Freedom of Coercing Small Children to Work for Shit Wages

Media Matters is on a roll lately, or maybe it's just the stupid people that feed them their material. At any rate, since the Republicans and Tea Baggers are such huge fans of third world policies and third world standards of living, I for one welcome them to just shut the fuck up and collectively move themselves to a true third world nation (remember, we're only aspiring to be one at this point) and see how much they love the awesomeness and freedom and stuff.

And for all you "But Fox is fair and balanced!" types, I think it's just adorable how they are barnstorming  wall-to-wall coverage of the exact same agenda that Republicans in Congress settled on coming out of the August recess.

Time For Obesity, Early Onset Diabetes Protests

It's my inalienable, Jebus given right to be a slovenly fat ass! Keep Michelle Obama's Kenyan socialism out of my bucket of KFC...that happens to be sitting on the other side of the room, that I can't reach, and I'm too fat to walk over there to get it, so I'll just wallow for a while because Medicare hasn't yet approved my claim for a Rascal from the Scooter Store.

This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things

Heckuva job, Democrats:

“I think the American people are very skeptical of big pieces of legislation,” Senator Bob Casey, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, said in an interview Wednesday, joining a growing chorus of Democrats who prefer an à la carte version of the bill despite White House resistance to that approach. “For that reason alone I think we should break it up.”
[...]
But Democrats, as is their wont, are divided over their objections, which stem from Mr. Obama’s sinking popularity in polls, parochial concerns and the party’s chronic inability to unite around a legislative initiative, even in the face of Republican opposition.
Some are unhappy about the specific types of companies, particularly the oil industry, that would lose tax benefits. “I have said for months that I am not supporting a repeal of tax cuts for the oil industry unless there are other industries that contribute,” said Senator Mary L. Landrieu of Louisiana.
A small but vocal group dislikes the payroll tax cuts for employees and small businesses. “I have been very unequivocal,” said Representative Peter A. DeFazio, a Democrat from Oregon. “No more tax cuts.”

I suppose it would be too much to ask for these prima donnas to just shut up and support the President's agenda for a change. That is what political parties do when they want to get something done. Just look at what the Republicans did with the Paul Ryan plan. They mainstreamed making Medicare into a voucher program while cutting trillions in taxes for the uber wealthy and whipped their entire caucus behind it in both houses of Congress despite it being terrible politics, policy, and overwhelmingly unpopular with the public. And the President can't even get his own party to shut up and unify behind a much needed economic plan in the middle of a flagging economy and 9% unemployment. In an election year.

Ostensibly, a number of the Democrats cited in the NYT piece oppose the American Jobs Act as a paltry attempt to burnish their conservative bona fides. I'm not quite sure what it will take these people to realize that having a 'D' next to their name ensures they will get pasted in any election in a conservative district or state. Just look at 2010 - the largest swath of Democrats that got ousted from the House were Blue Dogs. It's not terribly difficult to comprehend when the Right spends all of its time reading Ann Coulter books and listening to people on Fox News breathing fire about how Democrats are evil and treasonous and hate America and want to kill your children in their sleep. They hate you because you are a Democrat. It's very simple. 

In other words - shut the fuck up and support the President's long overdue jobs agenda already. The opposition party just introduced an identically titled bill that seeks to eliminate corporate taxation in its entirety. As a "jobs" bill. These are the people you're dealing with. These are the people you are implicitly supporting by whining about how Obama is mean or how his bill isn't what you'd like it to be. And they will be coming after your seat in 2012 regardless of how you act or vote. So despite whatever ill founded and delicate political misgivings you may have, Mr. & Mrs. Conservative Democrat, it's time to get on the right side of this issue. 

Thanks Captain Hindsight!

South Park:

Coon 2: Hindsight
Get More: SOUTH
PARKEric Cartman,more...

The Washington Post:

A 16-month federal investigation has concluded that BP’s efforts to limit costs on its mile-deep Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico contributed to the blowout last year that killed 11 workers, sank the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig and created the largest oil spill in U.S. history.
The long-awaited report by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement catalogues dozens of mistakes, misapprehensions, risky decisions and failures of communication that led to the blowout and the 87-day spill that spewed nearly 5 million barrels of oil into the gulf.

Right. I understand a formal investigation was necessary, but it wasn't like these things weren't blatantly obvious on the first day after the spill.

Republicans Hate Ponzi Schemes!

Via Greg Sargent, Bloomberg brings us a poll that shows - surprise! - the Republican base is a bunch of ignorant morons:

The most publicized campaign issue focusing on Perry -- his characterization of Social Security as a “Ponzi Scheme” -- has Americans divided. Among all respondents, 46 percent said they agree with the remark, while 50 percent said they disagree.
Among Republicans, 65 percent agree with Perry’s statements about Social Security, while 33 percent disagree.

So a significant majority of morons Republicans polled think that Social Security is akin to a criminal investment scheme whereby large sums of money are taken in by an individual, never invested as promised, and then that same individual runs away with the investor money. Mmm-hmm. Sounds just like  Social Security. Not that I would expect Republicans to know any better. I'm sure they were too busy watching Fox News screech about Michelle Obama's war on school lunches to be bothered to know about a very recent example of a Ponzi scheme in the form of Bernie Madoff.

But since Republicans can't ever be bothered with elitist things like "facts," let's just skip ahead to solving the problem. Since the Republican base is too goddamned stupid to know the difference between Social Security and a Ponzi scheme and that Rick Perry is a lying asshole and spewing misinformation to justify his extremist, ideologically driven goal to dismantle America's already inept social safety net, how about they "fix" the program by volunteering to no longer receive any benefits from it?

Oh what's that? They don't want to? Yeah, figured as much.

Fox's Idea of Onerous/Job Killing Regulations

Maybe we would have more jobs only if corporations had the freedom to discriminate against people for race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disabilities, and age. THANKS A LOT OBAMA!

Goddamn job killing regulations! We gotta get the fedrul gubmint outta the way so the private market can overcome this socialist Kenyan asshole's tyranny!

I can't wrap my head around the fact that people actually believe this shit.

Here He Is, The Biggest Douche in the Universe

Dick Cheney.

America's Lost Decade

Not good:

Another 2.6 million people slipped into poverty in the United States last year, the Census Bureau reported Tuesday, and the number of Americans living below the official poverty line, 46.2 million people, was the highest number in the 52 years the bureau has been publishing figures on it.And in new signs of distress among the middle class, median household incomes fell last year to levels last seen in 1997.Economists pointed to a telling statistic: It was the first time since the Great Depression that median household income, adjusted for inflation, had not risen over such a long period, said Lawrence Katz, an economics professor at Harvard.“This is truly a lost decade,” Mr. Katz said. “We think of America as a place where every generation is doing better, but we’re looking at a period when the median family is in worse shape than it was in the late 1990s.”The bureau’s findings were worse than many economists expected, and brought into sharp relief the toll the past decade — including the painful declines of the financial crisis and recession —had taken on Americans at the middle and lower parts of the income ladder. It is also fresh evidence that the disappointing economic recovery has done nothing for the country’s poorest citizens.

And this while congressional Republicans continues to plot how best to fuck over the economy in order to wound President Obama, while continuing their slobbery fealty to their corporate and wealthy masters. In any normal, moral, or sane democracy, these numbers would be treated as gravely as their substance dictates. Elected officials and those in a position of power to do something about it would be rightfully concerned. But not in America. We have an entire political party and their not-at-all-biased corporate propaganda mouthpiece wholly devoted to marginalizing grim reports like this and trying to entrench the perverse idea that the poor are a bunch of whiny, freeloading, lazy fucks who aren't really poor because they have Xbox 360s. I wish I were kidding. And graphs like these are just the best:

Who the fuck cares that they can't afford healthcare, education? They have coffee makers goddammit, and in some cases, more than one DVD player. And Obama wages class warfare because he doesn't think that corporate jet owners should get a tax break.

These people are sick, and it's well past time that their low information base wakes up and tosses them out of office. And while we're talking about sane, moral, normal democracies, I might add that we would  also have a party beating this point to a bloody pulp on a daily basis, unafraid of being labeled as fighting class warfare, and unafraid of being outspent (or not receiving any) in an election by corporate money, and unafraid if fighting these bastards cost them their job. The facts are there, and they are indisputable. Our pathetic center right policies are not advancing the American Dream, but are in fact destroying it. It's well past time that somebody puts up a real fight to reverse this disgusting trend. 

Terrorist Until Proven Innocent

This is exactly the kind of shit that I was talking about in my post about the shameful legacy of our piss pants reaction to 9/11. 

And note how blithely the FBI spokesperson states that the public prefers that they overreact rather than under react. Personally, I would rather prefer they act with a modicum of sanity and not use heavily armed SWAT teams to drag innocent citizens off of an airplane for no reason other than they are brown. And let's be honest with ourselves - that is exactly what happened here.

The Onion, excellent as usual, nails it here.

Your Modern GOP: Rooting for America's Failure Since 2008

A few days ago, I said the following in response to to Obama's laughably naive presumption that there might be any, even a single Republican that might put their country before electoral politics:

With all due respect: Wake the fuck up, Mr. President.

It doesn't take a political scientist to predict these things:

House Republicans may pass bits and pieces of President Barack Obama’s jobs plan, but behind the scenes, some Republicans are becoming worried about giving Obama any victories — even on issues the GOP has supported in the past.
And despite public declarations about finding common ground with Obama, some Republicans are privately grumbling that their leaders are being too accommodating with the president.
“Obama is on the ropes; why do we appear ready to hand him a win?” said one senior House Republican aide who requested anonymity to discuss the matter freely. “I just don’t want to co-own the economy by having to tout that we passed a jobs bill that won’t work or at least won’t do enough.”

This should be the top story on every major newspaper, cable network, and radio broadcast. These assholes would much rather just let the country suffer and wallow through the Lesser Depression than do anything to improve our economic malaise because...it might help Obama. 

The President and Congressional Dems need to disavow themselves of any further bull shit ideals of bipartisanship and compromise. The GOP doesn't want it. They want nothing to do with any policy that would actually help the economy or unemployment, because they view these things as mutually exclusive to their electoral success. 

It doesn't get much more fucked up and cynical than this. These people can not be allowed to make any sort of significant gains in 2012. Ezra Klein has a piece up today that basically posits that the American public is so stupid and ill informed that they will believe that any potential future Republican acts of government that have nothing to do with the economy or unemployment, such as repealing the Affordable Care Act or rolling back EPA regulations, will be credited for any recovery beyond 2012.

And sadly, he’s right. Which makes it imperative that a Republican does not sit in the White House come January 2013. The last thing this country needs, the last thing this country can afford is to have the failed militant conservative ideology validated by a GOP huckster taking credit for a recovery they wanted nothing to do with and actively sought to prevent.

(via Steve Benen)