Burritos and Politics

1. The United States isn’t broke—we have a revenue intake problem.

2. 97% of Planned Parenthood’s services aren’t abortions; the Hyde Amendment bans federal money for abortion.

3. The corporate tax rate of 35% is a fallacy due to the tax code. Also, taxes are at their lowest point in history, so where are the jobs, Republicans?

4. The rich do not create jobs. In fact, since the Bush tax cuts, and the subsequent renewal of those cuts by President Obama, we have had the least growth of any decade since the great depression.

If everyone could get these into their heads, my head will stop hurting.

Really quick on the recent developments on Wisconsin. First off, the Republicans should not longer call Wisconsin a “swing state”. They’ve lost it for the next 50 years.

Second, everyone knows that most Republicans (and I say most because let’s get real, not every Republican hates working people as much as Scott Walker and the Koch brothers do), want you to work for less, have less benefits, and let the market decide if you starve to death while they line their pockets and buy another Bentley. I just have to wonder if Governor Walker is going to the next logical step and crack down on those pesky government employees like fire fighters, police officers, teachers and snow plow drivers–demanding pay checks. Just think how we could balance the budget if people worked for no money at all! Damn unions demanding people getting paid.

Third, is this really how a conference committee should work?

Republicans may have won this time for a brief period, but the recall effort is in effect, and as they like to remind us so often, elections have consequences.

What hasn’t been stated enough during the whole debate is that this isn’t about wages or health benefits. The unions agreed to the cuts and paying more for their own health care. This was about collective bargaining. This was a much more philosophical debate as to whether or not workers get to negotiate what the products of their life and work are worth. Apparently, since they make a government salary, that work is invalid. Should have gone to work for Geico, you lousy parasites! Remember how much more noble working in the private sector is?

Bill Hicks uttered that statement over twenty years ago when talking about pro-life people who kill abortion doctors.

It pains me to say that Bill isn’t alive today to react to this--although, with all the cigarettes he smoked, this may have given him a heart attack if he was just from the sheer absurdity.

From the article:

Under Rep. Franklin’s bill, HB 1, women who miscarry could become felons if they cannot prove that there was “no human involvement whatsoever in the causation” of their miscarriage. There is no clarification of what “human involvement” means, and this is hugely problematic as medical doctors do not know exactly what causes miscarriages.

I’d really like to hear the rational behind this. Whatever veiled trite that piles out of this asshole’s mouth would probably be worthy of a laugh–if it wasn’t totally horrifying that he believed it. What’s next, Republicans? Prosecuting men who have wet dreams? Or how about those anti-masturbation laws that Chrstine O’Donnell was dreaming up? I’m sure whatever’s next is something so ridiculous I can’t even come up with it.

Edit: This link is a win of epic variety:

As I’m sure you know, more than 50% of fertilized eggs –Georgia citizens! — naturally don’t implant, and are flushed out of the body during menstruation. I am personally concerned that my own murdering woman-body may have flushed out some human beings, and I may have flushed them down the toilet without knowing that I was disposing of Georgia citizens in such an undignified way . . .  To that end, I attach a picture of my latest used tampon. I am preserving this tampon, as well as all of my other tampons, pads, feminine hygiene products and soiled panties from my current menstrual cycle, so that the Georgia State Police can come collect them as evidence. I would also be happy to drop the specimens off at your office, should you want to examine them yourself.

So.Fucking.Funny.

Aside from the awesome number of Star Wars references plastering protest signs (let’s get real, some of these signs are truly creative and hilarious)  in Wisconsin, as American citizens we really should be behind the unions in Wisconsin–and now elsewhere around the country–protesting to keep their rights to collectively bargain. Why? There’s a myriad of reasons.

Do you enjoy having weekends? How about sick pay? Health benefits paid for or partially paid for by your employer? Maternity leave? Thank the union movement. Yes, the union movements in the early and mid 1900s brought about many of these benefits we now see as rights.

Unions have been a whipping post for conservative politicians since the 1980s because they enjoy benefits on the job that many of us do not enjoy. They arguably make it harder for businesses to do business–because they demand things from their employers. Part of the job of the union is to get the best possible deal for the collective benefit of their employees–hence the term “collective bargaining”. The idea that the unions should have to give some back and share some pain in the economy is agreed across the board, EVEN BY THE UNIONS THEMSELVES .

The Governor has made clear that this is an effort, not to close the budget deficit, but to break the union by stripping them their rights to collectively bargain. In fact, Scott Walker himself created this budget deficit by handing out tax cuts without paying for them. This further enforces two things: a. Republicans don’t realize that tax cuts do not pay for themselves, and b. they don’t care about the people who do the upkeep on society–mostly because they don’t care about society so long as their paycheck is bigger.

This Governor’s push to destroy the unions is a larger push among the conservative right, corporations, and billionaires to break working people’s collective rights to a job. There seems to be this idea that workers are sponges off their employer. But people seem to forget that the employer can’t make profits without the work put in by the workers. The relationship is symbiotic. This is a movement to make work far less symbiotic than it already is.

This is a war on working people. Plain and simple. We should all be on their side. We can no longer blame people for collectively bargaining contracts from their employers as a problem. Do unions have their bad apples and ridiculous expectations? Sometimes, yes. But so does the TEA Party that conservative America continues to suck up to.

The outrage at unions from some people I would imagine is a certain hint of jealousy that they can’t attain the same benefits from employers. This should be cause for more people to try to start to unionize and to gain these rights. It isn’t easy to organize in many workplaces; I know this from experience. I was once threatened–well, not threatened, but met with fierce opposition and received a strongly worded talking to by an employer when rumblings began to surface about my efforts. This should be a call to support the Employee Free Choice Act and to have other classes of workers begin to unionize again.

The union movement built the middle class that we are all taught is part of the American dream to become. The efforts of this Governor and others to break these unions is an effort to further erode the idea that you are not subjugated or worthy of benefits from your employer, but that you are merely, for lack of a better term, a pack-mule and you should be thankful for it.

I’ve voiced a lot of skepticism over the TEA Party’s grassroots bona fides, and what their goals are–and I think you have to be skeptical of their goals, because their goals are really knee jerk reactions and platitudes that sound good when you’re yelling them dressed as Ben Franklin.

However seemingly innocuous or annoying you may find these so-called “patriots” one thing is abundantly clear: they don’t care about you.

Yes, I’m here to say what has been so clear since this movement of civil war enthusiasts reared its ugly head across the bow of American politics. The TEA Party is not a democratic movement; it’s not a grassroots movement; and it’s not the movement of “We the People”. No. The TEA Party’s true vision is the idea of Democracy of one. In other words, their signs should read “Me the People.”

Let’s go over some of the facts of this movement:

1. They hate government–except when it’s paying for their medicare scooters as Matt Taibbi’s article in Rolling Stone so adeptly pointed out (which is well worth the read if you have some time).
2. They want to cut spending–unless it’s for services they use like medicare.
3. They oppose deficit spending–except when Reagan or Bush II did it.
4. They hate democrats–because let’s get real, they hate America and want to turn us into a socialist marxist communist fascist dictatorship despite the fact that those ideologies can’t exist together.
5. They hate reading; they love Fox News (these are linked because it’s impossible to like reading and Fox News at the same time).
6. They love Sarah Palin (See number 5).

The TEA Party elected a number of House Republicans last November to “trim the fat” of government. Like stripping funding for Planned Parenthood–those pesky poor women and their health needs are affecting the deficit AND getting abortions! We can ignore the fact that federal funding for abortions has been illegal since the Hyde Amendment was passed or we can ignore the fact that of the services Planned Parenthood provides, abortions services make up only three percent of those services.

So why did I highlight this particular issue? Because it proves that the TEA Party is the Party of Me. This is a group of people who truly lack the empathy needed to interact in democratic life. The idea that we should strip Planned Parenthood of its funding is truly one of the clearest ideas that this group of people hates people who are not like them and cannot sit down and realize that people are put in situations other than they find themselves in.

I’ve constantly heard people in the TEA Party echoing the “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” mentality; however, it’s widely known that most TEA Partiers are fairly well-off, white, middle-class, babyboomers–the ultimate over-privileged complainers. Yes, the babyboomers are the ultimate complainers; they’re the most self-centered demographic in American civil life. The want to go back to the post-war fifties that they love talking about, but did nothing to help create. They want to go back to the “Leave It to Beaver” 1950s that never really existed–it only existed in their minds. They have this vision that all of America is this bastion of suburban family centered culture (despite most of the population lives in the cities).

These TEA Party people will likely go away after the economy recovers, but until that happens they’re here to echo the sentiment of “DON’T LET THE GOVERNMENT TAKE OVER SOCIAL SECURITY!” Because that’s ultimately what the TEA Party is: a movement not based in information, but on gut feelings and possibly schizophrenic paranoia about those “other people” who aren’t like Me (the People).

Edit: From this NY Times Article

They loved the cuts to a jet engine program. They applauded the curtailing of environmental regulators. When Mr. West, a first-term lawmaker, recounted his vote for an amendment to return unused stimulus dollars to the nation’s treasury, the crowd erupted with approval.

Then out came the pie chart, showing the giant slice of the budget consumed by Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid, untouched by lawmakers. “We have got to make some hard choices,” Mr. West said. “We gotta tackle that right now.”

The room of roughly 400 people grew silent.

The Party of Me the People, everyone.

So I’ve been a little out of the loop on what’s going on in Egypt, but from what I can tell the people are rising up against their dictator of a president. Good. Hopefully we will see a democratic transition of power. Hopefully the least amount of violence possible will occur, and hopefully people stay as safe as possible. That being said, as people who do enjoy a relatively peaceful, democratic system of government, as a people, we should stand in solidarity with the people of Egypt.

Photos of the protests can be seen here. Warning, some images are very graphic.

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Does anyone else think it’s totally fucked that to balance out the difference between The President and Michele Bachmann, the Republicans are using Paul Ryan? If nothing else, it shows how batshit that party has become. To balance out the center and the extreme, frothing-at-the-mouth level conservative, they’re using the guy that even John Boehner says goes too far on Social Security and Medicare. Ah, American politics.

Calling people NAZIs really isn’t okay, because chances are: A. no one on TV has mass murdered over 6 millions Jews and countless other minority races, and B. Because really, hyperbole has to have its limits. But I’m just going to leave this right here:

All I’m saying is: if it looks like  a NAZI, and it creates propaganda like a NAZI and it’s a racist . . . well, all I’m saying is, maybe if you don’t want to be called a NAZI, you shouldn’t dress like one on your book cover . . .

I could write a really lengthy entry on my feelings on MSNBC’s decision to can Olbermann, but I really don’t need more than a few sentences, the crux of which is this: I think it’s total horseshit.

Olbermann got pegged by the right and so-called “moderates” for being overtly liberal. So what? In a world where Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin dominate the news cycle, what’s wrong with a little liberalism? In fact, I further say, why do does the media criticize those who are openly liberal for being openly liberal, while Glenn Beck continues to be harping for the days where the founding fathers could not give you voting rights–and is outright lying about issues (death panels instantly come to mind)–when someone questions his horseshit, uses “the liberal media” as a scapegoat when he’s called out on his, let’s not parse words here, mostly schizophrenic racist paranoia that would embarrass most mental patients.

Olbermann never said he wasn’t biased, and never claimed to be balanced. In fact, I recall on one of his shows, him saying, “If you haven’t heard the news by the time you get to my show, then you weren’t looking for the news anyway.”

The modern left needs a voice, and in a world where paranoia seems to be replacing discourse at a ever-increasing rate, I have to fear that Glenn Beck’s vision of America may one day be considered the center.