Take Texas

By Capt. Fogg

Sometimes I don't know whether to keel over dead from laughing at the people insisting I think Barack Obama is a Messiah and trying to force that sour confection down the throats of Democrats or to have a fatal stroke yelling at them about how they've been trying to shove messiahs of their own up the other end.

Of course, America is always looking for a hero and wants one so badly we've made heroes out of some strange characters, but one man's hero is always the other man's Devil and nowhere more so than in the USA. Did FDR save us from complete economic collapse and a likely shift away from faith in the Capitalist economic model, or did he make it far worse because he was in fact only a puppet: like Truman and Eisenhower, a Quisling serving his Soviet masters? As I said, one man's Messiah is the other guy's Satan. At least he and Ike and Truman didn't succeed in handing over the reigns to Stalin or Kruschev -- or did they? It depends on the definition of Communism and what looks like a free market to one person is obviously not to another. There will be no reconciliation until long after it becomes moot and the US is a distant memory to be made into an object lesson for propagandists yet unborn.

At any rate the longing for some kind of return to a past that didn't happen as described is alive and thriving like bacteria in some Texas bus station men's room and making it impossible for us to be a real nation rather than the loose confederacy of Hobbsian States they envision. Take Texas - please.

Newsweek says that the tenacity of Texas Governor Rick Perry tells us much about America in the age of Obama. I think it tells us a lot about America in the age of James Buchanan; divided irrevocably on issues that now seem morally and legally obvious to most of us.

The US in the mid-19th century was a cultural hodgepodge, filling up with immigrants speaking many languages, publishing papersk and supporting theaters and associations using German, Polish, Italian, Russian, Czech, French, and other languages. Governor Perry thanks that "hodgepodge" sapping our "moral strength" today. It's strange to behold when in my lifetime civilization was on the brink of collapse because of the far right Utopian dream of ethnic and linguistic "purity." It's a strange kind of freedom that is allowed only to people of certain ethnic and religious backgrounds, but Texas is a strange kind of place.

Governor Perry worries that our country is run by government bureaucrats, instead of the Confederate model where it was run by wealthy landowners, and the current Republican model where free elections don't legitimize a candidate they don't like and where the country should be run by a confederation of wealthy Corporations and perhaps officially sanctioned religious leaders.

Am I making unfair comparisons to pre-Civil War era conditions? Keep in mind that Perry, when asked by Newsweek to explain his Capitol Steps talk about secession, only mumbled about long term debt and "what this administration is doing from an economic standpoint."

No, the government is the enemy unless the government is the enemy: "wants to be the epicenter and one size fits all... we have very, very different ideas about the structure of this country and how it should work," and as far as I can see, they're pretty much the same as those of Jefferson Davis and bear an uncanny similarity to the ideas of many America royalists who quite liked the state religion and its forced conformity, heresy laws, witch trials, and all.

"I don't care how hard you work. We are going to take more," are the words he puts in the mouth of the Democratic Demon. He needed to since it wasn't there in the real world he's such an alien to: the world where the Yankee president is going to take your slaves and let them whistle at white girls and where Obama is gonna take your guns even though he ain't. The Yankees are gonna make it hard for us to use public schools to teach far out fringe conjectures about a 6,000 year old universe and magic creation of men out of mud. Of course, if we taught them that Allah made us out of a blood clot, you'd soon hear the tune change from their "god given right" to teach our children to another assumed right to demonize other people's rights and lie about the data.

So how do you argue with someone for whom the truth is like silly putty; where you need absolute proof of some things and sneer about the entire idea of proof or even ignore evidence with other things: someone who believes in absolute authoritarianism yet decries absolute authoritarianism in democracy? How can the smug insistence that huge debts and massive borrowing is just fine unless it's done by Democrats?

You don't.

How do you argue with someone who insists the Depression started with Roosevelt and not with Hoover's huge tax cuts: someone who insists that FDR's spending didn't end or ameliorate the depression but admits WW II did because of the huge government deficit spending? How can you make him tell you why we should be more patient about seeing results from trillions spent to do unnecessary nothings in Iraq than about seeing a complete economic turn around after 15 months. How do you argue with someone who will defend unto death, or at least until the Thorazine kicks in, that contradictions and unanswerable questions weaken an argument, that freedom is all about ethnic and religious purity, that orchestrated demonstrations of inchoate anger are an acceptable way of petitioning for redress of grievances and undoing elections?

You don't and I can't and I'm tired of trying. I'm tired of listening to How Obama has squelched our freedom of speech, how the midwest meteorite and the earthquake in China are the result of health insurance reform and other totally imaginary, seditious things, many of which are the deeds of previous administration and even supported by Conservative leaders. I'm disgusted to live in a country that allows itself to be eaten alive from the inside and won't lift a finger to help itself.

This won't end well, if it ends at all. It won't end as long as we entertain ourselves with new and ever changing diatribes of just what liberals do and just what liberals did and just what liberals are. No one but the innocent are ever burned as witches, but moreover, we'll never be able to be constructive, we'll never be able to have a democracy that works and I have to believe that the people behind this insanity know it quite well and wouldn't have it any other way.

(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)

Is it over yet?

By Capt. Fogg

Yonder stands your orphan with his gun
Crying like a fire in the sun
Look out the saints are comin' through
And it's all over now, Baby Blue.

_____________

At what point do I give up and admit it's all over? The anti-Obama hate cult permeates every waking hour of my day, from technical seminars between engineers about packet radio networks interrupted by someone handing out disreputable Republican figures showing what a spendthrift radical socialist Obama is, from e-mails and phone calls asking me to participate in tax protests from people who won't have to pay taxes at all this year to the constant snide comments about Obama not saluting to this or apologizing for that. There are e-mailed clips of Gingrich preaching about the "most radical president" e-mailed jokes about him firing "cattle guards" and just about every captious hoax you'll find at Fact Check.org or Snopes.com or UrbanLegends.about.com. The mad blood is pumping like it's 1861, and US Rte 1 as it runs through my county, sports shiny new billboards for gun shops and firearms training.

"But these are real numbers" said a friend I should have thought would question any estimates published by the RNC about what "Obamacare" will cost.

"Real from the same people who predicted the Iraq war would cost nothing?" I replied? He looked puzzled. One doesn't suggest any doubt concerning the Party of God in these parts. One doesn't mention that 47% of American families won't owe any Federal income tax this year to a sign waving teabagger or that Iraq has cost us as much as WWII and isn't nearly over yet, not unless you want to invite hate mail and stuff thrown on your lawn, put your job at risk and have no friends at all. Want to know how Dr. Mudd felt? Just suggest that George W. Bush had anything to do with the policies that allowed Enron to ruin so many people, precipitated the bubble and credit crunch, started the most expensive war we've ever had on false pretenses. I spent years being called a traitor for suggesting that what has come to pass would come to pass, but exoneration is going to have to wait for the second coming.

Local papers have become unreadable and dripping with foamy saliva in their raving about Obama's religious agenda, secular and Islamic and I suspect that like many papers today, the owners thereof are writing some of them to use the power of insane hate to boost circulation.

One doesn't mention that Fox News, the fair and balanced network that is run entirely by and for Republicans, doesn't employ a single Democrat and not only slants stories, it invents them and remains silent when their hoaxes are revealed by every other outlet on earth. The Acorn Hoax, the Climategate hoax, the "Two Planeloads of Democrat Lawyers descend on Wasilla" hoax. People think you're crazy, or worse yet a Liberal -- you know, one of those black clad bearded guys who carry bombs and hate America. No one here will even listen for fear of being branded a liberal and people who call themselves skeptics can't imagine the Republican version of anything might be biased. No one will accept that Obama was elected because of the failure of a long Republican administration and Republican controlled congress.

The fact is that Dwight Eisenhower took equal flack for implementing integration to the horror of people who called him a radical, FDR took worse for Social Security, Johnson for his war on poverty and support of civil rights legislation and of course Medicare. Jefferson was called a tax-and-spend radical, because in America you can't just be wrong, you have to be the Devil, even the irrefutable facts can be the devil or the work of his hand.

What's the use of opposing it? Could any amount of truth or blather have stopped the civil war or done away with the institution of Slavery? Can anyone save America from the metastatic madness?

(Cross posted from Human Voices)

Hey boss, I won't be in today, I've got PHCFS

By J. Thomas Duffy

If we had a pile of money, we'd throw this out as a contest, the first verifiable usage of an excuse not to go to work, due to having "Post-Health-Care-Fatigue Syndrome."

David Corn has catapulted PHCFS into the lexicon today with this post:

Will Post-Health-Care-Fatigue Syndrome Thwart GOP Plans? 

There is a palpable sense in Washington that this battle over health care reform has nearly broken the town. Legislators and their staff aides, the president and his people, reporters and pundits, political strategists and advocates -- they've all been consumed by this fight for nearly a year and they're experiencing Post-Health-Care-Fatigue Syndrome (PHCFS). After all, this long-running drama followed months of political and policy intensity: the economic collapse, the subsequent bailouts, the start of the Obama administration. Moreover, that stretch came after a titanic and tiring presidential campaign, with competitive primaries and multiple candidates on each side, that lasted for almost two years. Obama and his crew have basically been going non-stop for three years, and on some days at the White House, it really does show. 

Go read the post.

We're almost going to be gridlocked, too exhausted to get anything meaningful done for the rest of the year.

And Corn pegs the PartyofNoicans the bigger loser of PHCFS.




(Cross-posted at The Garlic.)

The more we lie, the truer it gets

By Capt. Fogg

What happened never happened and the election that ousted the Republicans from office all around the country had nothing to do with public sentiment and even if it did, that sentiment did not include a desire for sweeping reform of health care in America. Or so says Sarah Palin, trying to emulate the rest of the Republican flim-flam artists and voodoo historians like Karl Rove and the dynamic Cheney Family Circus. True to American form, being the worst of them at this game, she may have the most followers.

Please ask yourself: who will be left behind? And who will decide – what kind of panel will decide – who receives the health care that government will obviously have to ration?

Yes, although every reputable source including this one insists that there is nothing in any way suggestive of rationing or "death Panels" as she used to call it, in the House or Senate health care reform bills, she goes on as though there obviously are and as though nobody ever asked for reform in the first place and as though all we ever needed is protection for doctors against malpractice suits.

Palin reveals in her Facebook page, which after all is a fine place to self-publish things no reputable source will touch that yes, America is wildly against reform and the "Democrat" cabal is forcing it all into one orifice or another against our collective will -- and of course there are death panels and rationing and all kinds of other evil things lurking in that huge document she hasn't got round to reading yet. It takes so long to sound out all those words, you know.

(Cross posted from Human Voices)

It's a cream puff!

By Capt. Fogg


Would you buy a used car from this man? That used to be a popular phrase back in the Nixon years when we were asked to buy his "secret plan to win the war." The secret was that there was no plan, but never mind, there was nothing to win and we didn't win it.

It's the first thing that comes to mind listening to the last ditch effort by Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell who is still telling us the public option will kill us all, although you can see he's having a hard time keeping his face straight while doing it. It's a prodigious effort of course, since he and his henchmen all have government health care just like the French and the Norwegians and the Germans and everyone else and all too many of them live to really ripe old ages because of it.

"I think if you have any kind of government insurance program, you're going to be stuck with it and it will lead us in the direction of the European style, you know, sort of British-style, single payer, government run system, and those systems are known for delays, denial of care and, you know, if your particular malady doesn't fit the government regulation, you don't get the medication. And it may cost you your life. I mean, we don't want to go down that path."

Yes, we do want to go down that path -- the majority of us anyway -- and it's an argument dependent on American ignorance of what the rest of the modern world enjoys and benefits from and chooses to have. There is no slope here, it's only his logic and his grasp of truth that's slippery. The problem with our health care cartel system is exactly the problem he tells us we will have if we abandon it and the coverage we have to buy now isn't even available to millions and millions. It may cost you your life and it's cost millions of lives already.

No, I wouldn't buy a load of fertilizer from this man and that's what he's selling and no matter how many times the truth is flung back at him, he'll continue. He's paid handsomely to continue and he's got a great health care plan as well which isn't known for denial, delay or enormous annual price increases like the one we have if we're lucky, young, in a good job and haven't ever been sick.

It's the old Republican song he's singing -- the corporate song, the best money can buy: I've got mine and screw you.

(Cross posted from Human Voices)

Saturday comedy blogging

There's a Rep for that!

A dangerous new anti-healthcare reform ad

By Creature

Without a strong push back this ad could be healthcare reform's swift boat to oblivion.



It's one thing when Sarah Palin says stupid shit that is easily mocked, but this ad, and its polished presentation, takes the fight to a whole new level. Boy I hope the Democrats have some fight in them.

Trig in 2012!

By J. Thomas Duffy

Remember, one of the reasons The Wasilla Whiz Kid bailed out of her job, was that the Lefty Communist Socialist Media was picking on her children, and, that they needed to "quit makin' things up".

John Amato, over on Crooks and Liars, hits it good;

Sarah Palin says Obama's health care will kill her Down Syndrome baby

I've heard a lot of disgusting stuff coming out of the mouths of the Zombie Plumbers, but Sarah Palin has become the Zombie Queen with this one. She sure likes her FaceBook page.

The Democrats promise that a government health care system will reduce the cost of health care, but as the economist Thomas Sowell has pointed out, government health care will not reduce the cost; it will simply refuse to pay the cost. And who will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly, and the disabled, of course. The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.

Okay, here's what is going to come down;

The PartyofNoicans (what is left of them, after the great 2011 ethnic-style-cleansing by Michelle Malkin's, Glen Beck's, and Sean Hannity's Flying Monkeys - or maybe, just Chuck Norris) nominate Trig in 2012 (They will ignore, and relentlessly beat down anyone who complains, the 35-year-old minimum age), who chooses his mother as running mate ... Trig wins in a landslide (thanks to the armed patrols of Limbaugh, O'Reilly and Beck listeners, supported by the Arizona Minutemen, ringing the polling sites) and the first order of business is to pass legislation, making it a Federal Crime to mention him, or any of his brothers and sisters, punishable by instant death (Malkin, Beck, all of Faux News, Little Billy Kristol and NR, Townhall, Hugh Hewitt and the Cheeseburger That Sweats [H/T Barry Crimmins] are all grandfathered in as exemptions).

Trig then resigns (tests later show, it's in the DNA), handing the reigns over to Ms. Ya'Bet'cha, who picks Michelle Bachmann for VP, and we begin the 2+-year purge of all the Communists and Socialists in Congress, and, the entire deficit is wiped out by selling all our borders to Lou Dobbs..

The First Amendment is tossed away, and the 2nd Amendment, with loads of revisions, becomes the 1st Amendment.

Remarkably, Palin sits for the eight-years, and is succeeded, not by Bachmann, but by Governor Gaucho's new Argentinian wife (the Birthers shift gears, and produce thousands of birth certificates to show Maria Belen Chapur was born in the USA)

Any Independent, or Democrat (and some moderate Republicans), that haven't been killed off, are exiled, and shipped to France.

Oh yeah, and Freedom Fries are brought back.




(Cross Posted at The Garlic)