NEON GODS

What if Obamacare actually works and the Republican base ends up liking it??

From Paul Krugman:

Many of us wish that Obamacare were a simpler system, one that directly provided health insurance. Political reality, unfortunately, ensured that many people will receive coverage from private insurers, selling policies — often with subsidies — on the “exchanges”...naturally enough, the Obama administration is teaming up with the insurers and other parts of the health industry to help inform Americans of the benefits to which they will be legally entitled, starting Jan. 1.

And in the eyes of Republicans, Bloomberg reports, this makes Obama a “bully” — dragooning those private companies into helping sell a public program that will increase their profits. Why, it’s tyranny, I tell you!

Yes, it’s ridiculous. But they can’t help themselves. I suspect that the idea of helping lower-income Americans in any way would drive the GOP bonkers; but the idea that this help might come from Obama (implementing a program originally designed by Republicans, but never mind), and that Obama’s plan might actually work, drives them crazy.

The Republican Party is a party of the very wealthy (who benefit greatly from small government, like lower taxes on the rich, etc.) who need the votes of poor whites to shrink the government (poor minorities know the Republicans are out to screw them). 

The Republicans have done a masterful job convincing poor and middle class whites in the flyover states that government is BAD and free market capitalism is GOOD (which is true only if you are very wealthy). 

However the Republicans can only remain in power if the ignorant class keeps believing that they are better off by having less government.  Most of them have no idea just how much of their meager existence is already a result of government programs and supports.

So imagine, if you will, if the poor goobers with low incomes and little or no health insurance suddenly get low-cost high-quality health care as a result of a government program?  OMG!!  Government isn't all bad?  What next?  Low interest student loans through the government so their children can afford to go to college and get better paying jobs?  And what if the hated government passes a law requiring every employer to give their employees a paid one week vacation each year, and three days of sick leave with pay every year?  Yes, the government (which is in fact We the People) can do things like that. 

Once the Republican base begins to realize that free market capitalism only benefits a few and the government has the ability to benefit the many, the Republican Party will be (and is) doomed.

--Trakker

 

 

We need to know more before we declare Snowden a hero

It's too early to jump to any conclusions about the extent of NSA spying on American citizens based on the recent revelations from Edward Snowden.  Who is Edward Snowden?  What is his background?  What are his motives?  Did he cherry pick facts, did he distort them?   All these questions need to be answered before we can understand how bad the problem is.  That being said, I applaud Snowden for putting this issue in the headlines where it belongs.  

I think it is obvious that our government has been engaged in a massive surveillance of the American people and that there is almost no effective oversight by Congress or anyone else over who gets examined, why, and how is the data used.  They insist they are protecting us from dangerous terrorist attacks.  Really, then prove it to Congress.  Prove that the government isn't using this huge data-collection apparatus to spy on political organizations or using it to blackmail politicians into voting a certain way.

I can assert with great confidence that if the NSA is NOT using this data against political organizations or politicians now, it's just a matter of time before they will.  Someday someone in control of all this data will realize the vast power they have and how easy it is to use it to get what they want...and we may never know it until it's too late (and, yes, it has occurred to me that maybe this is happening already). 

If I could, I would appoint a panel of citizens to examine our espionage agencies and report to the American people.  We need to know what they are doing, how they are doing it, and what prevents them from abusing their power.  We also need to know if they are using their budgets wisely and if the benefits are worth the costs.  We need to set up some kind of effective oversight to protect the privacy of the millions of innocent citizens who are doing nothing dangerous and never will.

If the only way to prevent terrorist attacks is to secretly spy on every American citizen with no oversight, then we'll just have to accept a greater risk of terrorist attacks. 

Trakker

Impeach Obama for (fill in the blank)!

I see the Republicans are baying at the moon again.  This time it's Benghazi.  Sen. Inhofe (R-Moon) predicts Obama will be impeached over the "coverup".  I thought he was supposed to be impeached for a fake birth certificate, or for ObamaCare's death panels, or for palling around with a terrorist (Bill Ayres).  How many times have I heard the Republicans say the words Obama and Impeach in reference to something he supposedly did in the past five years?  Ten? Fifteen?  More?  I thin I heard the first murmurings about two weeks after he took office.

It's funny what high standards Republicans have when someone else is in office.  Did you hear a peep from them when George Bush brushed off the intelligence report before 9/11 that Osama BinLaden was planning an attack, or when the Bush administration authorized America to engage in torture, or when it came out that about $8 billion of our dollars was lost somewhere in Iraq??  The GOP is so incompetent that the only way they can win elections is to gerrymander and suppress the vote, and, evidently, impeach any and every Democratic President.

No doubt the administration spun the facts about the tragedy in Benghazi.  Tell me that Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II administrations didn't do the same for reasons sometimes valid and sometimes not.  Everyone knows it, Everyone knows we rarely ever know the real truth until months or years later.  Often the press manges to finally get at the truth after the fact.  So go ahead a**holes and try to impeach Obama.  The majority of Americans now know the Republican's M.O.: lose the Presidency -> impeach the bastard.  The only real impeachable offense to a Republican is being a popular Democrat.

--Trakker

Gun nuts: fighting tyranny that doesn't exist by acting seditious. They might be insane after all.

More insanity from the addled minds of the gun nuts of America:

On the morning of July 4, 2013, Independence Day, we will muster at the National Cemetery & at noon we will step off to march across the Memorial Bridge, down Independence Avenue, around the Capitol, the Supreme Court, & the White House, then peacefully return to Virginia across the Memorial Bridge. This is an act of civil disobedience, not a permitted event. We will march with rifles loaded & slung across our backs to put the government on notice that we will not be intimidated & cower in submission to tyranny. We are marching to mark the high water mark of government & to turn the tide. This will be a non-violent event, unless the government chooses to make it violent. Should we meet physical resistance, we will peacefully turn back, having shown that free people are not welcome in Washington, & returning with the resolve that the politicians, bureaucrats, & enforcers of the federal government will not be welcome in the land of the free.

You are welcome to attend unarmed as a supporter, or armed with a recording device.

If this page gets to 10,000 attendees by June 1st, & we have the critical mass necessary to pull this off, (1,000 actual attendees) we will march. Please spread the word, share this event, & invite all your friends.

By all means, march you infantile spoiled adolescents who refuse to grow up and accept that you must obey laws you don't like - just like the rest of us in this once-great country you are doing your best to ruin. And by all means carry your loaded penis-substitutes to show the rest of us just how insecure you are.

The rally organizer writes, "We will march with rifles loaded & slung across our backs to put the government on notice that we will not be intimidated & cower in submission to tyranny."

Tyranny?  What tyranny?  Tyranny is defined as "arbitrary or unrestrained exercise of power; despotic abuse of authority."  Every American citizen over the age of 18 has the right to vote for a President, two Senators, and one Representatives who represent them in Washington.  They make our laws and American citizens agree to obey those laws or suffer the consequences.  Our elected officials may be doing a lousy job of governing, and if so we can vote them out and replace them.  It happens every two years.  This is not tyranny. 

No, what these idiots are are really marching about is that they only want to obey the laws they like, and they define everything else as tyranny.  Screw them!  If they set foot in WAshington, DC, they should be arrested, booked, and go on trial for sedition.  It's time to send a message to these haters of democracy that we won't be intimidated by gun-toting thugs threatening our nation and it's government.

--Trakker

It's just a matter of time: NRA edition

Requiring everyone who wants to buy a firearm to submit to a background check is only common sense and is supported by the vast majority of Americans, and in fact a majority in the Senate (54-46!) recently voted to move forward on extending the background checks to private sales.  But it didn't pass despite overwhelming support by the voters.  Why?  Because the dying Republican Party has used Senate rules to define majority as 60%! 

This means that just 20 of the reddest states in the country now control politics in America!  This is certainly NOT what the Founding Fathers envisioned.  They acknowledged that the smaller rural stats needed protection from the larger, more populous states, so in the Senate they made every state equal by giving each state the same number of Senators, two.  So in the Senate, Wyoming's 576,000 people are equal in influence to California's 38,000,000 people!  Quite a perk, no?  But that inequity is just not good enough for the Republican Party.  The GOP now insists that those 20 smallest states, plus one more Senator, can block any bills the 30 largest states want to pass! And they wonder why those of us in the larger, more populist states despise the Republican Party?

This level of inequity is stupid of course, and will only enrage the rest of the country more and more each year until the radical right and their wealthy puppeteers are finally crushed by a furious public.  The religious right, the gun nuts, the bigots, and the fear-mongers seem blissfully unaware of just how despised they are by a growing number of Americans who merely want America to move forward and prosper.

Still, the real blame for what happened yesterday lies at the feet of Harry Reid.  He's had two chances to end the current filibuster rules that the Republicans have been using to shut down the Senate and he's done nothing.  It is unreasonable to require 60 votes to get something passed, especially in a nation so divided as we are now.  Obviously the best thing we can do right now is disband the Senate and send them all back to the real world where they will have to have to get a job and live without all the perks they now get.  At least it will save us a bundle of money. 

As for the gun laws that were defeated.  They will be back and they will eventually get passed because the public and the press is now paying close attention to the NRA and gun nuts, and the people are beginning to realize what a bunch of ignorant, lying sons of bitches they are.  The NRA and the gun nuts (as opposed to regular gun owners) are a small minority.  We're seeing more and more NRA members speaking out publicly against the stupidity of opposing background checks.

Let me be clear, here.  Most gun owners are normal, decent people who support things like background checks, but the NRA's leadership, and those gun rights groups even more radical than the NRA, are truly despicable human beings, similar to international arms merchants who make millions off the death and suffering of innocent human beings.  Yes, there really are people out there who don't care that thousands of innocent people die every year due to lax gun laws.  They consider these deaths as nothing more than human detritus, like the wood shavings we get when carving a figure.  The press is now unmasking these grotesque human beings and the sight is not pretty.  It's just a matter of time...

--Trakker

We can't try to control gun sales because people can kill with anything, even a spoon!

WhooooBoy, gun control is not going away!  People are finally fed up and paying attention to the huge scam that the NRA has been pulling on the American people (i.e., the Second Amendment has no limits, and gun owners are all super-good citizens and super patriots and we should be thankful they are willing to walk among and scare the shit out of our kids  protect us).  No longer do gun nuts control the comments section of gun death news articles.  Finally, the press is paying attention to the lies and stupidity the NRA and gun nuts spout and are pushing back.

It does not always go well, however.  The other day Piers Morgan (aka "I'll do anything for ratings") had Dana Loesch as a guest on his program along with Grover Norquist and Van Jones to discuss gun control.  Gary Legum at the blog, Wonkette, went ballistic over assembling such a lightweight lineup to discuss a serious subject.  Here is Legum's take on the participants:

Piers: Piers Morgan "is [no] great soufflé in the baking dish of life.

Dana: ""Your Wonkette has a history of falling for self-absorbed and somewhat dimwitted women, and even we would not go anywhere near Dana Loesch, who projects a cloud of toxic dimwittedness so severe we imagine entire fields of grass withering as she walks across them.

Grover: Norquist is known for one thing, and that is the dogmatic enforcement of an anti-tax creed he thought up when he was twelve years old. He should not be given access to so much as a box of crayons, because he would eat them while complaining about stupid liberals who want to make him share his crayons with starving poor people."

And poor Van: "Why Van Jones keeps subjecting himself to debates with conservatives on CNN is a mystery that will perhaps one day be solved by a good psychiatrist or a swift kick to the nuts. Really, he can’t do better than this?"

I don't know much about Dana Loesch (I believe it's pronounced 'Lash') but after reading the transcript of her remarks she brings nothing original to the table...she obviously gets her talking points from the NRA: magazine size is meaningless because everyone can reload in just a few seconds...military weapons aren't being sold...gun control freaks are trying to ban certain firearms because they look scary...her son has a BB gun that looks like an AR-15...anything can be an assault weapon, even a spoon....(yes, she actually went there).

Wonkette had some good answers to Loesch's arguments.

This is a pretty standard gun-nutter argument: that people want to ban guns for aesthetic reasons, namely that they look scary. So let us make it clear: the pro-gun control crowd wants to place limits on the types of guns available to the public because these guns make it a hell of a lot easier for a mass shooter to kill lots of people in a very short period of time (Jared Loughner needed all of 15 seconds to fire off his 33-round clip, hitting 18 people). No one is talking about banning any gun, particularly Dana Loesch’s son’s BB gun, because it looks scary. Hell, no one is talking about banning BB guns, period, because everyone knows the worst you can do with one of those things is shoot your eye out. We hope your one-eyed son can live a full life despite his lack of spatial and depth perception, Dana Loesch.

Loesch: Anything can be qualified as an assault weapon. If you stab someone with a spoon, it can be qualified as an assault weapon.

Stabbing people with spoons! WHY ARE OUR POLITICIANS NOT SHUTTING DOWN THE DEATH MERCHANTS AT WILLIAMS-SONOMA, HENGHHHH?

The spoon argument is particularly stupid. It boils down to this: It's futile to ban guns or control firearm sales because people can kill with anything, even a spoon!   Let's rephrase this: It's futile to find a cure for cancer because people die of all kinds of other illnesses, even the common cold!  Yeah, that's what passes on the right for "logic."

Back to Wonkette:

If we were debating gun control with any kind of intellectual rigor, we could ignore the remarkable jumble of stupidity emitting from Dana Loesch’s mouth hole at a frequency usually only audible to bats. If this country prized intellectual rigor in debates about complex and important issues, Dana Loesch would just be one more dipshit college dropout suburbanite the neighbors stop inviting to barbecues because she always starts political arguments... Unfortunately, intellectual rigor and common fucking sense go right out the window where guns are concerned because people like Dana Loesch have not been confined to the sanitariums where they belong, but have instead been handed radio shows and television contracts.

Ouch. 

I've been accused of writing mostly angry posts.  Probably, although I'm not by nature an angry person.  This blog was started as a safety valve where I could let off steam so I wouldn't scare my grand kids with political rants.  But, come on.  Innocent people are being killed daily by people with firearms.  We've made it too easy for disturbed, paranoid, and suicidal people to get dangerous weapons, and the NRA has consciously worked to insure that 1) guns are available to everyone and 2) easy to get.  THEY KNOW that their work to insure even the insane and disturbed can get a gun will result in a fair number of deaths and even more injuries and maimings, AND THEY DON'T GIVE A DAMN!  They don't.  20 dead 1st graders is a price they are willing to pay to sell more guns.  THEY DON'T CARE.  They don't.  So, of course I'm angry.  And so is America, if the polls and comments on news articles are to be believed.

--Trakker

 

Politics is pretty simple these days.

Understanding politics is actually pretty easy these days. 

The rich and the corporations want to severely shrink the federal government. This would greatly reduce their taxes and rid themselves of regulations and government oversight.  Putting this crudely, they want to be able to pollute and to cheat (they don't see it as cheating though) with impunity.  Accumulating wealth and the bottom line are what matters most to many of them.

The tea party/red state Republicans also want to dismantle the federal government, but for a different reason.  They want to turn everything over to the states because the red states are fed up with being required to govern in compliance with the Constitution of the United States.  They don't recognize the separation of church and state, they don't want to acknowledge that abortion is a woman's right, they don't want to extend any rights to gays.  They want to be able to teach extreme right wing fairy tales as facts in their schools.  None of this can happen as long as the Federal government is strong enough to enforce federal laws and policies.

Both of these groups want to drastically shrink the federal government.  They seem to agree that the federal government should concentrate only on maintaining a national military to protect them and to fight wars (oh, and provide massive financial help to Israel).  Other than that the federal government should shed almost all current responsibilities and go away.  Leave everything to the private sector and the states.  In other words, they want to take the word "United" out our name and become a confederation of independent states.

These two groups have a lot of clout now, and the rest of us are having a lot of trouble figuring out how to respond to this assault on our government, a government that has traditionally protected our rights and provided safety nets for the poor and financial help for the young as they start their families and begin careers.  Sometimes I find myself wishing a chunk of red states would secede and form their own country and implement their own brand of government so we could all determine for ourselves if it would work (hint: I already know the answer to that.  In fact we would soon have an illegal immigration problem with the people fleeing those states).

--Trakker

Open Carry: Intimidation

I've been hearing a lot of gun nuts deriding people who get freaked out by the sight of gunowners openly carrying guns to political rallies or political functions.  They are contemptuous of the unarmed who feel intimidated or nervous around civilians who walk around armed when there is little need for it (most of the cases where this has occurred are not dangerous places - especially during the day when the incidents occur.

First of all, don't try to tell me that intimidation isn't part of the psychology of those who open carry, especially at political rallies or meetings with politicians.  America has a long tradition of insisting on equality in politics and in our day to day activities.  We don't always rise to this goal but it is an important part of what has made us great, but when two people meet to discus or negotiate or whatever, if one person is unarmed and the other is openly carrying an assault rifle, they are not equal and the unarmed person always knows that in the end the armed person has the upper hand, and the armed person knows it. Intimidation.

We're not at war in this country.  Crime is dropping.  The chances of anyone being accosted on the street is almost nil.  More than half of the people in this country go about their lives year after year without being armed or even thinking about it.  I've lived over 60 years in America, much of it in Washington, DC, where we're told by gun nuts is a very dangerous place because until recently guns were banned. 

There is very little reason for anyone in this country to feel the need to carry an assault rifle in public.  I'm convinced a large percentage of people who walk around openly carrying a firearm are doing so to psychologically bully the rest of us.  They want to remind us that they are more powerful than us, that you better not "mess" with them.

--Trakker

The stupider the person, the more certain they are that they are always right

Comment posted on WaPost to a snarky article about the way the federal government categorizes their workers as essential vs. non-essential (essential workers must come to work when the government shuts down for severe weather events):

-------------------------------------------- 

hammeresq

8:22 AM EST

Outside of the military, there is not one essential worker that works for the federal government.

--------------------------------------------

Isn't it amazing that the stupider a person is the more certain they are that they know everything?

That's one reason our nation is on a downward slide - the willfully ignorant now have their own cable news channel and their own political party and far more political power than their numbers warrant. 

Every time there is an article about federal workers in the WaPost the comments section gets hammered with stupid, hateful posts like this, insisting that government workers are: lazy, overpaid, useless, pampered, a drain on the taxpayers, etc. and that we could fire 50% of them and the country wouldn't feel the difference. 

Anyone with an ounce of sense knows better, or at least is smart enough to investigate further before making a fool of themselves, but over the years I've come to understand that we have a frightening number of Americans who are willfully ignorant and need classes of people to hate and denigrate regardless of the facts. 

Sad.

--Trakker

We can debate ideas but not facts.

Recently I've had to delete comments by one of my readers. I don't like doing this, but I have minimum standards for comments: they have to be fact-based, logical, and make sense.

I have no problem with people disagreeing with my posts and explaining why in a comment.  I usually rebut it (if I have time) and sometimes these turn into a mini-debate. Fine, but to have an intelligent debate there must be some common ground and some respect for facts. 

You might recall a few years ago I had a long debate with commenter, Adspar, who saw things differently than I did but at least we both accepted the same reality, we just disagreed on how those facts affected our future.  I agreed with much of what he wrote but not his conclusions.  I enjoyed it but at some point we both realized we were at an impasse.

The commenter I recently banned (for the third time I believe) rejects facts and lives in a world where might makes right.  If you say it often enough and loud enough it becomes a fact.  For example, he recently crowed that Fox News is the most watched cable news network, by far, as though that proved anything.  They may be number one because they are smarter and right more often than the others, or they may be number one because they tell angry, bigoted people what they want to hear instead of the truth.  Just because more Americans believe God made the world in seven days than believe in evolution, it doesn't make evolution untrue.  And because a lot of rich energy companies have spent billions convincing people that people aren't affecting our climate in any negative way, 95+% of the professional climatologists say we are, and dangerously so and all the propaganda in the world won't change their conclusions.  Anyone who can't understand and accept these basic concepts should move on, but this individual didn't and insisted that his make-believe world was the reality I must accept.  Not in my lifetime.  So be it.

--Trakker