Things that make you go, hmmmmm

• Ever since 2010 the U.S. deficit has been decreasing BUT 90% of Americans think it is going up.
• The GOP is trying to fix elections under the guise of wanting to voting reform. Several different states (for example, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Virginia) have the state GOP pushing to divide state electoral votes according to congressional districts. Why? Because of gerrymandering, the current layout of congressional districts favors Republicans–i.e., rural districts with low populations would have an equal say with urban districts with high populations. If those proposals are passed into law, then it will be that much more difficult to elect a Democratic President in the future. What’s missing from the proposals? Actual voting reform.
• The NRA is against background checks because they will lead to gun confiscation. Yep, they don’t care if child molesters or bank robbers or crazy people buy a gun. That’s brilliant!
• Ashley Judd, of the famous Judd family, is acting like she will be a candidate for Senator in Kentucky for the Democrats. Right now, Kentucky’s Senator Mitch McConnell’s popularity in his home state is the lowest in the entire nation. Polls to show a match of McConnell and Judd, show turtle boy losing. I haz a happy over this.
• MSNBC hired two former White House staffers.  So much for objectivity.

 

 

Thoughts on the Day

• Ann Coulter is a disgusting human being–she thinks the government should make a list of all women who have had abortions. I honestly don’t think she believes a single thing that comes out of her mouth. She’s a grifter making a ton of money off ignorant, conservative American voters just like Beck, Limbaugh, etc. But the irresponsibility of such talk, all for the sake of making money, takes my breath away. What’s next? Scarlet A’s for the women on the list? I have a suggestion. How about a big “C” brand for Coulter’s forehead?*
  
• It’s official. Sheriff Joe Arpaio now has members of his all volunteer posse patrolling carrying weapons at approximately 50 schools in Maricopa County today. Congratulations Arizona! You’ve joined the ranks of third world countries with authoritarian governments. Woohoo! So proud, I could weep. Fortunately they’re not patrolling in Peoria where my daughter goes to school or I would be there following their ass around with a protest sign and videotaping their dumbasses. I wonder how they would feel if I came with my Ruger Speed 6 loaded with jacketed hollow point 38 Special rounds with two speed loaders full? If they can carry on campus, why can’t I? I have security clearances or at least, I used to. I’m more qualified than many in his damn posse, some of whom have a criminal past.   Ht to Bob Cesca

• Here’s a question for you to ponder. Why are private for profit charter schools not held to the same standards as public schools? They receive our tax dollars. Here’s another. How come no one ever talks about the profit being made by these private corporations and how they’re in bed with the standardized test makers? Why are we allowing corporations who only care about the bottom line take over public functions like schools, prisons, health care, etc? What is most important in those particular types of services? The profit or the people? Whenever a profit motive is introduced corruption and a lack of oversight gets introduced. At least with government we have oversight, legal recourse, etc–we have built in mechanisms for controlling them. Charter schools are a new and growing business and it’s a particular problem in Ari-loony-zona. Unfortunately, there is no proof that they actually educate our kids any better or educate them on the right things. They also play favorites. They take the cream of the crop and leave the rest, the harder to teach to the underfunded public schools. The entire set up is a national recipe for failure. If you care to read more, Kay over at Balloon Juice follows educational issues and she’s got a ton of information on this topic.
• They were fer em before they were agin em! The President has nominated former Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE) to replace Panetta as the Secretary of the Department of Defense. Of course, if you hop into the “way back” machine and go to the mid-2000′s you’ll see that McCain and other GOP leaders thought Hagel was the bees knees. Now that the Brown Muslim Manchurian Socialist Usurper has chosen him, they don’t think he’s qualified.  They must think we’re stupid….oh, that’s right….
• Here’s some background information you need to remember when you start hearing about the “fight over the debt ceiling” in the coming months. Raising the debt ceiling does NOT authorize the President to spend more. It authorizes the President, specifically through the Treasury Department, to pay the bills on debt that CONGRESS PREVIOUSLY AND CONSCIOUSLY decided to incur. Here’s a simple metaphor. You work for a company with a board of directors. The company needs to buy some new property and buildings. The Board itself sets the limits on how much they can spend. The Board then proceeds to spend more than they were authorized. The Board now has to raise the limit on what they can spend to pay for the extra amount. But the Board is trying to blame the office secretary that pays the bills and accusing him/her of asking for unlimited spending power. If the Board refuses to raise the limit, does not pay those bills, the company’s credit will be destroyed. This company is crucial to their industry and if it collapses so will those related companies. Similarly, the President is trying to pay the bills. The US is the largest issuer of currency–money and credit. So the entire world economy depends on us and our good credit status. If we default on paying our debts, our credit goes bad. If our credit goes bad a serious of dominoes will fall and affect the world economy, very, very badly. Do you see how crazy it is to play politics with such a serious issue? Do you see how the Republicans are jeopardizing us and even the entire world by doing so? It’s madness.
• A Republican Lobbying group in Washington, D.C. is taking the term “Republican” out of their name. However, they are saying that they still “represent the governing wing of the Republican Party”. Is you or is you not a Republican? This is like naming a law that allows the federal government to spy on citizens without a warrant the “Patriot Act”. Doublespeak bullshit.
• You know how conservatives and even some moderates have been saying we need to “cut spending” and “tighten our government belt” like they did in Europe in response to the recent Recession? Well they were and are wrong. According to the International Monetary Fund:
  

  On Friday, in its first working paper of the year, it revealed the full horror of what did happen. Personally authored by the fund’s chief economist, Olivier Blanchard, the paper said for every dollar those nations cut their budgets their economies crumpled something more like $1.50.

  [snip]

  His defence [sic] is that in normal times they would have got it right. In normal times a budget cut of $1 would have cut economic growth by 50¢. But the times weren’t normal. European interest rates had been cut to nearly zero, meaning there wasn’t the normal room for authorities to cut further, and households were more heavily indebted than normal, so cuts to their income flowed through more quickly than normal to cuts in their spending. And the starting point was different. The European economies had been in recession, which was far from normal.

  The U.S. was one of the few nations, other than China, to actually do some Stimulus and the U.S. is in much better shape than most of Europe as a result. And the situation in the U.S. remains similar to what the conditions were in Europe at the time they decided to trod down the austerity path–low interest rates and households still heavily indebted. We have a consumer driven society. If consumers don’t have liquidity to spend on stuff the economy cannot and will not grow.  We don’t need austerity–we need investment in our national infrastructure and new, sustainable energy.

• Remember Lt. Bradley Manning, the young man who leaked classified material to WikiLeaks who then plastered it all over the Internet? Well I’ve been saying all along that his treatment during pre-trial detention was excessive and illegal. I KNOW what is acceptable and what is not, even in a military prison, and the way they treated him was unacceptable. Innocent until proven guilty, folks. Anyway, seems a judge actually agrees with me. Regardless of whether you think Manning did the right thing or not (I don’t think he did, actually) you should stand up for his rights in this particular regard. This is America dammit–we shouldn’t allow this kind of thing.
• And finally, have you heard about SHART? They are the Society of Heavily Armed Resistance Troopers….and they want a “Gun Appreciation Day”!**

_________________

Notes:   

*The C stands for a word that rhymes with “bunt”

**Hehe, the “article” purports to be from Smallwood, TX….small wood indeed

Random Thoughts

UPDATE:  At the end of my exhausting Sunday, as I was falling asleep, I remembered that I had put some personal stuff in the the politics section below.  Well, I wrote this post at 1:30 am, after rearranging all the furniture in the kid’s room by myself (and I have the sore back and bruises to show for it) and had had a couple of glasses of wine–so I’m lucky it is at all coherent.

Random thoughts from last few days.

1. You know what really sucks? Having to restrain oneself. There are so many things I want and really NEED to say and I can’t because I’m embroiled in a custody dispute. I feel like I have mental shackles and boy do they chaffe.  One day, I shall be free……

2. My life is so pathetic or completely awesome, depending on your perspective. I spent the majority of the time on my night sans kids shopping at Toy’s R Us for my son’s second birthday. I am having a cook-out/pool party tomorrow. My ex is providing the meat and I am providing everything else. I pray that my son enjoys himself. If that happens, then I will be content.

3. This past week in politics has been Kah-razeee! Here’s my Kah-razee synopsis:

a. The PA Supreme Court said that the PA voter ID law had to be put on hold (i.e., an injunction was issued) and this was a complete surprise. Even if they don’t decide against the law, there are volunteers standing by to help the tens of thousands of disenfranchised voter to get informed and get ID’s.

b. I have been living, jealously and vicarously, through ABL and John Cole of Balloon Juice who were able to go to the DNC Convention due to the Balloon Juice community largesse. I would give my left nut, if I had one, to have gone.

c. Mitt Romney this past week showed why he shouldn’t be let anywhere near the Oval Office by criticizing the President for a statement he didn’t make about an event that hadn’t yet occurred. Oh, and he’s an asshole for trying to make political hay using the deaths of four State Department employees in Libya.

d. It is the middle of September and about midnight. I just came from the jacuzzi and pool and I was not in the least bit too cold. Arizona is too damn hot for my lily white ass.

e. I finally got to watch “The Kids Are Alright”. I felt bad for the sperm donor. Does that make me a bad person? Also, the kid that plays the son, Josh Hutcherson, ended up playing Peeta in Hunger Games and it’s not hard to see why. This kid has talent and so far is pretty underrated. Let’s see what he does in the rest of the Hunger Games series…..

f. The statement by Chaz Pazienza that Kate Middleton’s breasts did not make him “…weep openly as if I’d just seen the face of the Christ child” made me laugh out loud. I was so amused I even snorted.

Well, it’s 1:30 am and that’s all I got. I gotta get to bed so I can be fresh as a daisy for my son’s second birthday party. Wish me luck because I need it…..

Thoughts on the Day

1. I think I discovered another Darwin Award Nominee, guy trying to pull a Bigfoot hoax gets killed in mid-prank….from Here

2. At the home of the teenage shooting suspect in Maryland, “A sign at the house said, “We don’t call 911″ and had a carved relief of a gun.” Hmmmm, I wonder where the boy got the idea into his head to use a gun to strike out at people who made him mad….hmmmmmmmmm…..from Here

3. Did you notice in the New York City shooting the other day that all 9 civilians who were wounded were actually shot by the officers responding to the scene. Completely undercuts the arguments of numbnuts who think they’re Dirty Harry who can respond to a shooting incident in a crowd and ONLY hit the bad guy….from Here

4. Sheriff “I let people die in my jails” Arpaio was set to speak (along with Donald Trump) at the GOP convention but only to the Western delegates at an “invitation-only” reception. For a minute there, I thought they were going to let the idiot speak on the national stage. Phew! As if AZ needed more embarrassment than usual…..from Here

5. Someone put up a modified Hope poster on Facebook yesterday that showed the President being lynched. Thankfully it was only up for a few hours before outraged citizens forced Facebook to take it down. It literally made me nauseous….from Here

6. Speaking of bigotry, did you catch Mitt “I have big Man-Love for Paul Ryan” Romney saying no one ever asked for his birth certificate, ha ha. Interestingly enough, I didn’t laugh at his supposed joke. He may have said it in Ann Arbor, Michigan but they heard that dog whistle all the way down in the Louisiana bayou. What an asshole….from Here

7. It has actually been raining in AZ, so now it’s over a 100 degrees, humid AND we’re still in a massive drought. Wheeeeeeeee!

8. Remember the conservative poutrage over the Dept of Homeland Security Report that said domestic terrorists, in particular right-wing groups, pose the greatest threat to our safety? Well, recent events are bearing that out (i.e., a plot in Alaska to kill a Federal Judge, in Georgia the murder of an innocent couple and a plot to kill the President, and the mass murder at a Sikh Temple in Wisconsin). Now watch how conservatives try to distance themselves from these extremists while issuing dog whistles from the other side of their mouth. They honestly think if the American people just stare into Paul Ryan’s dreamy blue eyes, they won’t notice that bigots and extremists have taken over the Republican party. Let’s hope they’re wrong.

9. Speaking of his dreamy blue eyes, Paul “I’m Ayn Rand in a suit” Ryan was raked over the coals by Maureen O’Dowd.  O’Dowd’s article was summarized in hysterical fashion by Sarah, Proud and Tall.  Sarah’s biting and bawdy humor isn’t for the faint of heart. And I mean that part about biting literally.  Even without her dentures in Sarah is a downright dangerous.  Check it out over at Balloon Juice and make sure you do not have liquids in your mouth while reading it:  That’s Why her hair is so big. It’s full of secrets.

Thoughts on the Day

1. Can you imagine, earning only $2,500 a year for a family of three and you STILL wouldn’t qualify for Medicaid? That’s insane and that’s what Gov. Rick Perry and all the other Republican Governors want for their state. They want the poor to die so that those Governors can gain political points for defying the President.

“Texas already has one of the nation’s most restrictive Medicaid programs, offering coverage only to the disabled, children and parents who earn less than $2,256 a year for a family of three.”

2. Finally the NCAA got something right…the punishment established today for Penn State’s 15 years of systemic tolerance of pedophilia by Sandusky is absolutely spot on.

3. I spoke too soon in my earlier post naming Michelle Bachmann as “Asshole of the Month” because there is someone else who deserves that title, former AZ State Senator, neo-Nazi friend and Mormon Bishop Russell Pearce. Pearce posted something ugly on his Facebook page in regards to the theater shooting that occurred over the weekend in Colorado. He essentially said that the guns weren’t the problem, and that the shooting could have been stopped if a brave man had been in the theater that night. Making the innocent victims in the first place is bad enough, but then blaming them after the fact, adds insult to injury. And BTW, no one would have had to stop the perp if the perp didn’t have guns in the first place.

4. The increasingly irrelevant Sarah Palin endorsed yet another mainstream candidate, Rep. Jeff Flake, over a Tea Party candidate, Wil Cardon, in the race to see who will replace retiring Senator Jon Kyl. What I find weird is that Flake’s views are pretty extreme and so that must mean the Tea Party candidate must be a real nutjob.

5. The gun lobby is out there declaring that guns save more lives than they take, pointing to research that people in the U.S. used guns more than 2.5 million times or about 6,850 times a day, to protect themselves from being a victim of a crime. Only problem is, it’s a lie. Read this take down of the lie….it’s a real eye opener. Here’s what is true….people with a gun are 4.5 times more likely to be shot in an assault than those not possessing a gun.

6. Caterpillar (the guys that make large lawn mowers and bulldozers) made a profit of $4.9 billion last year. Yet they are still squeezing their already reduced work force to concede a 6 year wage and pension freeze. Welcome to your free market economy where the only people that will actually be free will be the factory owners.