“a woman walks into a bar…” at El Chubasco, Echo Park

“a woman walks into a bar…” at El Chubasco, Echo Park

Thank you, Donald Trump. And It Pains Me To Even Write His Name

The clear race baiting, the buffoonery of a reprehensible clown - I'm waiting for someone to rush up and mess up that cotton candy comb-over - has achieved one positive thing: he has single-handedly galvanized President Obama's base. There is no turning back. The only way to defeat this ugliness is to work for a gigantic landslide victory for Obama's second term. I've always believed he would be a two-term President, and for anyone who knows me, knows the limitations of my admiration of his policies - but, that said, this is not a policy issue. This is way bigger than that. This is about our humanity, the core of what separates us from...who? aliens? animals? Do animals discriminate on the basis of race? Fur? Leave it to the supposedly highest form of life, humans, to want to destroy one another for some incomprehensible ideal.

We cannot abide the open racism of the right, its fearless expression protected by politicians who validate that racism by not out-rightly repudiating it because they need those Taliban Tea Party votes, after-all, to support their whacked out agendas. 

What Trump has managed to achieve, that I'm not sure even David Axelrod and Jim Messina could do, is to have shocked the base to the point of re-energizing them to work hard for Obama's re-election. And that's no small feat given the discontent over a multitude of issues. Trump has trumped the inertia, the disappointment, the discontent with Obama's performance. There is only one issue we can agree on now and that's WINNING! (Thanks Charlie!)

The more the Right sustains its ill-disguised racism, the more the base will coalesce. It's a horrible reason to come together but come together we will. Winning will be the best revenge.

Tea Party Taliban Imposing Sharia-like Law

With the imminent shutdown of the government by the Teabaggers - make no mistake, they are the ones whose intractability is pushing this country to the brink - they are beginning to look a lot like a cult enacting their own type of Sharia law by imposing their repressive and regressive moral code onto all of us 'non-believers'. NO health screenings for women, NO sex education in school, NO abortion counseling or abortion funding NO matter how you got pregnant, NO arts funding, "Waste of money!", NO learning to read, write or 'rithmetic, "Cut education funding. Now!" It's the uneducated hating to learn anything because it might upset their vacuous core 'values'. And god forbid anyone else should read a book and find out that the Philistine Teabaggers are all full of shit. NO climate change. NO birth certificate. NO government. NONONONONO. 

So, the Tea Party is taking a page out of the Al Qaeda handbook. For al-Qaeda, Sharia represents a perfect system for ordering human affairs. And for the Taliban Tea Party, that is exactly how they want the system to be: no room for diversity of thought, a strict adherence to their commandments or punishment by slow asphyxiation of the mind by depriving one of books, classrooms and learning. They want a country devoid of creative thinking, going down the slippery slope to next banning hip hop, all languages but bad English, and just shooting immigrants on site.

Wikipedia calls the Tea party an American populist party and goes on to describe Populism, as a political philosophy urging social and political system change that favors "the people" over "the elites", or favors the common people over the rich and wealthy business owners. Read that, per the Tea Party, as deriding anything that can help “the people” like crushing collective bargaining (I wonder if they know about the Triangle Fire and other apocalyptic worker tragedies and child labor that would still be going on today if it weren’t for collective bargaining aka unions.) And read that as the Tea Party turning the other cheek with regard to obscene corporations, “the elites” (the Kochs), making out like Jesse James in Vegas. As usual, they have everything ass-backwards. 

Here’s their mission from their website: “A community committed to standing together, shoulder to shoulder, to protect our country and the Constitution upon which we were founded!” Yes! With an exclamation mark 'n all! It’s like somebody in grade two wrote it. Or the Republican caucus. Meaningless drivel, and yet the political muscle of their miniscule minions is stupefying.

Obama Window Just Closed. Where's Bulworth?

Mid-term elections 2010 are finally fucking over. There has got to be a better way to touch voters other than interrupt them 15 times a day with phone calls, robo or otherwise. If I weren't such a 'voterphile', I might have slammed the phone, pulled the plug and said the hell with all of yous. There has to be some sort of technology that indicates a phone number has been called before, like a million times. And it would certainly be helpful to know how many times a number has been called in one’s own campaign. This is software just waiting for an algorithm. Someone get busy before the next onslaught of phone calls that's just around the corner.

Ah yes, the presidential campaign starts now, and we are about to endure hours of pundit prognostications, ruminations and colossally boring chit chat about whether Sarah Palin is going to run, can she actually speak in sentences, hours and hours of microscopic dissection of the Tea Party, watch Christine O'Donnell rise from the cauldron of ignorance to reality show freak, and on and on. But, this isn't going to be as bad as watching the Democratic party flounder like a fish on a Republican hook or as bad as watching President Obama being played by the Republicans like a cat batting around a mouse giving it momentary hope that it's life will be saved only to have it gobbled and spit out like a tasty snack.

That's what it's come to since Obama has squandered his window of opportunity to actually govern with the spine of a leader who could see that 'compromise' with the opposition wasn't going anywhere. Obama, who projected his persona to be the avatar as political savior, the man who was going to take the Washington bulls by the balls and change things up like he was supposed to. He went to Washington and did things old school. He never manned up. And now that precious window of opportunity to get things done is down the toilet.

Oh, I can hear the defenders repeat that old saw of theirs that Obama was never what we progressives thought he was. They say we projected onto him what we wanted to see. Well, my friends, that's not exactly true. You see, Obama was hoisted to victory on the backs of progressives who supported him early on, and Mr. Obama never said to progressives, "Look, I appreciate your support but I just want you to know that's not who I am. I'm a squishy moderate who will capitulate to Republican bullying...just so you know."  He never said, “Thank you” either. Instead, he took progressives for granted and wouldn’t even talk to them until his recent summit with progressive bloggers. Seriously. The defenders will say it's all in his books, and we should have known better. That we were hoping for miracles. Well, yes we were. But no we weren't. We were going with a guy who let us think he was a leader. Yeah, I know the other old saw about how campaigning is different from governing. So what.

And how about those much sought after independents who also believed that Obama would bring some brio to the White House. While independents may have voted to repudiate the Republicans, they also believed in the change Obama promised so relentlessly, that it would be different from the last eight years of unintelligent design by the ignorant enforcers. And now where are they? Driven back to the other side by an unfulfilled vision of what might have been. Yes, independents are notoriously fickle, but you have to give people some love to keep them interested. They didn't get any and neither did progressives. When your base doesn't think you love them, they're gone, onto the next cute boy or girl with pie-in-the-sky possibilities.

Now, more gridlock and Republican bullying, and any chance that any kind of progressive change will happen is as remote as John Boehner becoming a Democrat. And by progressive, I simply mean 'moving forward'.

My hope is that Obama will use his veto power to at least keep the conservative agenda in check. However, according to the following definition, we could be fucked on that score, too, with the Republican majority in Congress: A presidential veto is the rejection of a bill passed by the majority votes of both the House of Representatives and the Senate. While Congress can vote to override a presidential veto, causing the bill to become law without the president's approvals, this is rarely done. (Ha, ha, suuuure. We'll see.) More often than not, the threat of presidential veto is sufficient motivation for Congress to modify the bill prior to its passage. (Republicans laughing)

Yes, in conclusion, I put this mid-term debacle squarely on Obama's shoulders. He said so himself. And I certainly don't think we wouldn't have lost seats, but if there had been any enthusiasm for how Obama was doing, then his base would have shown him some love and done anything to go out and vote. But disappointment prevailed and that was not to be.

Where's our Bulworth?

For Geezuz Kris Sake...the news of the day according to the Huffington Post for example

Apologize for format...couldn't fix it...looking for other blog channel. thnx

Senate: U.S. Afghan Bases Employ Guards Tied To Taliban  This is so laughable that it doesn't merit comment. Wait...no, "Where was HR?"

Lawyer ARRESTED For Staying Silent During Pledge Of Allegiance  shit, I should be in solitary confinement
 

Fed's $2 Trillion May Buy Few Jobs  Fuck, yer kidding, right??

Despite Bashing 'Obamacare' As Unconstitutional, Joe Miller Admits He Got Government Health Care  What an asshole. 
 

KNEE JERKS  Isn't it amazing that all these so-called smart people are appointed to head these agencies? Makes me sympathetic to Tea Partiers who hate the fucking government...they got that part right. 

Facebook Cofounders: Legalize it  Right on, man. 

Top Senate Dem: Halt Foreclosures  Did that just occur to you? 

Fed's $2 Trillion May Buy Few Jobs  Show me the money? Who gotten the fucking money? Not me. Not my poor slob neighbor who's just about to lose his home cause he doesn't have a shitty job. 

Anderson Cooper Takes On Vince Vaughn Movie's Use Of 'So Gay' (VIDEO)  If Anderson Cooper is so offended by the use of 'gay' then why doesn't he fucking come out? He's adorable but he's a fucking coward. What an asshole. 

Albert Mohler, Southern Baptist Leader, On Yoga: Not Christianity HaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaH. What an asshole.  

National Christian Group Pulls Support For Anti-Gay Event, Calls For 'Tolerance'  That's cause half the organization sucks cock and calls it 'abstinence' and calls it 'tolerance'. Shit. 

Obama: Election Groups 'That Receive Foreign Money' Are A 'Threat To Our Democracy'  Shit, China practically owns us. We'd be up shit's creek if 'ferinners' didn't invest in this country. What the hell's he talkin' about?  

Christina Hendricks Sounds Off On Cathy Horyn's 'Big Girl' Dig  Awwww, Christina's 'feelings were hurt' because she wore some big ass dress that the fashionistas who, btw, would never qualify for the red fucking carpet cause they're too bloody awful, and this qualifies as news. Waaaaaaaaaaa. Is this important to some people? 

Bristol Palin Hasn't Lost Weight On 'Dancing With The Stars'  Aaaaaaaargh. 

PHOTOS: Hundreds Of Incredible New Species Discovered  What? THIRD PARTIES EMERGE. Buh bye Tea Party. Well, you weren't even a party, really.

Vanity Fair On The 'Real' McCain: 'A Ruthless And Self-Centered Survivor'  What an asshole. If ever anyone qualifies for 'asshole of the century', McCain is it. Forget all the POW shit and Mavericky stuff...the man is a charlatan. Thassit. 

Karen Owen's Duke Sex-Rating PowerPoint Goes Viral (VIDEO)   Oh, Hurray! Finally, a worthy story.  Some puerile jealous female wrote: "...the overall glorification of Karen Owen's PowerPoint and the implied sentiment that it was an act of sexual liberation equates "shattering the glass ceiling" with humiliating members of the opposite sex. Why should we congratulate Karen Owen for subjecting men to the objectification, embarrassment and harassment that women have fought against for years." Whaaaat?? You're against this, WHY??? What an asshole. Oh I forgot she dissed a dude for being CANADIAN! What a jerkess.

And, that's it for the news this day Thursday, October 7, 2010...almost Friday, October 8 and more asinine news stories.  TTFN (ta ta for now)...

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Presidency SAVED!

This morning President Obama signed what is being called the Health Care Reform bill. Phew. But what I'm feeling is exactly what Dennis Kucinich wrote, in an article in Esquire, about his decision to support the bill. Happy that it passed, because if it didn't, Obama's presidency would have been dealt a severe/death blow and this was an historical moment after 100 years of trying to do something about health care reform. As much as I am at odds with many of the administration's policies, I certainly don't want it paralyzed for the next three years. Too bad the reason for supporting it, though, is "think of the alternative". All you have to do is hear one minute of the loonie right and braindead Republicans to feel grateful we have a Democratic President and Democratic MAJORITY in office.  

So, just to be clear, this bill that was painstakingly signed today, after a tortuous year of smoke and mirrors, is not a health care reform bill by any stretch of the imagination. As Nalini Chilkov wrote this morning, "Let's Be Honest: Health Insurance Reform is Health Care Reform". While the Republicans ponder how to repeal the bill and support, in their silence, their nefarious disgusting shout outs, racial and homophobic slurs in the hope that their negative strategy will stir Americans' family values, as they puzzlingly crawl their way to taking what they believe is the high road (which they self-righteously believe they're on), Democrats all over the nation should now be working hard to get single payer systems in their home states. Single payer is the only way to reduce costs, cover everyone and get rid of the insurance companies once and for all. Learn about single payer here: California One Care has a comprehensive strategy for getting single payer in California. And, as we know, as California goes, so goes the rest of the world!

There is much work to do to fix the bill that just passed. Ahead are contentious years of trying to fix this bill to get it to where single payer already is. So much wasted energy bobbing and weaving lobbyists, making backroom deals, tense confrontations with opponents when all of that same energy could be put toward creating a viable single payer system instead of creating mystifying bandaid solutions along the way. 

Oh, it would be ever so nice if OFA decided to put its millions of grassroots troops and organizers behind single payer (I sound like a broken record and will continue to do so) and make a real contribution to President Obama's agenda. After all, Obama did say that single payer was the only way to go...once the Dems took back the White House, took back the Senate, took back the House. And Voila! We have done all of that...and now we have a bill that slightly regulates insurance companies and does nothing for health care, preventative or otherwise. What a victory.

Get to work! Please.

UPDATE: I just got a text from President Obama - bet you did, too - calling this bill a Health Insurance Reform bill confirming my post.

State of Obama

So I watched the State of the Union, and it felt like I was watching a campaign speech. Sadly, I find it hard to put much stock in anything Obama says...I want to see action. Trying the bipartisanship tact again was a joke except that it might have made the Repubs laff uncomfortably for a second.

A big thing I wish Obama would do is look straight ahead when speaking to the people. I understand the whole tele-prompter thingy but, for god's sake, look us straight in the eye. He did it for about 2 seconds toward the end of the speech but other than that it was left right left right all night long. It would have been so much more effective if he actually talked to 'us'. He did it in the 2004 speech and look what happened! As for any proposals, time will tell. Still waiting for some cajones. Progressive cajones. Yawn.