On the Trell With Sarah Palin

•  •  •  SCATOLOGY WEEK  •  •  • A workman draining blood out of turkeys looks on in disbelief as an unidentified man tumbles down the turkey wafer conveyor belt while Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin babbles about how brutal the “time consumption” was for her on the campaign “trell.” WTF does she think it would be like if she had …

Drumpf is the Result of the Crisis in the Do Nothing Republican Party

What’s Wrong With This Picture?  Yes, his mouth is open, but that’s not it. It’s that 44″ tie there that’s blowin’ in his wind.  This is exactly what Drumpf will look like as president, telling the press to “Get off my lawn!”— the lawn of his private Ireland “White House” golf course estate, and to go have sex with themselves back in Amerika. Several …

Teh Stupid: Donald Trump Replaces Sarah Palin

Trump is rapidly proving that he is only too competent to replace Palin as the embodiment of Teh Stupid.

KICK THEIR BUTTS, BERNIE.

Uncle Bernie
That’s right Uncle Bernie, KICK THEIR BUTTS.

“Their” being all those Americans who sit on their butts and don’t vote in elections.  “Their” being those Americans who aren’t even registered to vote.  “Their” being all Americans who think Politics in this country is broken beyond repair.

If you happen to own one of those butts mentioned above, or are just a less than enthusiastic voter when it comes to the 2016 presidential elections, because, well, you’re too busy— here’s a news flash for you— and try to imagine it being delivered with a swift kick to your buttocks:  The new base of the Democratic party is unmarried women, people of color, and young voters— the Rising American Electorate (RAE)— and they already represent a majority of voting-eligible citizens.

And that’s totally meaningless when the majority of them don’t actually vote.  Yes, they flexed their new-found electoral muscles to elect the first black president, and then blew off the 2010 midterm elections, because:

•  2.7% could not find their polling place
•  3.9% forgot to vote
•  5.5% experienced a registration issue
•  8.6% were out of town
•  10.0% 
were punishing their own party
•  10.2% don’t know what “elections” are
 11.8% said they were just plain indolent   
•  12.7% did not like the candidates or campaign issues
•  15.7% reported not being interested
•  18.9% were too busy

(Black and Red stats are real;  Purple stats are my best snarky guess. )

Non-voters are disproportionately young, single, less educated, and more likely to be of an ethnic minority than those who say they are infrequent voters, and those who are frequent voters.  Forty percent of nonvoters are under thirty years old, compared to 29% of infrequent voters and 14% of frequent voters.  Compared to 60% of infrequent voters, and 70% of frequent voters, 54% of nonvoters are Caucasian.

The perception that politics are controlled by special interests represents a significant excuse for lack of voter participation.  In recent surveys, a feeling that candidates “don’t really speak to them” was cited as a leading reason why infrequent voters and nonvoters justify not voting.

The kids are turned off from politics, they say.
Most of ’em don’t even want to hear about it.
All they want to do these days is lie around on waterbeds
and smoke that goddamn marrywanna … yeah, and just
between you and me Fred, that’s probably all for the best.
—HUNTER S. THOMPSON
Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72

And then there are voices (well, at least one voice) that says, yawn.. it’s Obama‘s fault, and it’s been his fault all along.  “Nothing better dramatizes the damage that President Obama has done to Democrats than the fact that Republicans now control the House of Representatives, the Senate, and a majority of governorships across America.  Obama’s political style depresses liberal Democratic voters, who then would not turn out on Election Day, while inflaming conservative Republican voters, who would turn out,” blah, blah, blah.

Public opinion, the mores— is the basic energy in social evolution and state development.  And when that energy is manifested through universal suffrage in the hands of uneducated and indolent majorities, we get the likes of George W. Bush;  Louie Gohmert;  Michele Bachmann;  Sarah Palin;  the current GOP Clown Car.

Representative government presupposes an intelligent, efficient, and universal electorate.  The character of government is always determined by the character of those who compose it.  As civilization progresses, suffrage needs to be effectively modified.  Every free and intelligent group of citizens represents a vital and functioning organ within the larger governmental organism.

Unless a free people are educated— taught to think intelligently and plan wisely— freedom usually does more harm than good.  When fifty percent of any nation’s people become brainwashed, uneducated, intellectually challenged buffoons, and possesses the ballot— that nation is doomed.  The dominance of mediocrity will spell the downfall of any nation.

[NOTE TO BERNIE]  Bernie, when you make it to the White House, and after you’ve solved all the really intractable problems facing America and the World, make sure voting is compulsory, and make it easy to do so.  And if they don’t vote, say because they think they’re too busy, not interested, don’t give a shit, then assess heavy fines against all who fail to cast their ballots.

The survival of democracy is dependent on successful representative government; and that is conditioned upon the practice of electing only those who are technically trained, intellectually competent, socially loyal, and morally fit.  Only by such provisions can government of the people, by the people, and for the people be preserved.
The URANTIA Book

McCain: Pallin’ Around With Terrarists?

Jon Stewart reviews another thrilling episode of the action-adventure  series, “McCain”

Obie Grump Kanobi, as Stewart calls our favorite galavanting action star and former POW, Senator John McCain (Warmonger-Az), has never seen an international conflict where US military forces shouldn’t just stay the fuck home.

As pointed out here about McCain in Tales From The Benghazi Crypt Keeper:

Just as he has never gotten over being tortured by the North Vietnamese, manifest in his ‘bomb the hell out of ‘em’ knee-jerk response to nearly every foreign policy crisis, he will never get over losing to The Black Man in The White House.

Early in President Obama’s first term, McCain beat the war drums on Iran. During the Arab Spring, he demanded that our default response be to arm every opposition group in sight, despite the fact that many of them are Islamic fundamentalists with Al Qaeda sympathies. The strategy of “leading from behind” that operated so effectively in overthrowing Libya’s Mohamar Qadaffi, costing not a single American life, makes McCain’s wrinkled and liver spotted skin crawl right off his malformed skeleton. (That skeletal malformation was the result of a crash landing he endured after being shot down over heavily populated Hanoi by the Vietnamese during one of his 23 bombing sorties.) This is a guy who really, really enjoys the smell of napalm in the morning.

The political point being that arming anyone and everyone who mouths the word “democracy” is not necessarily a trusted ally; that weapons provided to today’s “freedom fighters” won’t be used by anti-US forces tomorrow, a  point that Stewart drives home. (See, e.g. the Muhajadeen in Afghanistan, who we armed to fight the Soviets but who later morphed into today’s Al Qaeda and Taliban.)

In the clip above, one of the vaunted Syrian rebel commanders photographed with McCain during his secret trip to Syria (designed to undermine President Obama’s cautious foreign policy?) appears to be the same guy who kidnapped 11 Shiite religious pilgrims in Lebanon. That would, of course, make him a terrorist, assuming he uses the ransom money to buy weapons.

During the 2008 presidential election, McCain’s hand chosen VP candidate, Sarah Palin, accused Obama of “pallin’ around with terrorists.” This was an apparent reference to Obama’s acquaintance with former Weather Underground co-founder, Bill Ayers, who happened to be a professor at the University of Illinois at the same time Obama was teaching law there.

McCain seems to be as oblivious to irony as he is to critical judgment. A dangerous combination for someone who seems to have an open invitation from the Sunday morning talk show “public affairs” programmers, who regularly offer him a platform from which he can inflict his warmongering bias upon their considerable audience.  

To be fair, McCain seems to be somewhat saner on domestic matters. However, when his carefully self-cultivated image as a political Maverick is seriously challenged by the extreme right wing of the GOP, as it was on the issue of immigration when it could have determined his most recent re-election to the Senate,  he will default to doing whatever it takes to maintain his political survival.

For someone who has so much invested in the legend of his own mind, the image of him as the Crypt Keeper is, well, a keeper.

THE PUFFINGTON HOST

Click twice to enlarge

Puffington Host For those precious minutes you wanna waste on the lurid and stupid side of life.

No, fellow travellers, this is not the Onion, but maybe those guys are moonlighting the front page of the Puffington Post because they can’t stop themselves. So here’s my challenge to you, you that want to use your brain for more that a feces storage locker: Go to the front page of Puff Ho™ and see how many posts are worth your precious time.
I’ll wait.

So you came back with:

7 Struggles Of People Who Bite Their Nails

Okay I lied, why the fuck would I wait for you to waste your time if my whole poin… you know, forget it.

Mad To The Max: Paul Ryan, Beyond Blunderdome

Paul Ryan Beyond Blunderdome

The barn door has closed on yet another episode of CPAC’s Wingnut Woodstock, the annual conclave of conservaschism‘s most extreme proponents. (See our archives for previous entries.)

Among the 70+ speakers were the party’s last two failed GOP Veep candidates, Rep. Paul Ryan (R- Gault’s Gulch), who couldn’t be bothered to even mention his former running mate, Mitt Romney, who was also there;  and Sarah Palin (R-Alaskan Quitter), who couldn’t resist sucking up some sugar water poison from a Big Gulp and throwing some red meat to the Birthers while attacking Karl Rove:

“If these experts who keep losin’ elections and keep gettin’ rehired and gettin’ millions — if they feel that strong about who gets to run in this party, then they should buck-up or stay in the truck.”

Rand Paul, who won the presidential straw poll beating Marco Rubio, 25%-23%, also implicitly took a shot at Rove and the establishment wing of the party, calling it “stale and moss covered,” in need of a complete do-over.  Rubio took the opposite tack, saying that the party just needed better packaging, everything else is just fine… except maybe their attitude toward immigration, a word that curiously never passed his lips.  Ted Cruz responded politely to GOP’s “grey eminence” John McCain, after McCain called him a “whackobird” for supporting Paul’s 13 hour filibuster against extra-judicial targeted killings, ala drone strikes.

All told, over 70 speeches were given.  And while Donald Trump said nothing of substance, he will be remembered for making a further investment in self-parody, talking to a room full of empty chairs after tweeting enthusiastically about how the sponsors were expecting a standing room only crowd for the pleasure of his company.

Empty chairs TrumpSquint real hard and you might see Trump holding court for a handful of starstruck suckups

Noticeable for their absence were Past GOP luminaries New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and Virgina Governor Bob McDonnell weren’t invited this year because they had committed the unforgivable sin of, you know, actual governance, an activity antithetical to the overriding mission of modern conservatism— the wholesale dismantling of the US government (except as it benefits the 1%).

Which brings us to the substance of Paul Ryan’s speech, his proposed 2014 budget confabulation. The zombie eyed granny starver once again tried to disguise his Ayn Randian flavored social Darwinism as deficit reduction, framing his argument as the only rational approach to a country teetering on the edge of the apocalypse:

Unless we change course, we will have a debt crisis.  Pressed for cash, the government will take the easy way out:  It will crank up the printing presses.  The final stage of this intergenerational theft will be the debasement of our currency.  Government will cheat us of our just rewards.  Our finances will collapse.  The economy will stall.  The safety net will unravel. And the most vulnerable will suffer.

But it’s not too late.  This budget provides an exit ramp from the current mess— and an entry ramp to a better future.  Unlike the President’s last budget, which never balanced, this budget achieves balance within ten years.

Washington Post and MSNBC economic policy wonk Ezra Klein comments:

These are tremendously important paragraphs. They’re emphasized a few pages later, in the first real section of the budget, which is entitled “The Debt Crisis Ahead.”  These paragraphs matter because they serve as Ryan’s justification for his budget.  They are why we need to throw 35 million people off health insurance.  They are why we need to cut deep into education and infrastructure and food stamps and housing assistance.  They are why this budget is an act of mercy rather than cruelty — because if this future is the only alternative, then this budget is painful but necessary medicine.

But it’s not.  Ryan’s nightmare scenario isn’t likely even in the absence of new policy.  A reasonable assumption of future debt is about 112 percent of GDP come 2037 — and that’s assuming the repeal of the sequester.  That’s too high for comfort, and there’s some evidence that debt at that level could harm the economy.  But there’s no evidence that it would create the kind of Mad Max-style scenario Ryan paints.

Ryan’s GOP budget takes a meat ax to the social safety net for the old, poor, and infirm, all the while sparing the military/medical/prison/financial industrial complex or any other corporate interest group from any sacrifice whatsoever. Ryan ignores deficit expanding tax expenditures that overwhelmingly favor the wealthy, which in 2009 cost the federal government a cool trillion; says nothing about eliminating tens of billions of dollars in direct taxpayer subsidies to hugely profitable industries like the oil companies and Big Ag, many of whom don’t even pay any income tax thanks to lobbyist provided loopholes; and lowers tax rates across the board, which again, overwhelmingly favors the rich.MORE. . .“Mad To The Max: Paul Ryan, Beyond Blunderdome”