For POTUS: Carl “Shitty” Levin

C-SPAN: telling it like it is.

Carl: feeling shitty.

Ed Schultz Sits In On Voting Mad

Since I’ve been way too busy to blog lately, I have elicited the help of one of my favorite talk show hosts, Ed Schultz. Enjoy this clip from Ed, and I’ll be back as soon as I can!

Open Forum: What Does The Tea Party Want?

Love ’em or hate ’em, The Tea Party is now a legitimate political movement. With the ability to influence politicians and shape the Republican/Conservative dialog, The Tea Party has a voice that is too loud to be ignored. But what exactly are they saying with that amped-up voice of theirs?

Sure, I could profile them based on my purely anecdotal observations: they hate big government, taxes, abortions, and federal spending. They love guns, Sarah Palin, the sovereignty of states’ rights, American isolationism, and guns. Their positions scare many liberals, and they motivate conservatives.

But I don’t know any Tea Partiers personally, so perhaps I am missing something? I just want to know exactly what they see as the American way of life? What would they do if they ran the country? What would they change, and what would stay the same?

If you are a Tea Party member, supporter, or if you know someone who is please direct them to this blog, I just want an answer to this simple question: What does the Tea Party Want?

All comments will be posted without moderation, in an attempt to open up an honest dialog between the Tea Party and their detractors.

Advertisement

The Semantics Of Orrin Hatch

In yesterday’s Chicago Tribune there was an opinion piece written by Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), with retired Reagan Attorney General Ed Meese, and Northwestern University Law Professor Steven Calabresi (read it here). It was the title “Forcing Americans To Buy What They Don’t Want” that caught my eye, and what followed was a stream of misleading boilerplate text that I’ve heard over and over from the GOP regarding the healthcare reform bill that is now law today.

I am just a regular guy, so far be it from me to take on such accomplished men as Senator Hatch, Mr. Meese, and Professor Calabresi, but I know BS when I smell it. So here goes.

First the title of the piece. Senator Hatch and his Hatchmen posit that Americans are being forced to buy health insurance, and this is something we supposedly do not want. Or perhaps they are trying to intimate that we are being forced to buy government health insurance? I can’t seem to figure out any other possible meaning of the title, and either explanation is a lie. Americans want health insurance, they want the security of knowing that if they pay for it they can’t be dropped when they get sick, and they want to be able to buy it if they were sick once before. The only thing Americans are being forced to do is insure that their bills will be paid so the rest of us don’t pick up the tab in increased premiums and higher taxes. Otherwise, it sounds like Hatch wants to return to being a welfare state where we pay for those who can’t or won’t pay for themselves.

The article opens up with some pithy statements about “playing fair”, and “ends not justifying means” in order to assert that the Democrats passed this law while ignoring the procedural rules of Congress. Really? If that were the case then the GOP’s lawyers would have already succeeded in overturning it. The fact is that Democrats used all the rules that were available to them, and Hatch doesn’t like it because he and his party couldn’t stop it. They got beat fair-and-square and now they are calling foul. That sounds like a case of being a sore loser over “how the legislative game is played”, as he puts it. Game over. You lost. Deal with it like a grownup.

But Hatch saves his best canned party lines for the end when he says “In 220 years, Congress has never required Americans to purchase a particular good or service”, and he specifically cites the “liberal” pivot of comparing this to being mandated to purchase auto insurance. Hatch has the nerve to say that purchasing auto insurance is okay because it is a state mandate, and not a federal mandate. C’mon Senator–you’re either for mandates or against mandates. A state mandate can’t be good when a federal mandate is bad; those are just semantics.

Just because the Fed has never mandated the purchase of health insurance before, that doesn’t make it a bad idea right now. Senator Hatch’s argument sounds like an argument against evolving, against learning, against growing up and facing our responsibilities together as a nation. Why, that sounds like an argument against patriotism, and e pluribus unum, and “one nation under God”! It’s an argument against the United States of America!!!

Sorry, I didn’t mean to get semantical on you.

My Response To Rush Limbaugh

In a recent rant by uber-blowhard Rush “dude, where’s my Oxy?” Limbaugh, he completely goes off the rails in his flat-out hysteria over President Obama’s successful legislative victories:

“Never in my life have I seen a regime like this, governing against the will of the people, purposely. I have never seen the media so supportive of a regime amassing so much power. And I have never known as many people who literally fear for the future of the country.”

Oh Rush, all those prescription drugs have burned away your jaded memory. It was just a few years ago when those same words could have come from the mouths of Rachel Maddow, or Ed Schultz, or any rational and sane US citizen. Regime? Governing against the will of the people? Media Support? People who literally fear for the future of the country?

I spent eight years of my life uttering those same words every day. About tax cuts for the rich while my middle class taxes went up and my property value and income dropped. About an illegal invasion of a country that had no weapons of mass destruction. About ignoring the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. About illegal wiretaps. About torture. About stocking the Supreme Court with anti-abortion activists judges bent on overturning Roe vs. Wade. About the inability to correctly pronounce “nuclear”. About having a bonehead for the leader of the free world.

Rush, you foul-mouthed, bloated, racist, elitist, lying, jerk. Those words you utter should have been uttered for the eight long and depressing years of W’s presidency. That was a regime worth ranting about. That regime bolstered FOX as they became a Conservative media powerhouse. W and his neo-con supporters made you a very rich man while the rest of us watched our country go down the toilet.

My mom reads this, so I am holding back the worst words in my vocabulary. But Rush, I despise you. I hate you more than W, Cheney, Rove, Frum, and all the other neo-cons that have soiled America’s reputation. You could care less about my opinion because you live in an Ivory Tower, high above the regular people like me. But one day you will fall from that tower like some bizarre version of Humpty Dumpty, and I hope that no one is there to put you back together again.

April Fools On Parade

"Lesbian bondage strip club? Quick, fire a staffer and it'll all go away!"

"The Democrats have hopey, we've got dopey and nopey! You betcha!"

"Healthcare reform passed, so I am preparing for armageddon by stocking up on all the self-tanning cream I can buy!"

"Where the hell is my fucking cream of wheat?!"

"911 911 911 911 911 911 911 911 911 911!!!!! Did I get elected yet?"

"If we're able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo. It will break him." (actual foolish quote)