoric coming from the right, by the policies from Reagan, and by the lies from Christian charlatans. More homeless were created in order to pay for a military build-up that brought huge deficits for the nation and enormous wealth for a few cronies. And so, so many Americans bought the bullshit illusion of national greatness, the post-Vietnam War self-fellatio that this country was a destiny, a Valhalla, and not a messy conglomeration of people who, for fuck's sake, needed to learn how to live together or were gonna sink. It was, frankly, an ugly time.
"This is no time for Optimism
This is no time for Endless Thought
This is no time for my country Right or Wrong
Remember what that brought."
For the Rude Pundit, still young, still a bit naive, still believing he could change the world but with grown-up doubt starting to creep in, New York offered a cynical view of an America that had indeed fucked itself. But the cynicism was tempered with a hard-won, embittered hope. The city and the nation that Reed saw had dragged itself into the gutter, all through self-inflicted wounds, and we had to look at ourselves, all of it, understand it, get enraged by it, before we could even begin the long crawl out of this shit-filled pit. Oh, and it helps if you've got insanely great guitar riffs to accompany you on the journey.
"Americans don't care too much for beauty
They'll shit in a river, dump battery acid in a stream
They'll watch dead rats wash up on the beach
And complain if they can't swim."
What always stuck for the Rude Pundit was how immense Reed's vision is on New York. It's got Reed's usual sympathy for freaks and outsiders, for the damaged and the alienated, but the majority of the album is given over to images of our monstrous complicity in our own damnation. Take the lyric up there, from "Last Great American Whale." In the song, Reed mourns the disappearing Native American, but he uses that to take on environmental degradation and "Some local yokel member of the NRA." And on "Xmas in February," he describes a veteran who returns from war with no hope for the future. It's depressing how relevant the album still is today.
"There's no such thing as human rights
When you walk the N.Y.streets."
The most piercing rage on New York is saved for the title city. On the opening song, "Romeo Had Juliette," Reed sings, "Manhattan's sinking like a rock, into the filthy Hudson what a shock/They wrote a book about it, they said it was like ancient Rome." He calls out the police brutality, youth violence, Rudy Giuliani, racial upheaval and more, in specific, even shocking terms. Lou Reed loved this city, yes, but he saw it as being dragged down by the stupidity and ignorance of those leading and "protecting" it.
"'Give me your hungry, your tired, your poor, I'll piss on 'em'
That's what the Statue of Bigotry says
'Your poor huddled masses, let's club 'em to death
and get it over with and just dump 'em on the boulevard.'"
Others will no doubt choose albums like Berlin or Street Hassle or something by the Velvet Underground as their way to memorialize Lou Reed, who died yesterday at age 71. Idiots will play "Walk on the Wild Side," a song Reed could barely stomach performing anymore (although it is still about as subversive as rock music gets). But the Rude Pundit will always remember New York leading him to an understanding that the issues he had embraced were born out of real world circumstances for people who had been shoved to the margins, people who are still at the margins. It was How the Other Half Lives for the death of the 20th century. This is not to mention that "Busload of Faith" got him through more than one fucked-up time.
Lou Reed was the poet of a city, in all its decadent glamor and breathtaking squalor, and New York was a chronicle of our plunge into an abyss of consumerism, victimization, and apathy, the skid marks of the last millenium polluting this new one.
"Something flickered for a minute and then it vanished and was gone."
Lou Reed's New York, his 1989 album, hit the Rude Pundit like fist in the solar plexus. It's hard to remember that era, over 24 years ago, in a nation that had been dragged back to a crueler time by the unregulated capitalism and ruthless pseudo-imperialism of the Reagan administration, heading into the dim era of Bush the First. The poor had been turned into a pestilence by the rhetoric coming from the right, by the policies from Reagan, and by the lies from Christian charlatans. More homeless were created in order to pay for a military build-up that brought huge deficits for the nation and enormous wealth for a few cronies. And so, so many Americans bought the bullshit illusion of national greatness, the post-Vietnam War self-fellatio that this country was a destiny, a Valhalla, and not a messy conglomeration of people who, for fuck's sake, needed to learn how to live together or were gonna sink. It was, frankly, an ugly time.
"This is no time for Optimism
This is no time for Endless Thought
This is no time for my country Right or Wrong
Remember what that brought."
For the Rude Pundit, still young, still a bit naive, still believing he could change the world but with grown-up doubt starting to creep in, New York offered a cynical view of an America that had indeed fucked itself. But the cynicism was tempered with a hard-won, embittered hope. The city and the nation that Reed saw had dragged itself into the gutter, all through self-inflicted wounds, and we had to look at ourselves, all of it, understand it, get enraged by it, before we could even begin the long crawl out of this shit-filled pit. Oh, and it helps if you've got insanely great guitar riffs to accompany you on the journey.
"Americans don't care too much for beauty
They'll shit in a river, dump battery acid in a stream
They'll watch dead rats wash up on the beach
And complain if they can't swim."
What always stuck for the Rude Pundit was how immense Reed's vision is on New York. It's got Reed's usual sympathy for freaks and outsiders, for the damaged and the alienated, but the majority of the album is given over to images of our monstrous complicity in our own damnation. Take the lyric up there, from "Last Great American Whale." In the song, Reed mourns the disappearing Native American, but he uses that to take on environmental degradation and "Some local yokel member of the NRA." And on "Xmas in February," he describes a veteran who returns from war with no hope for the future. It's depressing how relevant the album still is today.
"There's no such thing as human rights
When you walk the N.Y.streets."
The most piercing rage on New York is saved for the title city. On the opening song, "Romeo Had Juliette," Reed sings, "Manhattan's sinking like a rock, into the filthy Hudson what a shock/They wrote a book about it, they said it was like ancient Rome." He calls out the police brutality, youth violence, Rudy Giuliani, racial upheaval and more, in specific, even shocking terms. Lou Reed loved this city, yes, but he saw it as being dragged down by the stupidity and ignorance of those leading and "protecting" it.
"'Give me your hungry, your tired, your poor, I'll piss on 'em'
That's what the Statue of Bigotry says
'Your poor huddled masses, let's club 'em to death
and get it over with and just dump 'em on the boulevard.'"
Others will no doubt choose albums like Berlin or Street Hassle or something by the Velvet Underground as their way to memorialize Lou Reed, who died yesterday at age 71. Idiots will play "Walk on the Wild Side," a song Reed could barely stomach performing anymore (although it is still about as subversive as rock music gets). But the Rude Pundit will always remember New York leading him to an understanding that the issues he had embraced were born out of real world circumstances for people who had been shoved to the margins, people who are still at the margins. It was How the Other Half Lives for the death of the 20th century. This is not to mention that "Busload of Faith" got him through more than one fucked-up time.
Lou Reed was the poet of a city, in all its decadent glamor and breathtaking squalor, and New York was a chronicle of our plunge into an abyss of consumerism, victimization, and apathy, the skid marks of the last millenium polluting this new one.
10/25/2013
Alan Grayson Tells Conservatives and Others to Blow Him
Alan Grayson Tells Conservatives and Others to Blow Him:
Representative Alan Grayson of Florida is dangerous because he's a rich-ass liberal who doesn't give a shit. That's damned invigorating because, frankly, the Left needs more people who don't give a shit, who have given up on the niceties and the demure decorum by which Democrats, especially, are supposed to act in Washington while Republicans and conservatives can take a photo of President Obama and fuck its face in public while calling Nancy Pelosi a cunt.
Members of the media, conservatives, and some Democrats are currently fanning themselves on the fainting couch over Grayson's fundraising email that explicitly compares the Tea Party to the Ku Klux Klan.
Yeah, the only way it could be more explicit is if Grayson showed a Tea Party gathering with a lynched President Obama hanging in the foreground.
Of course, it's rude shit, right there. It's bomb throwing. It's a clear and obvious attack, absolutely resolute in its opinion, completely without nuance, way over the top, and totally necessary.
Why "necessary"? Because it's now forced Tea Party members to jump out and demonstrate that they aren't racist (even if, you know, they are). Sal Russon, the chief strategist of the Tea Party Express (which is a title that sounds like "Toilet Licker at the Nuthouse") wrote in The Daily Caller (motto: "It's either this or more Tucker Carlson on your TV and nobody wants that"), "For the Democrats, vicious anti-Tea Party hate speech has become regular and no one seems to hold them accountable, certainly not the compliant major media. This loss of civility is no way to conduct a national conversation." The Rude Pundit's pretty sure that Russo believes Tea Party rallies involve actual doilies and tea pots and not people calling the President a socialist foreigner who worships Allah. And a nigger.
The other beautiful thing about Grayson's comparison is that any time racism does crop up in Tea Party events or Facebook pages or comment threads, it simply proves his point. That's some Karl-Rove-in-his-prime shit right there, and Democrats need that to stomp the GOP into the ground while they're down.
Grayson has made degrading and destroying the Tea Party, if not the entire Republican Party, his mission. They fucked him over before, and now he's telling them they can just blow him. As for the media or anyone who would try to get him to apologize or shut up? Well, there's enough knee pads and lip balm to go around.
Representative Alan Grayson of Florida is dangerous because he's a rich-ass liberal who doesn't give a shit. That's damned invigorating because, frankly, the Left needs more people who don't give a shit, who have given up on the niceties and the demure decorum by which Democrats, especially, are supposed to act in Washington while Republicans and conservatives can take a photo of President Obama and fuck its face in public while calling Nancy Pelosi a cunt.
Members of the media, conservatives, and some Democrats are currently fanning themselves on the fainting couch over Grayson's fundraising email that explicitly compares the Tea Party to the Ku Klux Klan.
Yeah, the only way it could be more explicit is if Grayson showed a Tea Party gathering with a lynched President Obama hanging in the foreground.
Of course, it's rude shit, right there. It's bomb throwing. It's a clear and obvious attack, absolutely resolute in its opinion, completely without nuance, way over the top, and totally necessary.
Why "necessary"? Because it's now forced Tea Party members to jump out and demonstrate that they aren't racist (even if, you know, they are). Sal Russon, the chief strategist of the Tea Party Express (which is a title that sounds like "Toilet Licker at the Nuthouse") wrote in The Daily Caller (motto: "It's either this or more Tucker Carlson on your TV and nobody wants that"), "For the Democrats, vicious anti-Tea Party hate speech has become regular and no one seems to hold them accountable, certainly not the compliant major media. This loss of civility is no way to conduct a national conversation." The Rude Pundit's pretty sure that Russo believes Tea Party rallies involve actual doilies and tea pots and not people calling the President a socialist foreigner who worships Allah. And a nigger.
The other beautiful thing about Grayson's comparison is that any time racism does crop up in Tea Party events or Facebook pages or comment threads, it simply proves his point. That's some Karl-Rove-in-his-prime shit right there, and Democrats need that to stomp the GOP into the ground while they're down.
Grayson has made degrading and destroying the Tea Party, if not the entire Republican Party, his mission. They fucked him over before, and now he's telling them they can just blow him. As for the media or anyone who would try to get him to apologize or shut up? Well, there's enough knee pads and lip balm to go around.
10/24/2013
Spying and Drones: What the Hell Is Wrong With Us?
Spying and Drones: What the Hell Is Wrong With Us?:
No, seriously, what the fuck is wrong with us? Are we that crazed about our own precious safety that we simply don't give a shit anymore about what other nations think when it comes to us "protecting" ourselves from "terrorists"? At this point, the United States views the world as one giant conspiracy out to destroy truth, justice, and high school football. We're so bugfuck insane that Osama bin Laden must be laughing his crab-bitten ass off at the bottom of the ocean.
What it looks like is that, starting in 2006, under orders from George W. Bush, the National Security Agency began monitoring the calls of dozens of foreign leaders. How did the NSA start doing so? Because some "U.S. official" gave the spooks the personal or direct phone numbers of the leaders. Ain't that some shit right there? It's like showing all the guys at the bar pictures of your girlfriend's tits that you assured her were only for you.
The biggest allegation so far is that the NSA monitored the cell phone of German Chancellor Angela Merkel. A question about it to Press Secretary Jay Carney led to one of the all-time great weasel answers: "The President assured the Chancellor that the United States is not monitoring and will not monitor the communications of Chancellor Merkel." Now, the Rude Pundit may not be a big city diplomat, but he is a professor, and he knows when the past tense is missing in a sentence. That shit's so weaselly that actual weasels stood on their hind legs and applauded.
So Germany's pissed at us. A good chunk of Europe is pissed at us. Or, to be more specific, pissed at President Obama because no matter who started it, Obama could have stopped it. One left-leaning newspaper in Germany editorialized, "It's hard to even imagine how Obama's intelligence services deal with hostile states when one sees how they behave toward their closest allies." Even the German interior minister, who had up to this point thought the NSA spying scandal was bullshit, demanded an apology.
And before anyone tries to say this is no big deal, much ado about nothing, metadata, or whatever self-deluding nonsense you wanna toss onto the shitpile, what's more important, huh? Hearing Angela Merkel order take-out bratwurst or whatever the fuck they do in Germany? Or assuring ongoing cooperation from our, you know, allies? 'Cause those alleged allies are already thinking of telling the United States to go fuck itself on sharing spy information.
Of course, a little phone and email eavesdropping would be preferable for the people of Pakistan and Yemen, where Obama's drone war is killing the shit out of civilians. Like, you know, the "18 laborers, including a 14-year-old boy, [who] were killed in multiple strikes on an impoverished village close to the border with Afghanistan as they were about to enjoy an evening meal at the end of a long day of work" in July 2012. The U.S. reported that as a successful terrorist murder operation, but Amnesty International discovered that it was, in fact, 18 laborers, including a 14-year old boy, who had fuck-all to do with terrorism. There's lots more like that in both countries where we rain fiery death on the people.
What's the game here? Is it that once Obama was shown the real threats to the United States, the shit we're all too stupid to be allowed to see, he lost his fuckin' mind and decided to go survivalist? Or is it that Obama is so concerned, like Democrats before him, to be seen as a tough motherfucker at home that he doesn't really care what people overseas think about the spying and the drones missiles?
The Rude Pundit has a problem with all of this. He can't just sweep it under the rug, say he trusts Obama, go about his daily life, and be glad that he's not getting attacked. Fuck that. He didn't sign up for this. He's not gonna pretend it's okay because it's not. And if it takes our European allies and the human rights organizations we have trusted for decades to smack us back into reality, then, please, slap away at our contorted faces.
(Note to Obama supporters who go nutzoid at any hint of negativity from the left: The Rude Pundit can, in the same week, support President Obama on health care reform and attack him for drone missile murder. It's like you can love your husband for being such a good father but hate him for being such a shitty lay.)
No, seriously, what the fuck is wrong with us? Are we that crazed about our own precious safety that we simply don't give a shit anymore about what other nations think when it comes to us "protecting" ourselves from "terrorists"? At this point, the United States views the world as one giant conspiracy out to destroy truth, justice, and high school football. We're so bugfuck insane that Osama bin Laden must be laughing his crab-bitten ass off at the bottom of the ocean.
What it looks like is that, starting in 2006, under orders from George W. Bush, the National Security Agency began monitoring the calls of dozens of foreign leaders. How did the NSA start doing so? Because some "U.S. official" gave the spooks the personal or direct phone numbers of the leaders. Ain't that some shit right there? It's like showing all the guys at the bar pictures of your girlfriend's tits that you assured her were only for you.
The biggest allegation so far is that the NSA monitored the cell phone of German Chancellor Angela Merkel. A question about it to Press Secretary Jay Carney led to one of the all-time great weasel answers: "The President assured the Chancellor that the United States is not monitoring and will not monitor the communications of Chancellor Merkel." Now, the Rude Pundit may not be a big city diplomat, but he is a professor, and he knows when the past tense is missing in a sentence. That shit's so weaselly that actual weasels stood on their hind legs and applauded.
So Germany's pissed at us. A good chunk of Europe is pissed at us. Or, to be more specific, pissed at President Obama because no matter who started it, Obama could have stopped it. One left-leaning newspaper in Germany editorialized, "It's hard to even imagine how Obama's intelligence services deal with hostile states when one sees how they behave toward their closest allies." Even the German interior minister, who had up to this point thought the NSA spying scandal was bullshit, demanded an apology.
And before anyone tries to say this is no big deal, much ado about nothing, metadata, or whatever self-deluding nonsense you wanna toss onto the shitpile, what's more important, huh? Hearing Angela Merkel order take-out bratwurst or whatever the fuck they do in Germany? Or assuring ongoing cooperation from our, you know, allies? 'Cause those alleged allies are already thinking of telling the United States to go fuck itself on sharing spy information.
Of course, a little phone and email eavesdropping would be preferable for the people of Pakistan and Yemen, where Obama's drone war is killing the shit out of civilians. Like, you know, the "18 laborers, including a 14-year-old boy, [who] were killed in multiple strikes on an impoverished village close to the border with Afghanistan as they were about to enjoy an evening meal at the end of a long day of work" in July 2012. The U.S. reported that as a successful terrorist murder operation, but Amnesty International discovered that it was, in fact, 18 laborers, including a 14-year old boy, who had fuck-all to do with terrorism. There's lots more like that in both countries where we rain fiery death on the people.
What's the game here? Is it that once Obama was shown the real threats to the United States, the shit we're all too stupid to be allowed to see, he lost his fuckin' mind and decided to go survivalist? Or is it that Obama is so concerned, like Democrats before him, to be seen as a tough motherfucker at home that he doesn't really care what people overseas think about the spying and the drones missiles?
The Rude Pundit has a problem with all of this. He can't just sweep it under the rug, say he trusts Obama, go about his daily life, and be glad that he's not getting attacked. Fuck that. He didn't sign up for this. He's not gonna pretend it's okay because it's not. And if it takes our European allies and the human rights organizations we have trusted for decades to smack us back into reality, then, please, slap away at our contorted faces.
(Note to Obama supporters who go nutzoid at any hint of negativity from the left: The Rude Pundit can, in the same week, support President Obama on health care reform and attack him for drone missile murder. It's like you can love your husband for being such a good father but hate him for being such a shitty lay.)
Late Post Today
Late Post Today:
The Rat King is up to no good in the lab. Gotta wake up Donatello and get ready for another fight.
Back later with more mutant rudeness.
The Rat King is up to no good in the lab. Gotta wake up Donatello and get ready for another fight.
Back later with more mutant rudeness.
10/23/2013
Republican Governors Are Hurting More People Than the ACA Website
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10/22/2013
Photos That Make the Tea Party Look Like a Bunch of Shut-Ins on Hoverounds
Photos That Make the Tea Party Look Like a Bunch of Shut-Ins on Hoverounds:
Hey, Tea Party slackers, that up there is how you protest a fuckin' budget you don't like. You get your fat asses out in the street, like the 50-70,000 people who did so in Rome. You fuckin' riot, you punk ass bitches. You don't wait for Paul Ryan to shit out another time-waster of a document.
Oh, and you don't suck the assholes of the wealthy and make their causes yours. Those protesters up there are a combination of lefties who oppose the worthless austerity programs of the Letta government and conservatives who want lower corporate taxes. If something like this happened in the United States, it'd just be Koch Brother-approved capitalist slaves doing the bidding of their masters. Anything smacking of a pro-union or pro-government program would be beaten out of the group by Wall Street's flunkies.
As one protest leader said, "Even after austerity has proven to be disastrous, with debt rising, the economy crumbling, and unemployment soaring, they still continue with these policies." Bigger marches are promised. Can you imagine that kind of energy spent in the United States?
Nope. Probably everyone would be arrested as "terrorists." Or there's just so many hours in a day and all those episodes of NCIS aren't gonna watch themselves.
Hey, Tea Party slackers, that up there is how you protest a fuckin' budget you don't like. You get your fat asses out in the street, like the 50-70,000 people who did so in Rome. You fuckin' riot, you punk ass bitches. You don't wait for Paul Ryan to shit out another time-waster of a document.
Oh, and you don't suck the assholes of the wealthy and make their causes yours. Those protesters up there are a combination of lefties who oppose the worthless austerity programs of the Letta government and conservatives who want lower corporate taxes. If something like this happened in the United States, it'd just be Koch Brother-approved capitalist slaves doing the bidding of their masters. Anything smacking of a pro-union or pro-government program would be beaten out of the group by Wall Street's flunkies.
As one protest leader said, "Even after austerity has proven to be disastrous, with debt rising, the economy crumbling, and unemployment soaring, they still continue with these policies." Bigger marches are promised. Can you imagine that kind of energy spent in the United States?
Nope. Probably everyone would be arrested as "terrorists." Or there's just so many hours in a day and all those episodes of NCIS aren't gonna watch themselves.
10/21/2013
The Tale of the Terrible, Glitch-Filled Health Care Law Rollout
The Tale of the Terrible, Glitch-Filled Health Care Law Rollout:
Within a week of the new health care law coming into effect, the St. Petersburg Times was reporting that "After hearing about the elaborate network of options...Hugh Mabe had a simple response. 'I don't get it.' For the past week, many Citrus County residents have echoed Mabe's sentiment. Though enrollment began Tuesday, few potential beneficiaries have settled on a plan." Yes, it was confusing because it was so very new and different.
Of course, the computer glitches didn't help: "During the first few days of enrollment, people had trouble logging onto [the] website because of heavy traffic." Because of all the problems, less than a month after its rollout, at least one senator from the president's own party wrote to officials in charge of the website, saying, "I am writing to express my concern with serious problems brought to my attention relating website. [People] have reported that the pricing information of plans listed on the website is inaccurate and misleading...A discrepancy of thousands of dollars is more than just a 'glitch'...This sort of problem could greatly hinder successful implementation of the [new health care law] by undermining consumer confidence in the program."
A Democratic Congressman wrote to the president after a month into the sign-up to complain that "only 500,000 of 40 million eligible [people] have signed up so far. This low participation number is not surprising. After all, the fledgling program has been plagued by mishaps and misinformation." He was also frustrated that Congress was doing nothing to help fix the problems.
Things got so bad that even a governor who supported the law was frustrated that only "700 of the 100,000 applications [from his state] that have been submitted" had even been processed. He also noted that the Department of Health and Human Services promised that the "glitches" were fixed, even if users still had difficulties with the website. Among those glitches were "computer file transfers" that caused people to have to resubmit applications that were processed incorrectly.
Medical professionals were also upset with the program. "It's a nightmare," said one. "It will be a disaster" if the problems are not fixed, said another.
Let's just show the cards here. If you haven't figured it out, this is all about the sign-up period for what was the then-new Medicare prescription drug program, Part D. The "people" up there are actually senior citizens. The senator was Olympia Snowe of Maine, a Republican. The congressman was Benjamin Cardin of Maryland, who is now a senator. The governor was Richard Codey of New Jersey. The president was George W. Bush. The time period was from mid-October of 2005, which was the start of enrollment before the plan went into effect on January 1, 2006.
And on it went. "The system was certainly overwhelmed," said a spokesman for Walgreens on January 4, 2006 about the national computer network that his company's stores was using. Others reported ongoing glitches, using phrases like "mild chaos" and "a confusing nightmare." Computer issues caused thousands to lose whatever drug coverage they had. It got so bad that governors had to step in to make sure that seniors got their medications. To state it plainly, after the program started, the entire thing was seen as one giant glitch. It wasn't until months later that the law was seen as starting to work as it was intended, except for the pesky doughnut hole in drug costs (which Obamacare fills).
This all was on top of the fact that, shortly after its passage as one of Bush's signature achievements, it was revealed that the $400 billion law would end up costing over $530 billion.
The bill was passed in December 2003. In November 2004, there was a vote to raise the debt ceiling. You know what didn't happen? The Democrats in the Senate didn't hold the debt ceiling hostage because the act was confusing and unpopular - remember, it passed the House only because of bribery and threats by Tom DeLay. They didn't try to undermine it or sabotage it. No, they tried to make it better, with Republicans refusing to do so.
Senator Blanche Lincoln, a Democrat from Arkansas, tried to fix things in December 2005. She said that "all of the problems that have occurred could have been avoided if Republicans had not blocked a crucial amendment she cosponsored during federal budget debates last month. Lincoln's bill would have added six months to the transition period to ensure that pharmacists are reimbursed under Medicaid until each eligible senior is assigned to a new drug plan under Medicare. Her amendment was uniformly opposed by Republicans in the Finance Committee and during budget debates on the Senate floor last month." It failed because Republicans didn't want to delay the law.
Now, you want the real kick in the teeth? Defending the administration in those early days of the law's implementation was then-Representative Roy Blunt, Republican from Missouri. He acknowledged the problems with the sign-up, and he noted, "Remember: when Medicare started in 1965 there were reports of confusion, patients and doctors didn't understand the new program and seniors were complaining that hey had not received their new Medicare cards. Sounds familiar."
Yeah, it sure does.
And this isn't even ancient history.
Within a week of the new health care law coming into effect, the St. Petersburg Times was reporting that "After hearing about the elaborate network of options...Hugh Mabe had a simple response. 'I don't get it.' For the past week, many Citrus County residents have echoed Mabe's sentiment. Though enrollment began Tuesday, few potential beneficiaries have settled on a plan." Yes, it was confusing because it was so very new and different.
Of course, the computer glitches didn't help: "During the first few days of enrollment, people had trouble logging onto [the] website because of heavy traffic." Because of all the problems, less than a month after its rollout, at least one senator from the president's own party wrote to officials in charge of the website, saying, "I am writing to express my concern with serious problems brought to my attention relating website. [People] have reported that the pricing information of plans listed on the website is inaccurate and misleading...A discrepancy of thousands of dollars is more than just a 'glitch'...This sort of problem could greatly hinder successful implementation of the [new health care law] by undermining consumer confidence in the program."
A Democratic Congressman wrote to the president after a month into the sign-up to complain that "only 500,000 of 40 million eligible [people] have signed up so far. This low participation number is not surprising. After all, the fledgling program has been plagued by mishaps and misinformation." He was also frustrated that Congress was doing nothing to help fix the problems.
Things got so bad that even a governor who supported the law was frustrated that only "700 of the 100,000 applications [from his state] that have been submitted" had even been processed. He also noted that the Department of Health and Human Services promised that the "glitches" were fixed, even if users still had difficulties with the website. Among those glitches were "computer file transfers" that caused people to have to resubmit applications that were processed incorrectly.
Medical professionals were also upset with the program. "It's a nightmare," said one. "It will be a disaster" if the problems are not fixed, said another.
Let's just show the cards here. If you haven't figured it out, this is all about the sign-up period for what was the then-new Medicare prescription drug program, Part D. The "people" up there are actually senior citizens. The senator was Olympia Snowe of Maine, a Republican. The congressman was Benjamin Cardin of Maryland, who is now a senator. The governor was Richard Codey of New Jersey. The president was George W. Bush. The time period was from mid-October of 2005, which was the start of enrollment before the plan went into effect on January 1, 2006.
And on it went. "The system was certainly overwhelmed," said a spokesman for Walgreens on January 4, 2006 about the national computer network that his company's stores was using. Others reported ongoing glitches, using phrases like "mild chaos" and "a confusing nightmare." Computer issues caused thousands to lose whatever drug coverage they had. It got so bad that governors had to step in to make sure that seniors got their medications. To state it plainly, after the program started, the entire thing was seen as one giant glitch. It wasn't until months later that the law was seen as starting to work as it was intended, except for the pesky doughnut hole in drug costs (which Obamacare fills).
This all was on top of the fact that, shortly after its passage as one of Bush's signature achievements, it was revealed that the $400 billion law would end up costing over $530 billion.
The bill was passed in December 2003. In November 2004, there was a vote to raise the debt ceiling. You know what didn't happen? The Democrats in the Senate didn't hold the debt ceiling hostage because the act was confusing and unpopular - remember, it passed the House only because of bribery and threats by Tom DeLay. They didn't try to undermine it or sabotage it. No, they tried to make it better, with Republicans refusing to do so.
Senator Blanche Lincoln, a Democrat from Arkansas, tried to fix things in December 2005. She said that "all of the problems that have occurred could have been avoided if Republicans had not blocked a crucial amendment she cosponsored during federal budget debates last month. Lincoln's bill would have added six months to the transition period to ensure that pharmacists are reimbursed under Medicaid until each eligible senior is assigned to a new drug plan under Medicare. Her amendment was uniformly opposed by Republicans in the Finance Committee and during budget debates on the Senate floor last month." It failed because Republicans didn't want to delay the law.
Now, you want the real kick in the teeth? Defending the administration in those early days of the law's implementation was then-Representative Roy Blunt, Republican from Missouri. He acknowledged the problems with the sign-up, and he noted, "Remember: when Medicare started in 1965 there were reports of confusion, patients and doctors didn't understand the new program and seniors were complaining that hey had not received their new Medicare cards. Sounds familiar."
Yeah, it sure does.
And this isn't even ancient history.
10/18/2013
Chris Christie Just Wasted $12-24 Million Tax Dollars
Chris Christie Just Wasted $12-24 Million Tax Dollars:
You see that? That's the ballot that confronted New Jersey voters this past Wednesday. It had one thing and one thing only on it: Who do you want in office to finish Frank Lautenberg's term in the U.S. Senate? Cory Booker won because everyone knew that Cory Booker was going to win and, really, Steve Fuckin' Lonegan? It took about 2 seconds to vote.
But that's not why it was an enormous waste of time and money. No, see, in less than three weeks, there's an election in New Jersey that's not on the third Wednesday in October. No, see, it's on the first Tuesday in November or, you know, Election Day. And on that ballot will be initiatives, state legislators, a shitload of local elections, and, oh, hey, a gubernatorial race featuring one Chris Christie. He's New Jersey's governor, the very man who decided that the Senate election couldn't possibly wait three more weeks, despite the fact that Christie had appointed a replacement until someone could be elected.
And this is why Democrats shouldn't fear Christie. Sure, he looks like a corpulent villain straight out of a 1930s serial or maybe Sydney Greenstreet without the style, but while he projects that he's an asshole, he's really just a pussy.
The Senate election cost the state at least an additional $12 million, possibly up to $24 million when all is said and done, money that would have been saved had Christie merely waited a handful more days. What did the state get for its millions of dollars at a time when Christie is raiding the Clean Air Fund, including $10 million just a few months ago to "plug a hole" in the budget? A 24% turnout and the inevitable Cory Booker victory.
Oh, and probably a lot of black (Democratic) voters staying home on November 5, which was the goal all along and, frankly, it should have been paid for by Christie's campaign.
Christie is devouring Democrat Barbara Buono like he eats a pizza slice on the Jersey Shore, ahead of her by at least 20 points. How much of a comfortable lead does he need? Ah, but, see, if he wins by 25-30 points in November, won't that look unbeatable in a presidential election.
Unless, of course, some candidate or Hillary brings up this simple fact: Chris Christie wasted New Jersey's limited tax dollars for no reason other than ego and fear.
(Fun fat fact: Christie was just endorsed by the NJ Food Council because no shit.)
You see that? That's the ballot that confronted New Jersey voters this past Wednesday. It had one thing and one thing only on it: Who do you want in office to finish Frank Lautenberg's term in the U.S. Senate? Cory Booker won because everyone knew that Cory Booker was going to win and, really, Steve Fuckin' Lonegan? It took about 2 seconds to vote.
But that's not why it was an enormous waste of time and money. No, see, in less than three weeks, there's an election in New Jersey that's not on the third Wednesday in October. No, see, it's on the first Tuesday in November or, you know, Election Day. And on that ballot will be initiatives, state legislators, a shitload of local elections, and, oh, hey, a gubernatorial race featuring one Chris Christie. He's New Jersey's governor, the very man who decided that the Senate election couldn't possibly wait three more weeks, despite the fact that Christie had appointed a replacement until someone could be elected.
And this is why Democrats shouldn't fear Christie. Sure, he looks like a corpulent villain straight out of a 1930s serial or maybe Sydney Greenstreet without the style, but while he projects that he's an asshole, he's really just a pussy.
The Senate election cost the state at least an additional $12 million, possibly up to $24 million when all is said and done, money that would have been saved had Christie merely waited a handful more days. What did the state get for its millions of dollars at a time when Christie is raiding the Clean Air Fund, including $10 million just a few months ago to "plug a hole" in the budget? A 24% turnout and the inevitable Cory Booker victory.
Oh, and probably a lot of black (Democratic) voters staying home on November 5, which was the goal all along and, frankly, it should have been paid for by Christie's campaign.
Christie is devouring Democrat Barbara Buono like he eats a pizza slice on the Jersey Shore, ahead of her by at least 20 points. How much of a comfortable lead does he need? Ah, but, see, if he wins by 25-30 points in November, won't that look unbeatable in a presidential election.
Unless, of course, some candidate or Hillary brings up this simple fact: Chris Christie wasted New Jersey's limited tax dollars for no reason other than ego and fear.
(Fun fat fact: Christie was just endorsed by the NJ Food Council because no shit.)
10/17/2013
In Brief: President Obama: "Radical Republicans Are Traitors Who Must Be Crushed"
In Brief: President Obama: "Radical Republicans Are Traitors Who Must Be Crushed":
In his remarks today about the end of the shutdown/debt default crisis, President Obama was pissed off. It was something many of us on the left have waited for. We've wanted Obama to finally say that he's sick of this shit and won't take it anymore. You have to think that, after years of Republicans successfully damaging his presidency and spitting on his goals, he wanted to rub their stupid fucking faces in the shitpile of their defeat. But he held back from spiking the ball and doing an endzone dance.
However, what Obama did say was pretty sweet. Essentially, it boiled down to "Hey, you yahoos and nut jobs, this is what it looks like when someone actually is trying to destroy the nation."
Look at how he laid it out. He hit on the credit rating of the United States: "The agency that put America’s credit rating on watch the other day explicitly cited all of this, saying that our economy 'remains more dynamic and resilient' than other advanced economies, and that the only thing putting us at risk is -- and I'm quoting here -- 'repeated brinksmanship.'"
He smacked the GOP with the standing of the U.S. in the world: "[N]othing has done more damage to America's credibility in the world, our standing with other countries, than the spectacle that we've seen these past several weeks. It's encouraged our enemies. It's emboldened our competitors. And it's depressed our friends who look to us for steady leadership."
And then the kicker: "So let's work together to make government work better, instead of treating it like an enemy or purposely making it work worse. That’s not what the founders of this nation envisioned when they gave us the gift of self-government. You don’t like a particular policy or a particular president, then argue for your position. Go out there and win an election. Push to change it. But don’t break it. Don’t break what our predecessors spent over two centuries building. That's not being faithful to what this country is about."
You got it? In other words, Republicans who took the nation to the brink of disaster are, at best, anarchist terrorists; at worst, traitors.
In otherer words, you just got a preview of the line of attack for 2014. Who do you stand with? People who believe in the nation or people who want to wreck the joint?
In his remarks today about the end of the shutdown/debt default crisis, President Obama was pissed off. It was something many of us on the left have waited for. We've wanted Obama to finally say that he's sick of this shit and won't take it anymore. You have to think that, after years of Republicans successfully damaging his presidency and spitting on his goals, he wanted to rub their stupid fucking faces in the shitpile of their defeat. But he held back from spiking the ball and doing an endzone dance.
However, what Obama did say was pretty sweet. Essentially, it boiled down to "Hey, you yahoos and nut jobs, this is what it looks like when someone actually is trying to destroy the nation."
Look at how he laid it out. He hit on the credit rating of the United States: "The agency that put America’s credit rating on watch the other day explicitly cited all of this, saying that our economy 'remains more dynamic and resilient' than other advanced economies, and that the only thing putting us at risk is -- and I'm quoting here -- 'repeated brinksmanship.'"
He smacked the GOP with the standing of the U.S. in the world: "[N]othing has done more damage to America's credibility in the world, our standing with other countries, than the spectacle that we've seen these past several weeks. It's encouraged our enemies. It's emboldened our competitors. And it's depressed our friends who look to us for steady leadership."
And then the kicker: "So let's work together to make government work better, instead of treating it like an enemy or purposely making it work worse. That’s not what the founders of this nation envisioned when they gave us the gift of self-government. You don’t like a particular policy or a particular president, then argue for your position. Go out there and win an election. Push to change it. But don’t break it. Don’t break what our predecessors spent over two centuries building. That's not being faithful to what this country is about."
You got it? In other words, Republicans who took the nation to the brink of disaster are, at best, anarchist terrorists; at worst, traitors.
In otherer words, you just got a preview of the line of attack for 2014. Who do you stand with? People who believe in the nation or people who want to wreck the joint?
10/16/2013
"If It's So Great, Why Don't You Do It?": One of the Stupidest Anti-Obamacare Arguments
"If It's So Great, Why Don't You Do It?": One of the Stupidest Anti-Obamacare Arguments:
On Morning Starbucks with Joe Scarborough's Beady Eyes, Mika Brezinski's Sneer, and the Pickled Corpse of Mike Barnicle, Rep. Sean Duffy, Republican of Wisconsin, said the hosts should ask "liberal guests" on the show, "Why won’t you join Obamacare? If it’s good for Americans, why isn’t it good for you?”
This question and its variants has been a talking point for Republicans both before and during this crisis they brought on. Rand Paul, giving Ted Cruz a moment to shit his diaper in peace during the notafilibuster, asked the question of Barack Obama: "'Mr. President, are you willing to take Obamacare? If you don’t want it, why are we stuck with it?'"
It's the question at the core of the Vitter Amendment, named for the Senator who wishes he could shit his diaper on the floor of the Senate. It would make all members of Congress and their staffs find insurance on the Affordable Care Act exchanges and, just because if you're gonna be a prick, you may as well be a mega-prick, receive no subsidies from their employer (you know, the government) to help. Rep. Tim Huelskamp, Kansas GOP nut, on Al Sharpton's just terrible MSNBC "show," fluffing Vitter like a New Orleans prostitute, said that if it’s good enough for the rest of the country, "it should be good enough for the President of the United States" and other federal employees.
On and on this could go, with more and more members of Congress, with right-wing media, with knuckle-dragging bloggers all joining into a dissonant chorus of farts and vomit noises around a single line: "If it's so good/great, why isn't Congress/the President/Kathleen Sebelius/Mitch McConnell's shell shiner being forced onto it?"
Dear, sweet conservatives, especially those of you devoid of thought except for what Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity piss into your ears, listen closely. Here's the answer to your question: It's because the law is meant to cover people who don't have access to health insurance, you dumb fucks. It's meant to be something for people who have nothing, people who aren't poor enough for Medicaid or have preexisting conditions that prevent them from getting insurance. If it was meant for everyone, we would call it "single payer" or "universal health care" or "socialized medicine" or "that thing that works in every other fucking country but we're too deluded to enact here."
It's goddamned childish, like saying, "If you like Obamacare so much, why don't you marry it?" It's like saying that if public housing is so awesome, why doesn't everyone live in it? Would you support a bill to force members of Congress to live in Barry Farm?
You know who it wasn't meant for? People who already get health insurance through their jobs. That's a benefit, something that people get instead of higher pay. If you want to kick anyone off their health insurance and not provide subsidies, you better fucking pay 'em more with the money that's not being used to give 'em insurance, but that's not in the Vitter Amendment, is it?
Sure, sure, go ahead and cite the very few examples of companies who have been total assholes to their employees. But 96% of companies aren't affected by the Affordable Care Act (except in that it will lower health costs overall). And of the 4% that are affected, nearly 95% of them won't be bothered by it. But, no, really, go ahead and dig out your exceptions, like your invisible welfare queens and your phantom voter fraud cases.
Stop being such pussies and admit what's really going on here. The Vitter Amendment's purpose was to drive people away from government jobs. And, as so many have pointed out, there is a deep, deep fear in right-wingers that, once they have insurance and are getting regular health care, people will think that this program that's supposedly as bad as slavery times the Holocaust to the power of 9/11 isn't so bad and that the streetcorner screamers of the right are full of shit.
The battle is over, motherfuckers. Put down your weapons and return to your homes. Kiss your loved ones. And we can all warm ourselves by the fire made from the corpses of Republicans who threw themselves at the barricade only to get themselves impaled right through their cold, awful hearts.
On Morning Starbucks with Joe Scarborough's Beady Eyes, Mika Brezinski's Sneer, and the Pickled Corpse of Mike Barnicle, Rep. Sean Duffy, Republican of Wisconsin, said the hosts should ask "liberal guests" on the show, "Why won’t you join Obamacare? If it’s good for Americans, why isn’t it good for you?”
This question and its variants has been a talking point for Republicans both before and during this crisis they brought on. Rand Paul, giving Ted Cruz a moment to shit his diaper in peace during the notafilibuster, asked the question of Barack Obama: "'Mr. President, are you willing to take Obamacare? If you don’t want it, why are we stuck with it?'"
It's the question at the core of the Vitter Amendment, named for the Senator who wishes he could shit his diaper on the floor of the Senate. It would make all members of Congress and their staffs find insurance on the Affordable Care Act exchanges and, just because if you're gonna be a prick, you may as well be a mega-prick, receive no subsidies from their employer (you know, the government) to help. Rep. Tim Huelskamp, Kansas GOP nut, on Al Sharpton's just terrible MSNBC "show," fluffing Vitter like a New Orleans prostitute, said that if it’s good enough for the rest of the country, "it should be good enough for the President of the United States" and other federal employees.
On and on this could go, with more and more members of Congress, with right-wing media, with knuckle-dragging bloggers all joining into a dissonant chorus of farts and vomit noises around a single line: "If it's so good/great, why isn't Congress/the President/Kathleen Sebelius/Mitch McConnell's shell shiner being forced onto it?"
Dear, sweet conservatives, especially those of you devoid of thought except for what Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity piss into your ears, listen closely. Here's the answer to your question: It's because the law is meant to cover people who don't have access to health insurance, you dumb fucks. It's meant to be something for people who have nothing, people who aren't poor enough for Medicaid or have preexisting conditions that prevent them from getting insurance. If it was meant for everyone, we would call it "single payer" or "universal health care" or "socialized medicine" or "that thing that works in every other fucking country but we're too deluded to enact here."
It's goddamned childish, like saying, "If you like Obamacare so much, why don't you marry it?" It's like saying that if public housing is so awesome, why doesn't everyone live in it? Would you support a bill to force members of Congress to live in Barry Farm?
You know who it wasn't meant for? People who already get health insurance through their jobs. That's a benefit, something that people get instead of higher pay. If you want to kick anyone off their health insurance and not provide subsidies, you better fucking pay 'em more with the money that's not being used to give 'em insurance, but that's not in the Vitter Amendment, is it?
Sure, sure, go ahead and cite the very few examples of companies who have been total assholes to their employees. But 96% of companies aren't affected by the Affordable Care Act (except in that it will lower health costs overall). And of the 4% that are affected, nearly 95% of them won't be bothered by it. But, no, really, go ahead and dig out your exceptions, like your invisible welfare queens and your phantom voter fraud cases.
Stop being such pussies and admit what's really going on here. The Vitter Amendment's purpose was to drive people away from government jobs. And, as so many have pointed out, there is a deep, deep fear in right-wingers that, once they have insurance and are getting regular health care, people will think that this program that's supposedly as bad as slavery times the Holocaust to the power of 9/11 isn't so bad and that the streetcorner screamers of the right are full of shit.
The battle is over, motherfuckers. Put down your weapons and return to your homes. Kiss your loved ones. And we can all warm ourselves by the fire made from the corpses of Republicans who threw themselves at the barricade only to get themselves impaled right through their cold, awful hearts.
10/15/2013
What Concessions Republicans Ought to Be Forced to Make
What Concessions Republicans Ought to Be Forced to Make:
There's competing "deals" in the House and the Senate to end the government shutdown and raise the debt ceiling. The Senate version is a bit less kind to Republicans, giving them very little to take from the confrontation they provoked while Democrats get to roll back a fee in the Affordable Care Act that pissed off unions. The doomed House deal gives Democrats nothing and does make some minor changes to the ACA, like a two-year delay on a tax on medical devices and, dickishly, forcing all members of Congress and high-ranking members of the executive branch to go out into the health insurance exchanges with no subsidies from their jobs. Oh, and we have to do it all again in February 2014.
There's a chance that Senator Ted Cruz will be a cockhole and explode the Senate deal. There's a chance that teabaggers will continue to be crazy bastards in the House. Either way, the Republicans, who bear the total blame for this clusterfuck crisis, aren't punished in any way. In another time, we'd've just lined 'em up against the World War II memorial and gunned 'em down for sedition. But, alas, we live in a moderately more civilized era.
Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi should be calling on Republicans to abase themselves before the people of the United States. It could be written into the deal. Just a few things. Like:
1. Paul Ryan will have to give President Obama a blow job on the steps of the Capitol while the GOP House members sing, "Amazing Grace." Ryan will give the blow job enthusiastically, stating repeatedly, in answer to Obama's question, "Yes, I like it." Ryan will not neglect Obama's balls. Obama will be allowed to decide if he wants to blow his load on Ryan's hair or face or right into Ryan's mouth. If it is the mouth, Ryan will swallow and tell everyone that Obama's spunk tastes American and Christian.
2. John Boehner and Mitch McConnell will appear nude except for thong underwear. They will stand in front of the Democratic members of each of their legislative bodies. Those Democrats will be allowed to throw rotting fruit and vegetables at them for a period of no less than three hours. At the end, they will have bananas shoved up their asses. Boehner and McConnell may not bathe or change outfits until a time that the Democratic leadership determines to be appropriate or until they get skin infections, whichever comes first.
3. The members of the Tea Party caucus of the House of Representatives must be brought to a charity mental institution and locked up before they do further harms to themselves and others. This will be done in full view of television cameras. If the Tea Party-identified House members resist, they will be straitjacketed and gagged. This will be done to Louie Gohmert regardless of his level of cooperation. The representatives will be kept in the psychiatric hospital until they no longer see demons, Kenyans, socialists, and/or Muslims everywhere they look.
4. Senator Ted Cruz will have to go on MSNBC and eat the entire text of his 21-hour fake filibuster as printed on regular paper. If he vomits while doing so, he must eat the vomit. When he's done and he's shit out the document, the shit will be eaten by Senators Mike Lee, Rand Paul, and Marco Rubio, who have been connected in that order, their mouths to each other's anuses, human centipede-style, with Lee's mouth attached to Cruz's ass.
5. Eric Cantor will get punched in his stupid fucking face. The puncher will be determined by a lottery. Lottery tickets will be sold to Democrats as a fundraiser for Planned Parenthood.
That's a start. At the end of the day, President Obama and Harry Reid should ensure that the GOP pays a mighty price for fucking with the nation. It's time to start treating the Republicans like the criminals, perverts, and circus freaks that they are.
There's competing "deals" in the House and the Senate to end the government shutdown and raise the debt ceiling. The Senate version is a bit less kind to Republicans, giving them very little to take from the confrontation they provoked while Democrats get to roll back a fee in the Affordable Care Act that pissed off unions. The doomed House deal gives Democrats nothing and does make some minor changes to the ACA, like a two-year delay on a tax on medical devices and, dickishly, forcing all members of Congress and high-ranking members of the executive branch to go out into the health insurance exchanges with no subsidies from their jobs. Oh, and we have to do it all again in February 2014.
There's a chance that Senator Ted Cruz will be a cockhole and explode the Senate deal. There's a chance that teabaggers will continue to be crazy bastards in the House. Either way, the Republicans, who bear the total blame for this clusterfuck crisis, aren't punished in any way. In another time, we'd've just lined 'em up against the World War II memorial and gunned 'em down for sedition. But, alas, we live in a moderately more civilized era.
Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi should be calling on Republicans to abase themselves before the people of the United States. It could be written into the deal. Just a few things. Like:
1. Paul Ryan will have to give President Obama a blow job on the steps of the Capitol while the GOP House members sing, "Amazing Grace." Ryan will give the blow job enthusiastically, stating repeatedly, in answer to Obama's question, "Yes, I like it." Ryan will not neglect Obama's balls. Obama will be allowed to decide if he wants to blow his load on Ryan's hair or face or right into Ryan's mouth. If it is the mouth, Ryan will swallow and tell everyone that Obama's spunk tastes American and Christian.
2. John Boehner and Mitch McConnell will appear nude except for thong underwear. They will stand in front of the Democratic members of each of their legislative bodies. Those Democrats will be allowed to throw rotting fruit and vegetables at them for a period of no less than three hours. At the end, they will have bananas shoved up their asses. Boehner and McConnell may not bathe or change outfits until a time that the Democratic leadership determines to be appropriate or until they get skin infections, whichever comes first.
3. The members of the Tea Party caucus of the House of Representatives must be brought to a charity mental institution and locked up before they do further harms to themselves and others. This will be done in full view of television cameras. If the Tea Party-identified House members resist, they will be straitjacketed and gagged. This will be done to Louie Gohmert regardless of his level of cooperation. The representatives will be kept in the psychiatric hospital until they no longer see demons, Kenyans, socialists, and/or Muslims everywhere they look.
4. Senator Ted Cruz will have to go on MSNBC and eat the entire text of his 21-hour fake filibuster as printed on regular paper. If he vomits while doing so, he must eat the vomit. When he's done and he's shit out the document, the shit will be eaten by Senators Mike Lee, Rand Paul, and Marco Rubio, who have been connected in that order, their mouths to each other's anuses, human centipede-style, with Lee's mouth attached to Cruz's ass.
5. Eric Cantor will get punched in his stupid fucking face. The puncher will be determined by a lottery. Lottery tickets will be sold to Democrats as a fundraiser for Planned Parenthood.
That's a start. At the end of the day, President Obama and Harry Reid should ensure that the GOP pays a mighty price for fucking with the nation. It's time to start treating the Republicans like the criminals, perverts, and circus freaks that they are.
Late Post Today
Late Post Today:
Looks like THRUSH got its hand on some nuke codes. Gotta call Illya and get to work.
Back later with more secret rudeness.
Looks like THRUSH got its hand on some nuke codes. Gotta call Illya and get to work.
Back later with more secret rudeness.
10/14/2013
Columbus Day for the Conquered: Indian Country Loves Obamacare
Columbus Day for the Conquered: Indian Country Loves Obamacare:
You know, when people aren't dicks about the Affordable Care Act, when they turn off Fox "news" and stop listening to the idiots and fucknuts about it, they learn, pretty quickly, that for the vast majority of people affected by it, it's pretty damn cool. Like out in Indian Country. On the rez, Obamacare is being embraced as offering Native Americans a path to truly decent health care.
As Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes Tribal Health and Human Services Director Kevin Howlett explains, the ACA goes way beyond what was available for Indians: "[T]he Indian Health Services has been historically under funded and the result is needed medical care is often not available because individual Indians do not have any other coverage." (Fun fact: The IHS exists by treaty as a part of the shit that the nation is supposed to provide Indians in exchange for, you know, ripping their land away from them.)
You got that? The government program meant to assist Indians can't do its job in good times. Now, the vicious, nihilistic sequester cuts have fucked over the IHS even further: "It stands to lose about $228 million in 2013 from automatic sequester cuts alone, out of a $4 billion budget. That will mean 3,000 fewer inpatient admissions and 800,000 fewer outpatient visits every year." So, yeah, Obamacare might actually fill in where Washington, DC has left Indians out to die in the sun. When the insurance part kick into effect in 2014, many Indians will be able to afford to seek medical care outside of the IHS.
The ACA already has made life better for American Indians: "It permanently reauthorizes the Indian Health Care Improvement Act, the cornerstone for the provision of health care to American Indians and Alaska Natives." As a result, if the ACA were defunded, it "would wipe out most the Indian Health Service budget," which, insurance or not, will still be a huge part of the health care for hundreds of thousands of people. (For big fun, read Fox "news" on how "unfair" it is that Indians will be exempt from the individual mandate because of the aforementioned treaty obligations.)
Of course, the shutdown might just end up fucking up the lives of Indians even more. Yeah, the furloughs have more or less gutted the Bureau of Indian Affairs and law enforcement on reservations. General food assistance programs are down, so people are going hungry in North Dakota and, as Senator Heidi Heitkamp said on the floor of the Senate, "The food banks and the food pantries are overrun."
Yeah, on this Columbus Day 2013, let's think, as ever, of the paths that the rest of the nation can take with Indian Country: compassion or neglect, help or harm.
You know, when people aren't dicks about the Affordable Care Act, when they turn off Fox "news" and stop listening to the idiots and fucknuts about it, they learn, pretty quickly, that for the vast majority of people affected by it, it's pretty damn cool. Like out in Indian Country. On the rez, Obamacare is being embraced as offering Native Americans a path to truly decent health care.
As Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes Tribal Health and Human Services Director Kevin Howlett explains, the ACA goes way beyond what was available for Indians: "[T]he Indian Health Services has been historically under funded and the result is needed medical care is often not available because individual Indians do not have any other coverage." (Fun fact: The IHS exists by treaty as a part of the shit that the nation is supposed to provide Indians in exchange for, you know, ripping their land away from them.)
You got that? The government program meant to assist Indians can't do its job in good times. Now, the vicious, nihilistic sequester cuts have fucked over the IHS even further: "It stands to lose about $228 million in 2013 from automatic sequester cuts alone, out of a $4 billion budget. That will mean 3,000 fewer inpatient admissions and 800,000 fewer outpatient visits every year." So, yeah, Obamacare might actually fill in where Washington, DC has left Indians out to die in the sun. When the insurance part kick into effect in 2014, many Indians will be able to afford to seek medical care outside of the IHS.
The ACA already has made life better for American Indians: "It permanently reauthorizes the Indian Health Care Improvement Act, the cornerstone for the provision of health care to American Indians and Alaska Natives." As a result, if the ACA were defunded, it "would wipe out most the Indian Health Service budget," which, insurance or not, will still be a huge part of the health care for hundreds of thousands of people. (For big fun, read Fox "news" on how "unfair" it is that Indians will be exempt from the individual mandate because of the aforementioned treaty obligations.)
Of course, the shutdown might just end up fucking up the lives of Indians even more. Yeah, the furloughs have more or less gutted the Bureau of Indian Affairs and law enforcement on reservations. General food assistance programs are down, so people are going hungry in North Dakota and, as Senator Heidi Heitkamp said on the floor of the Senate, "The food banks and the food pantries are overrun."
Yeah, on this Columbus Day 2013, let's think, as ever, of the paths that the rest of the nation can take with Indian Country: compassion or neglect, help or harm.
10/11/2013
Family Research Council: Herbert Hoover Was Right and God Hates Obamacare
Family Research Council: Herbert Hoover Was Right and God Hates Obamacare:
In this week's missive from the bugfuck insane Family Research Council (motto: "Our lips are chapped from sucking Ted Cruz's dick"), we members of the Super-Duper Prayer Team were treated to a history lesson. The Rude Pundit joined the Super-Duper Prayer Team years ago under a secret nom de rude, and each and every Wednesday, he receives his orders of Shit What Needs Prayin' On. It's a service and a blessing, you know.
Before gettin' to the intense prayitus, the FRC gives us a long-ass quote about how evil socialism will make evil things happen because evil: "Some of the corrosions of our division of power... come from various infections of socialism...In the Iron Curtain states, it was socialist intellectuals who weakened the freedom of men by destroying free enterprise." Who is this prophet who saw that vile places like Sweden and Denmark would eventually crumble into ruin, as they so obviously have? Why, it was Herbert Hoover, still pissed off at FDR, speaking in 1954. It's amazingly wise, if you ignore that taking economic advice from Herbert Hoover is like taking child care advice from Brian David Mitchell.
But then we get to the prayin'. This time, it's all about the debt and that Obamacare that is going to suck out your eyes and skullfuck you in front of your children, screaming at them, "This is your future." The FRC explains to the SDPT, "Scripture has much to say about money, stewardship and debt - individual and national. America cannot borrow and spend itself into prosperity. Coupled with our rush to socialism, we face ruin on our current course. Only God's mercy and our repentance, citizen action and strong, godly leadership can turn the tide."
Whatever can we do? Pray, bitches, pray. "Pray that the American people will wake up and demand that their Senators defer implementation of Obamacare and find a responsible compromise on the continuing resolution and debt ceiling," we're told, and God probably has the time to listen, since he's apparently abandoned any pretext of helping out in Syria or Bangladesh and just doesn't give a holy fuck about the cyclone about to rip up India. One can imagine God sitting on his toilet, hearing the prayer and thinking, "Sure, let's prevent poor people from getting health care for at least a year. Just to fuck up Barack Obama's day" before wiping his ass with torn angel wings.
As always, we are given verses from the Good Book to support our prayifyin'. This time, it's a badass section of Proverbs, Book 1:10-16, which says, in part, "My son, if sinners entice thee, consent thou not./ If they say, 'Come with us, let us lay wait for blood, let us lurk privily for the innocent without cause:/Let us swallow them up alive as the grave; and whole, as those that go down into the pit...'/ My son, walk not thou in the way with them; refrain thy foot from their path:/ For their feet run to evil, and make haste to shed blood." Fuckin' A, man.
And what is better for teaching people not to give in to peer pressure than imploring them to join in a group prayer or face the wrath of an invisible sky wizard?
In this week's missive from the bugfuck insane Family Research Council (motto: "Our lips are chapped from sucking Ted Cruz's dick"), we members of the Super-Duper Prayer Team were treated to a history lesson. The Rude Pundit joined the Super-Duper Prayer Team years ago under a secret nom de rude, and each and every Wednesday, he receives his orders of Shit What Needs Prayin' On. It's a service and a blessing, you know.
Before gettin' to the intense prayitus, the FRC gives us a long-ass quote about how evil socialism will make evil things happen because evil: "Some of the corrosions of our division of power... come from various infections of socialism...In the Iron Curtain states, it was socialist intellectuals who weakened the freedom of men by destroying free enterprise." Who is this prophet who saw that vile places like Sweden and Denmark would eventually crumble into ruin, as they so obviously have? Why, it was Herbert Hoover, still pissed off at FDR, speaking in 1954. It's amazingly wise, if you ignore that taking economic advice from Herbert Hoover is like taking child care advice from Brian David Mitchell.
But then we get to the prayin'. This time, it's all about the debt and that Obamacare that is going to suck out your eyes and skullfuck you in front of your children, screaming at them, "This is your future." The FRC explains to the SDPT, "Scripture has much to say about money, stewardship and debt - individual and national. America cannot borrow and spend itself into prosperity. Coupled with our rush to socialism, we face ruin on our current course. Only God's mercy and our repentance, citizen action and strong, godly leadership can turn the tide."
Whatever can we do? Pray, bitches, pray. "Pray that the American people will wake up and demand that their Senators defer implementation of Obamacare and find a responsible compromise on the continuing resolution and debt ceiling," we're told, and God probably has the time to listen, since he's apparently abandoned any pretext of helping out in Syria or Bangladesh and just doesn't give a holy fuck about the cyclone about to rip up India. One can imagine God sitting on his toilet, hearing the prayer and thinking, "Sure, let's prevent poor people from getting health care for at least a year. Just to fuck up Barack Obama's day" before wiping his ass with torn angel wings.
As always, we are given verses from the Good Book to support our prayifyin'. This time, it's a badass section of Proverbs, Book 1:10-16, which says, in part, "My son, if sinners entice thee, consent thou not./ If they say, 'Come with us, let us lay wait for blood, let us lurk privily for the innocent without cause:/Let us swallow them up alive as the grave; and whole, as those that go down into the pit...'/ My son, walk not thou in the way with them; refrain thy foot from their path:/ For their feet run to evil, and make haste to shed blood." Fuckin' A, man.
And what is better for teaching people not to give in to peer pressure than imploring them to join in a group prayer or face the wrath of an invisible sky wizard?
10/10/2013
Help Wendy Davis Fuck Up the Texas GOP's Shit
Help Wendy Davis Fuck Up the Texas GOP's Shit:
The Rude Pundit has never participated in a money bomb, where a bunch of bloggers try to get people to donate to the campaign of a particularly appealing Democratic politician. He's making an exception this time for two reasons. First, because fuck the Texas GOP and the reign of filth and stupidity they have inflicted on Texas and the nation, from their chemical factories to their textbooks. And, second, because State Senator Wendy Davis kicks so much ass that actual asses pucker in fear when she's around.
Davis just announced that she is running for governor of the Lone Star State, and you can bet that the hate machine is gearing up to rip her to shreds. (Note of compassion: the likely Republican nominee will be Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, who is wheelchair-bound. Electing the first disabled governor in Texas? That's kind of a big deal. Otherwise, though, fuck that guy.)
Why should you give money to Wendy Davis's campaign? The Rude Pundit thinks she's awesome not just because of her genuine filibuster against restrictive anti-choice legislation, which really did stop the bill from passing and forced Gov. Rick Perry to call another special session, but because she also previously filibustered a school funding bill in 2011 that shorted the kids of Texas by $4 billion. She pissed off Rick Perry, who called her a "show horse," which is funny only if you think about the Republican nominee for president in 2012.
(Oh, one more fun fact: Abbott sued the homeowner whose tree fell on him in 1984 and was awarded up to $9 million, which didn't prevent Abbott from attacking lawyers and "excessive" lawsuits. So, seriously, fuck this guy.)
She went from being a single mom in a trailer park to Harvard. She's received a shit-ton of awards for her advocacy for women and children. And anti-abortion nutzoids are losing their fucking minds that she would dare to run for governor.
(Okay, just one more thing: Abbott was addressing the National Right to Life convention in Dallas. He believes that if a woman is raped or an incest victim, she should be forced to keep that damn baby. He told the gathered freaks and shut-ins, "It is great to be in a room full of Americans who are fighting for the full arc of human life from conception until natural death." Apparently, "natural death" includes capital punishment, which Abbott loves like a child loves his wubby. So, again, it can't be said enough, fuck this guy.)
Davis is gonna need all the help she can get. Texas is one of the nation's breeding grounds for dumbfucks who want to turn the clock back to 1950something. But it'd be worth it to start to wreck the Republican machine that has dominated Texas for a generation. It'd be worth it to make Rick Perry and Ted Cruz cry. And it'd be worth it because you know that Ann Richards and Molly Ivins would be behind her with all the intensity and cutting wit they could muster.
Let's help her fuck some shit up.
The Rude Pundit has never participated in a money bomb, where a bunch of bloggers try to get people to donate to the campaign of a particularly appealing Democratic politician. He's making an exception this time for two reasons. First, because fuck the Texas GOP and the reign of filth and stupidity they have inflicted on Texas and the nation, from their chemical factories to their textbooks. And, second, because State Senator Wendy Davis kicks so much ass that actual asses pucker in fear when she's around.
Davis just announced that she is running for governor of the Lone Star State, and you can bet that the hate machine is gearing up to rip her to shreds. (Note of compassion: the likely Republican nominee will be Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, who is wheelchair-bound. Electing the first disabled governor in Texas? That's kind of a big deal. Otherwise, though, fuck that guy.)
Why should you give money to Wendy Davis's campaign? The Rude Pundit thinks she's awesome not just because of her genuine filibuster against restrictive anti-choice legislation, which really did stop the bill from passing and forced Gov. Rick Perry to call another special session, but because she also previously filibustered a school funding bill in 2011 that shorted the kids of Texas by $4 billion. She pissed off Rick Perry, who called her a "show horse," which is funny only if you think about the Republican nominee for president in 2012.
(Oh, one more fun fact: Abbott sued the homeowner whose tree fell on him in 1984 and was awarded up to $9 million, which didn't prevent Abbott from attacking lawyers and "excessive" lawsuits. So, seriously, fuck this guy.)
She went from being a single mom in a trailer park to Harvard. She's received a shit-ton of awards for her advocacy for women and children. And anti-abortion nutzoids are losing their fucking minds that she would dare to run for governor.
(Okay, just one more thing: Abbott was addressing the National Right to Life convention in Dallas. He believes that if a woman is raped or an incest victim, she should be forced to keep that damn baby. He told the gathered freaks and shut-ins, "It is great to be in a room full of Americans who are fighting for the full arc of human life from conception until natural death." Apparently, "natural death" includes capital punishment, which Abbott loves like a child loves his wubby. So, again, it can't be said enough, fuck this guy.)
Davis is gonna need all the help she can get. Texas is one of the nation's breeding grounds for dumbfucks who want to turn the clock back to 1950something. But it'd be worth it to start to wreck the Republican machine that has dominated Texas for a generation. It'd be worth it to make Rick Perry and Ted Cruz cry. And it'd be worth it because you know that Ann Richards and Molly Ivins would be behind her with all the intensity and cutting wit they could muster.
Let's help her fuck some shit up.
10/09/2013
The Constitutional Crisis We Deserve Is the One That We Need
The Constitutional Crisis We Deserve Is the One That We Need:
Here's another goddamn government extortion/hostage-taking/shutdown-debt ceiling breach analogy, but, hell, go with it:
Let us say, and why not, that you're a woman married to a dude in whom you lost interest in fucking a long, long time ago. Sure, you agree every now and then and let him fuck you because it's better than hearing him bitch about how frigid or whatever you are when, truth is, his breath stinks, he's let his body go, and he's kind of an asshole. Why don't you just leave him? Oh, you know, the usual. The kids, you own too much property together, inertia. Now let's say that his sexual demands start getting more frequent. And he's said that he wants to do anal on you. You draw a line. You will not let him fuck your ass. Well, that just won't work, he informs you. One night, he starts breaking shit. He breaks some dishes, saying that he'll keep breaking shit until you let him fuck your ass. You still say no. He breaks your collection of porcelain Disney figurines. You still say no. He threatens to burn down the house. At some point, there's a final straw, no?
So what can you do? You can let him fuck your ass, but you know that if you do, the next time it'll be ball gags and multiple partners and scat play and whatever else he can think up. There's a part of you that just wants to get the kids out of the house, lock him in a room, and set the fire yourself. But that's not rational. You can keep trying to reason with him, get him to see that he's gone over the edge, but, c'mon, you know him. No, at some point, finally, your husband is just another rapist, and it's time to call the cops.
Throughout the past four years and change, we have watched President Obama, time and again, compromise and compromise on issue after issue, giving far, far more than he got. He did it on health care, he did it on the bank bailout, he did it on the budget and on the debt ceiling. It was all done with the notion that negotiation was a good thing, that the government functions only if people of good faith are willing to see past their own goals to the greater good, which was a reasonably well-run nation. It was done while so many of us on the left were waving our hands and saying, in no uncertain terms, that there's a line between compromise and capitulation that the President was crossing too many times. Motherfuckers will fuck their mothers, the Rude Pundit has said on numerous occasions. It's just what motherfuckers do.
So no wonder Republicans have lost their minds now that Obama has said, at long last, that there is some shit he will not eat.
Anyone who has paid even the slightest bit of attention to recent history and who is not blinded by irrational Obama hatred knows that it's absurd to the point of playground derision for Republicans to claim that Obama has refused to negotiate with Republicans. In today's Washington Post, that bespectacled goblin of doom, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, writes, "President Obama refuses to even sit at the same table as Republicans and work to solve the 'debt problem'." Cretinous loser Paul Ryan blabs in the Wall Street Journal, "He's refusing to talk, even though the federal government is about to hit the debt ceiling." The problem isn't that Obama is refusing to talk and refusing to negotiate. It's that he is doing it no further.
Ryan adds, "That's a shame—because this doesn't have to be another crisis. It could be a breakthrough." No, dear congressman who wants to cut food stamps and Medicaid to give rich people a tax break, it needs to be a crisis because a crisis is the only way to make you dullards and dolts sit the fuck down. It's time for a full-blown constitutional throwdown between the executive and legislative branches.
President Obama would be doing the nation a favor if, on the eve of the nation going into default on its debts, he simply declared that the debt ceiling doesn't exist and the nation will pay its bills, as Section 4 of the 14th Amendment demands. It is the compelling case that historian Sean Wilentz laid out in the New York Times, and it is the path that Obama specifically ruled out at his press conference yesterday.
Sure, such an action would end up in an all-out political war. It would destabilize markets - not as badly as an actual default, though. It would lead to impeachment charges in the House (which would end without removal from office in the Senate). And it would head to the Supreme Court.
And still, Obama needs to nut up and do it, if no agreement is reached on raising the debt ceiling. There's going to be a crisis come October 17. It can be one that is solved merely by a short-term political action or it can be solved permanently.
There's one part of the picture that President Obama left out in his pessimistic view of taking the 14th Amendment step: there will be an election in 2014. As he pointed out, "It'd be tied up in litigation for a long time." He concludes that investors would be nervous buying government bonds because the Supreme Court might overturn his decision to continue issuing the bonds. However, the story doesn't end with the Supreme Court. Because then this becomes the issue of the 2014 election: do you want the government to function? Do you want a Congress that passes laws or one that merely seeks to undo the will of the people? The Rude Pundit has at least a little hope that the nation is sick of being led by the Tea Party.
Frankly, if we are in such a crisis situation and the people still vote in the anarchists and revolutionaries and insurgents who put us there, then we need to ask ourselves if the whole goddamn thing has finally failed. This is the crisis we've earned and it's the crisis we need to finish this mess.
Here's another goddamn government extortion/hostage-taking/shutdown-debt ceiling breach analogy, but, hell, go with it:
Let us say, and why not, that you're a woman married to a dude in whom you lost interest in fucking a long, long time ago. Sure, you agree every now and then and let him fuck you because it's better than hearing him bitch about how frigid or whatever you are when, truth is, his breath stinks, he's let his body go, and he's kind of an asshole. Why don't you just leave him? Oh, you know, the usual. The kids, you own too much property together, inertia. Now let's say that his sexual demands start getting more frequent. And he's said that he wants to do anal on you. You draw a line. You will not let him fuck your ass. Well, that just won't work, he informs you. One night, he starts breaking shit. He breaks some dishes, saying that he'll keep breaking shit until you let him fuck your ass. You still say no. He breaks your collection of porcelain Disney figurines. You still say no. He threatens to burn down the house. At some point, there's a final straw, no?
So what can you do? You can let him fuck your ass, but you know that if you do, the next time it'll be ball gags and multiple partners and scat play and whatever else he can think up. There's a part of you that just wants to get the kids out of the house, lock him in a room, and set the fire yourself. But that's not rational. You can keep trying to reason with him, get him to see that he's gone over the edge, but, c'mon, you know him. No, at some point, finally, your husband is just another rapist, and it's time to call the cops.
Throughout the past four years and change, we have watched President Obama, time and again, compromise and compromise on issue after issue, giving far, far more than he got. He did it on health care, he did it on the bank bailout, he did it on the budget and on the debt ceiling. It was all done with the notion that negotiation was a good thing, that the government functions only if people of good faith are willing to see past their own goals to the greater good, which was a reasonably well-run nation. It was done while so many of us on the left were waving our hands and saying, in no uncertain terms, that there's a line between compromise and capitulation that the President was crossing too many times. Motherfuckers will fuck their mothers, the Rude Pundit has said on numerous occasions. It's just what motherfuckers do.
So no wonder Republicans have lost their minds now that Obama has said, at long last, that there is some shit he will not eat.
Anyone who has paid even the slightest bit of attention to recent history and who is not blinded by irrational Obama hatred knows that it's absurd to the point of playground derision for Republicans to claim that Obama has refused to negotiate with Republicans. In today's Washington Post, that bespectacled goblin of doom, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, writes, "President Obama refuses to even sit at the same table as Republicans and work to solve the 'debt problem'." Cretinous loser Paul Ryan blabs in the Wall Street Journal, "He's refusing to talk, even though the federal government is about to hit the debt ceiling." The problem isn't that Obama is refusing to talk and refusing to negotiate. It's that he is doing it no further.
Ryan adds, "That's a shame—because this doesn't have to be another crisis. It could be a breakthrough." No, dear congressman who wants to cut food stamps and Medicaid to give rich people a tax break, it needs to be a crisis because a crisis is the only way to make you dullards and dolts sit the fuck down. It's time for a full-blown constitutional throwdown between the executive and legislative branches.
President Obama would be doing the nation a favor if, on the eve of the nation going into default on its debts, he simply declared that the debt ceiling doesn't exist and the nation will pay its bills, as Section 4 of the 14th Amendment demands. It is the compelling case that historian Sean Wilentz laid out in the New York Times, and it is the path that Obama specifically ruled out at his press conference yesterday.
Sure, such an action would end up in an all-out political war. It would destabilize markets - not as badly as an actual default, though. It would lead to impeachment charges in the House (which would end without removal from office in the Senate). And it would head to the Supreme Court.
And still, Obama needs to nut up and do it, if no agreement is reached on raising the debt ceiling. There's going to be a crisis come October 17. It can be one that is solved merely by a short-term political action or it can be solved permanently.
There's one part of the picture that President Obama left out in his pessimistic view of taking the 14th Amendment step: there will be an election in 2014. As he pointed out, "It'd be tied up in litigation for a long time." He concludes that investors would be nervous buying government bonds because the Supreme Court might overturn his decision to continue issuing the bonds. However, the story doesn't end with the Supreme Court. Because then this becomes the issue of the 2014 election: do you want the government to function? Do you want a Congress that passes laws or one that merely seeks to undo the will of the people? The Rude Pundit has at least a little hope that the nation is sick of being led by the Tea Party.
Frankly, if we are in such a crisis situation and the people still vote in the anarchists and revolutionaries and insurgents who put us there, then we need to ask ourselves if the whole goddamn thing has finally failed. This is the crisis we've earned and it's the crisis we need to finish this mess.
10/08/2013
Photos That Make the Rude Pundit Want to Slam His Head into a Marble Statue (Updated)
Photos That Make the Rude Pundit Want to Slam His Head into a Marble Statue (Updated with More Statue Fun):
That's King Cracker himself, Rep. Louis Gohmert of Texas, giving constituents a tour of the U.S. Capitol. One can imagine the history lesson Gohmert is offering, all about how GodJesus made America the greatest fuckin' land in the history of everything, with lots of factoids about rugged individualism and how the guv'mint gets in the way of all the stupid shit that people like Gohmert want to do. It's what Gohmert and other members of the House are doing instead of passing a fucking continuing resolution and ending the fucking shutdown, which has stopped the tours of the Capitol.
One might imagine that the fellow Gohmert is standing beneath would want to crush that idiot shitkicker's skull with his marble ass. That's John Burke, the Progressive Era governor of North Dakota. Yeah, see, Burke believed big time in the government's role in everyone's life. Under his leadership in the early 20th century, North Dakota ended child labor, expanded the state income tax, offered health care to the poor, and prohibited lobbying of individual members of the legislature. He was a liberal's liberal.
In other words, Louis Gohmert isn't fit to be teabagged by John Burke's scrotum.
Update: The good Charles Pierce informed the Rude Pundit of another interesting part of the photo there. That guy on the right that looks like he's getting out of his chair to kick Gohmert's ass? That's Fighting Bob La Follette. Google that name. That tough son of a bitch makes Bernie Sanders look conservative. He'd've pimp-slapped Gohmert all over the statuary hall.
That's King Cracker himself, Rep. Louis Gohmert of Texas, giving constituents a tour of the U.S. Capitol. One can imagine the history lesson Gohmert is offering, all about how GodJesus made America the greatest fuckin' land in the history of everything, with lots of factoids about rugged individualism and how the guv'mint gets in the way of all the stupid shit that people like Gohmert want to do. It's what Gohmert and other members of the House are doing instead of passing a fucking continuing resolution and ending the fucking shutdown, which has stopped the tours of the Capitol.
One might imagine that the fellow Gohmert is standing beneath would want to crush that idiot shitkicker's skull with his marble ass. That's John Burke, the Progressive Era governor of North Dakota. Yeah, see, Burke believed big time in the government's role in everyone's life. Under his leadership in the early 20th century, North Dakota ended child labor, expanded the state income tax, offered health care to the poor, and prohibited lobbying of individual members of the legislature. He was a liberal's liberal.
In other words, Louis Gohmert isn't fit to be teabagged by John Burke's scrotum.
Update: The good Charles Pierce informed the Rude Pundit of another interesting part of the photo there. That guy on the right that looks like he's getting out of his chair to kick Gohmert's ass? That's Fighting Bob La Follette. Google that name. That tough son of a bitch makes Bernie Sanders look conservative. He'd've pimp-slapped Gohmert all over the statuary hall.
10/07/2013
The Devil Responds to Antonin Scalia
The Devil Responds to Antonin Scalia:
Down in the fiery pits, the Devil read with deep delight the comments that Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia made regarding the existence of Satan, demon, and Hell itself. Asked what he thought about Scalia declaring that not only does he believe in the Devil, but that "What he’s doing now is getting people not to believe in him or in God. He’s much more successful that way," the Devil himself responded:
"Well, lemme first tell ya that I'm a big, big fan of Justice Scalia. I mean, c'mon, how could ya not love the guy? 'Argle-bargle.' That shit's gold. The man said that capital punishment decisions are 'easy.' He hates sodomy so much that he's made it simple for me to figure out how to punish him after he dies. Check out these barbed wire baseball bats. Yeah, that spiky Louisville slugger's gonna feel pretty bad going into his sphincter.
"What's hilarious is that Scalia's Catholicism has exposed him to my greatest work on earth. Umm, hello? Priests fucking little kids and getting away with it? I'm not subtle about this shit. Getting people to not believe in God? Well, if you consider all the Jesus freaks who finally take Christ's dick out of their mouths when one of my floods or tornadoes waste their towns, then, yeah, sure. But it's way more fun to watch a desperate mom try to save her baby as the water fills up her car. Oh, does that offend you? I'm the motherfuckin' Devil, bitch.
"Scalia also wonders 'why there’s not demonic possession all over the place.' He says that 'That always puzzled me. What happened to the Devil, you know? He used to be all over the place.' First off, demonic possession is not the rush it used to be. Back in the day, you could take one young woman and get an entire town to burn everyone they think is a witch. Now, you possess one teenaged chick, her friends just film her vomiting and it ends up on YouTube - by the way, YouTube? Totally my doing.
"You tell Big Tony that I'm waiting for him. All that repentance bullshit he talks about is worthless. He wonders if Judas Iscariot is down here. Yeah, he is, and he's gonna be Scalia's bunkmate. The thing about Judas is that he's been here so long that he's gone native. A little bit rapey, if you know what I mean, and if you don't, it means that Judas is more than likely gonna rape Scalia in between shit baths, castrations, and long spit-fire rotations.
"But, hey, good to know that the United States has a man like Scalia as one of its Supreme Court justices. People who believe in phantoms and demons and eternal justice are just perfect for deciding the future of your nation. He'll end up doing all the work I want to do at half the price.
"Now I've gotta watch So You Think Can Dance. On my DVR. Idle hands, you know?"
Down in the fiery pits, the Devil read with deep delight the comments that Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia made regarding the existence of Satan, demon, and Hell itself. Asked what he thought about Scalia declaring that not only does he believe in the Devil, but that "What he’s doing now is getting people not to believe in him or in God. He’s much more successful that way," the Devil himself responded:
"Well, lemme first tell ya that I'm a big, big fan of Justice Scalia. I mean, c'mon, how could ya not love the guy? 'Argle-bargle.' That shit's gold. The man said that capital punishment decisions are 'easy.' He hates sodomy so much that he's made it simple for me to figure out how to punish him after he dies. Check out these barbed wire baseball bats. Yeah, that spiky Louisville slugger's gonna feel pretty bad going into his sphincter.
"What's hilarious is that Scalia's Catholicism has exposed him to my greatest work on earth. Umm, hello? Priests fucking little kids and getting away with it? I'm not subtle about this shit. Getting people to not believe in God? Well, if you consider all the Jesus freaks who finally take Christ's dick out of their mouths when one of my floods or tornadoes waste their towns, then, yeah, sure. But it's way more fun to watch a desperate mom try to save her baby as the water fills up her car. Oh, does that offend you? I'm the motherfuckin' Devil, bitch.
"Scalia also wonders 'why there’s not demonic possession all over the place.' He says that 'That always puzzled me. What happened to the Devil, you know? He used to be all over the place.' First off, demonic possession is not the rush it used to be. Back in the day, you could take one young woman and get an entire town to burn everyone they think is a witch. Now, you possess one teenaged chick, her friends just film her vomiting and it ends up on YouTube - by the way, YouTube? Totally my doing.
"You tell Big Tony that I'm waiting for him. All that repentance bullshit he talks about is worthless. He wonders if Judas Iscariot is down here. Yeah, he is, and he's gonna be Scalia's bunkmate. The thing about Judas is that he's been here so long that he's gone native. A little bit rapey, if you know what I mean, and if you don't, it means that Judas is more than likely gonna rape Scalia in between shit baths, castrations, and long spit-fire rotations.
"But, hey, good to know that the United States has a man like Scalia as one of its Supreme Court justices. People who believe in phantoms and demons and eternal justice are just perfect for deciding the future of your nation. He'll end up doing all the work I want to do at half the price.
"Now I've gotta watch So You Think Can Dance. On my DVR. Idle hands, you know?"
Late Post Today
Late Post Today:
K.A.O.S. has sent a squad of assassins to take out the Chief. Gotta wake up 99 and get to work.
Back later with more shoe-phoned rudeness.
10/04/2013
A Tyranny by the Minority, Part 2: The Reign of the Cracker Babies
A Tyranny by the Minority, Part 2: The Reign of the Cracker Babies:
You remember when there was supposed to be an epidemic of "crack babies"? They were babies whose mothers had smoked crack (or done coke) during pregnancy and would give birth to drug addicted bundles of joy. They were going to grow up to be sociopaths who would wreak havoc on the nation. Yeah, not so much.
However, what we are seeing now is the plague of the cracker babies. These are primarily white people who grew up insulated in communities that had fucked-up beliefs about God, guns, and America, who became resentful of people different than them who might have gotten help from the government, who watched Fox "news" since it started and listened to conservative talk radio before that, who have been pandered to and exploited by opportunists and snake oil salesmen who made them think that their stunted intellectual development is an asset. We are now in the grip of their electoral choices, which even includes some of their own (lookin' at you, Louis Gohmert, you god among cracker babies).
Let's just put it this way: When its new season premiered back in August, more people watched Duck Dynasty, a TV show about crazed, conservative, religious fundamentalists who happen to have gotten rich making a decent duck call, than watched the series finale of Breaking Bad. More people will watch the antics bearded backwoods tree carvers who barely speak anything we might acknowledge as "English" than will ever watch Mad Men, Homeland, or any of those shows that get TV critics all hard and wet.
Is this intellectual elitism? You fucking well bet it is. By pretending that the beliefs of yahoos, crackers, and cousin-fuckers are worthy of consideration in the public sphere, we have degraded the nation to the point that, well, fuck, they have successfully taken over one chamber of Congress by essentially threatening the leadership of the GOP with a banjo-accompanied ass raping while they giggle out their last couple of teeth.
These seeds were sowed back when Ronald Reagan cravenly allowed Jerry Falwell and other charlatans to have a seat at the table of power instead of treating them and their followers as pariahs whose goal was to upend the entire relationship between church and state. As on so many things, Reagan should be dug up and have his bones dressed in rags and paraded about so people can throw tomatoes and eggs at him.
We are a nation held hostage by idiots elected by idiots. While you can say, smugly, "Oh, but that's been true all throughout history," there's a hilarious fuckin' twist this time. These Tea Party fucknuts have no master. It's less Frankenstein's monster being let loose than it is nuclear bombs awaking Godzilla.
See, the teabaggers owe little to nothing to Wall Street or to big business. Oh, no. The pathetic truth about America is that the capitalists, not our pussy media, are the final check and balance to our political system: if they are displeased, they normally can fund the shit out of candidates to oppose those who have not done their bidding. But the anarchists we have now in the House don't give a happy monkey fuck about the backing of banking whores and portfolio pimps. You wanted deregulation, motherfuckers? Here ya go. If we default on the debt, the days of even milquetoast laws like Dodd-Frank will seem like salad days.
But you wanna know how awful the cracker babies are? Two quick examples from their ilk in Congress: Rep. Randy Neugebauer of Texas barked at a park ranger because she was doing her goddamn job, saying she should be "ashamed" for blocking access to the World War II memorial, closed because of Neugebauer. And Rep. Renee Ellmers of North Carolina was asked if she would give up her salary during the shutdown, where millions of government workers are furloughed without pay or working without pay. She said, "I need my paycheck. That's the bottom line."
Somewhere, "God Bless America" is being played by a jug band.
You remember when there was supposed to be an epidemic of "crack babies"? They were babies whose mothers had smoked crack (or done coke) during pregnancy and would give birth to drug addicted bundles of joy. They were going to grow up to be sociopaths who would wreak havoc on the nation. Yeah, not so much.
However, what we are seeing now is the plague of the cracker babies. These are primarily white people who grew up insulated in communities that had fucked-up beliefs about God, guns, and America, who became resentful of people different than them who might have gotten help from the government, who watched Fox "news" since it started and listened to conservative talk radio before that, who have been pandered to and exploited by opportunists and snake oil salesmen who made them think that their stunted intellectual development is an asset. We are now in the grip of their electoral choices, which even includes some of their own (lookin' at you, Louis Gohmert, you god among cracker babies).
Let's just put it this way: When its new season premiered back in August, more people watched Duck Dynasty, a TV show about crazed, conservative, religious fundamentalists who happen to have gotten rich making a decent duck call, than watched the series finale of Breaking Bad. More people will watch the antics bearded backwoods tree carvers who barely speak anything we might acknowledge as "English" than will ever watch Mad Men, Homeland, or any of those shows that get TV critics all hard and wet.
Is this intellectual elitism? You fucking well bet it is. By pretending that the beliefs of yahoos, crackers, and cousin-fuckers are worthy of consideration in the public sphere, we have degraded the nation to the point that, well, fuck, they have successfully taken over one chamber of Congress by essentially threatening the leadership of the GOP with a banjo-accompanied ass raping while they giggle out their last couple of teeth.
These seeds were sowed back when Ronald Reagan cravenly allowed Jerry Falwell and other charlatans to have a seat at the table of power instead of treating them and their followers as pariahs whose goal was to upend the entire relationship between church and state. As on so many things, Reagan should be dug up and have his bones dressed in rags and paraded about so people can throw tomatoes and eggs at him.
We are a nation held hostage by idiots elected by idiots. While you can say, smugly, "Oh, but that's been true all throughout history," there's a hilarious fuckin' twist this time. These Tea Party fucknuts have no master. It's less Frankenstein's monster being let loose than it is nuclear bombs awaking Godzilla.
See, the teabaggers owe little to nothing to Wall Street or to big business. Oh, no. The pathetic truth about America is that the capitalists, not our pussy media, are the final check and balance to our political system: if they are displeased, they normally can fund the shit out of candidates to oppose those who have not done their bidding. But the anarchists we have now in the House don't give a happy monkey fuck about the backing of banking whores and portfolio pimps. You wanted deregulation, motherfuckers? Here ya go. If we default on the debt, the days of even milquetoast laws like Dodd-Frank will seem like salad days.
But you wanna know how awful the cracker babies are? Two quick examples from their ilk in Congress: Rep. Randy Neugebauer of Texas barked at a park ranger because she was doing her goddamn job, saying she should be "ashamed" for blocking access to the World War II memorial, closed because of Neugebauer. And Rep. Renee Ellmers of North Carolina was asked if she would give up her salary during the shutdown, where millions of government workers are furloughed without pay or working without pay. She said, "I need my paycheck. That's the bottom line."
Somewhere, "God Bless America" is being played by a jug band.
10/03/2013
A Tyranny by the Minority, Part 1: We Are Living Through an Attempted Coup
A Tyranny by the Minority, Part 1: We Are Living Through an Attempted Coup:
The Rude Pundit has been thinking for the last day or so about the extensive use of surveillance by the Obama administration, but not for the usual reasons.
First, kudos to the House GOP. See, the left was fracturing a bit when it came to things like the collection of metadata and more by the NSA. That story continues, and the divisions still exist between those who don't think the government should be tracking everyone online, on phones, all the time, and those who see it as a necessary evil in a time where our enemies exist in the shadows. However, the House GOP's complete and utter disregard for the well-being of the nation and their callous placement of ideology over common sense, compassion...well, pretty much over everything has unified the left once again behind the Democrats and President Obama. So a big thumbs up on strategy, you stupid motherfuckers.
The other thing the Rude Pundit has been thinking is how the NSA surveillance has an analogous purpose to the tactics of the GOP. See, a great deal (or all, depending on who you ask) of the NSA's universal anal probe has been perfectly legal. However, just because something is legal doesn't mean it's right. To take this further, just because it's legal does not, by any definition, mean it's not evil. You can bend laws right to the point of snapping, but as long as it doesn't crack, you're fine, man.
What the GOP has done, first through the ludicrous overuse of the filibuster and now through the shutdown and the threat of breaking the debt ceiling if they do not get a law overturned, is to use perfectly legal means to achieve their goals. It is, however, a contortion of the Constitution and the rules of Congress that'd make a circus performer say, "How the fuck did you get your head all the way up your own ass?" The ultimate goal of the effort is to undo the will of the people of the United States by forcing the President to accept the GOP agenda.
So let's just call this what it is: it's an attempted coup.
The Tea Party, having cowed the leadership of the Republican Party, are attempting to stage a creeping coup by using the Constitution against the nation. It's so breathtakingly ballsy it's almost admirable. Fuck, it's even something the GOP laid out in a plan, the Williamsburg Accord. We just didn't pay attention. The nation is currently being wrecked by a tyranny of the minority, and, unfortunately, it's up to the cowards leading the Republican Party to stop it.
And that, dear liberals, dear Americans, is why it's not just economic anxiety that hangs over us like a guillotine blade. It's existential nausea that we may finally reap the seeds of our doom that we planted a generation ago.
More on that tomorrow.
The Rude Pundit has been thinking for the last day or so about the extensive use of surveillance by the Obama administration, but not for the usual reasons.
First, kudos to the House GOP. See, the left was fracturing a bit when it came to things like the collection of metadata and more by the NSA. That story continues, and the divisions still exist between those who don't think the government should be tracking everyone online, on phones, all the time, and those who see it as a necessary evil in a time where our enemies exist in the shadows. However, the House GOP's complete and utter disregard for the well-being of the nation and their callous placement of ideology over common sense, compassion...well, pretty much over everything has unified the left once again behind the Democrats and President Obama. So a big thumbs up on strategy, you stupid motherfuckers.
The other thing the Rude Pundit has been thinking is how the NSA surveillance has an analogous purpose to the tactics of the GOP. See, a great deal (or all, depending on who you ask) of the NSA's universal anal probe has been perfectly legal. However, just because something is legal doesn't mean it's right. To take this further, just because it's legal does not, by any definition, mean it's not evil. You can bend laws right to the point of snapping, but as long as it doesn't crack, you're fine, man.
What the GOP has done, first through the ludicrous overuse of the filibuster and now through the shutdown and the threat of breaking the debt ceiling if they do not get a law overturned, is to use perfectly legal means to achieve their goals. It is, however, a contortion of the Constitution and the rules of Congress that'd make a circus performer say, "How the fuck did you get your head all the way up your own ass?" The ultimate goal of the effort is to undo the will of the people of the United States by forcing the President to accept the GOP agenda.
So let's just call this what it is: it's an attempted coup.
The Tea Party, having cowed the leadership of the Republican Party, are attempting to stage a creeping coup by using the Constitution against the nation. It's so breathtakingly ballsy it's almost admirable. Fuck, it's even something the GOP laid out in a plan, the Williamsburg Accord. We just didn't pay attention. The nation is currently being wrecked by a tyranny of the minority, and, unfortunately, it's up to the cowards leading the Republican Party to stop it.
And that, dear liberals, dear Americans, is why it's not just economic anxiety that hangs over us like a guillotine blade. It's existential nausea that we may finally reap the seeds of our doom that we planted a generation ago.
More on that tomorrow.
10/02/2013
Photos That Make the Rude Pundit Want to Turn Dogs and Fire Hoses on House Republicans:
You know, you can have your World War II vets, egged on by the very asses who shut the government down, storming the barricades with walkers and canes so they can have a gathering at their memorial in DC.
For the Rude Pundit's money, Martin Luther King's statue being blocked off, gated, imprisoned, is the more poignant image, especially with African Americans being put in the position of setting up the metal bars.
What could be more symbolic? White Republicans are blocking a black leader from doing good for the poor in the nation.
What could be more ironic? Even in death, King must be jailed.
We are sailing this stinking ship of state very quickly into uncharted waters. A nation that cannot pay homage to its iconography is a nation that is doomed.
(Note: The Rude Pundit is traveling. More extensive rudeness tomorrow.)
You know, you can have your World War II vets, egged on by the very asses who shut the government down, storming the barricades with walkers and canes so they can have a gathering at their memorial in DC.
For the Rude Pundit's money, Martin Luther King's statue being blocked off, gated, imprisoned, is the more poignant image, especially with African Americans being put in the position of setting up the metal bars.
What could be more symbolic? White Republicans are blocking a black leader from doing good for the poor in the nation.
What could be more ironic? Even in death, King must be jailed.
We are sailing this stinking ship of state very quickly into uncharted waters. A nation that cannot pay homage to its iconography is a nation that is doomed.
(Note: The Rude Pundit is traveling. More extensive rudeness tomorrow.)
10/01/2013
In Brief: Shutdown Polls That Prove We're Really Not That Insane
In Brief: Shutdown Polls That Prove We're Really Not That Insane:
Dear World,
Rude Pundit here. We know that right now we here in the USA look pretty fucked-up. And, mostly, we are. Not Greece fucked-up, but still. However, when it comes to the government shutdown over defunding the Affordable Care Act, we really aren't as crazy as you think. Check this out:
According to a Quinnipiac University poll (those of you who don't care what polls say - looking at you, Syria - can move along), 72% of Americans think this is a terrible thing to do. That includes 74% of independents, 90% of Democrats, and even 44% of Republicans. Only 49% of Republicans support their own members of Congress on this.
Yeah, yeah, these are a lot of numbers. Such things matter, though. Because, see, one thing that Republicans in the House of Representatives keep claiming is that they're doing the will of the people in trying to get rid of the Affordable Care Act. If that's true, if the polls matter, then either the GOP needs to back the fuck off or they are a bunch of cowards and liars.
If you know anything about this country, you know it's the latter.
In fact, when it comes to defunding Obamacare (that's the cutesy name Republicans gave the law), only 34% support that.
See? We're not a stupid country when it comes to this. We're a lazy-ass bunch of fuckers because too many people thought that a candidate who scrawls manifestos in his or her own shit is worthy of being in Congress and too many others didn't vote or run for office.
Yeah, sorry, China, we can't just line the anarchists up against a wall and shoot them. We gotta suffer through this, although it's seeming more and more that people are sick of this shit.
Let's hope the message is received by the bizarre combination of zealots, opportunists, and backwards ass country fucks who are controlling the situation before the debt ceiling nightmare that'll plunge all of us into darkness (perhaps, just perhaps). By the way, 64% already oppose that hostage situation.
All is not lost. Until, of course, it's lost.
Kisses,
The Rude Pundit
Dear World,
Rude Pundit here. We know that right now we here in the USA look pretty fucked-up. And, mostly, we are. Not Greece fucked-up, but still. However, when it comes to the government shutdown over defunding the Affordable Care Act, we really aren't as crazy as you think. Check this out:
According to a Quinnipiac University poll (those of you who don't care what polls say - looking at you, Syria - can move along), 72% of Americans think this is a terrible thing to do. That includes 74% of independents, 90% of Democrats, and even 44% of Republicans. Only 49% of Republicans support their own members of Congress on this.
Yeah, yeah, these are a lot of numbers. Such things matter, though. Because, see, one thing that Republicans in the House of Representatives keep claiming is that they're doing the will of the people in trying to get rid of the Affordable Care Act. If that's true, if the polls matter, then either the GOP needs to back the fuck off or they are a bunch of cowards and liars.
If you know anything about this country, you know it's the latter.
In fact, when it comes to defunding Obamacare (that's the cutesy name Republicans gave the law), only 34% support that.
See? We're not a stupid country when it comes to this. We're a lazy-ass bunch of fuckers because too many people thought that a candidate who scrawls manifestos in his or her own shit is worthy of being in Congress and too many others didn't vote or run for office.
Yeah, sorry, China, we can't just line the anarchists up against a wall and shoot them. We gotta suffer through this, although it's seeming more and more that people are sick of this shit.
Let's hope the message is received by the bizarre combination of zealots, opportunists, and backwards ass country fucks who are controlling the situation before the debt ceiling nightmare that'll plunge all of us into darkness (perhaps, just perhaps). By the way, 64% already oppose that hostage situation.
All is not lost. Until, of course, it's lost.
Kisses,
The Rude Pundit
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