Month: December 2011

A Jobs Pipeline

This kind of crap (linking the payroll tax cut extension to the Keystone XL pipeline) is precisely why we’d be better off as a nation if Obama had come to the Rose Garden back on Day Two and announced his immutable opposition to wind power, trains, mass transit of any kind, single payer health care, mortgage adjustments and cram-down, and massive civil and criminal penalties for the banksters in general and claw-back of Wall Street salaries specifically. Had he done so, odds are at least two or three of these items would have gotten done per “give us x or we destroy the country” showdowns. With a heavy heart he’d show up and sign the dreaded bill(s). By now he’d have a legislative record on par with the New Deal and the Great Society and would be hard pressed to find new things to “oppose.”

We are in an era in which whatever the President is for, the GOP is against. If it angers the dirty fucking hippies, then so much the better. They don’t even hide it anymore. Here’s Ohio’s Representative Jim Jordan:

“Frankly, the fact that the president doesn’t like [the Keystone XL project] makes me like it even more’’

It is long past time to plan accordingly and make them pay political prices for this. Over and over again. Start picking the things they love the most and convert them into policy proposals that you can live with or even like. Come out for them. Propose the legislation. Force votes. Make ads about the inevitable “flip flop” in their districts. All 50 states. Lather, rinse, repeat.

A Jobs Pipeline

President Obama is replacing our merit-based, opportunity-based society with an entitlement society. In an entitlement society, everyone is handed the same rewards, regardless of education, effort and willingness to take risk. That which is earned by some is redistributed to others. And the only people to enjoy truly disproportionate rewards are the people who do the redistributing — the government.

Mitt Romney, accurately describing the inevitable and country-destroying results of going from a 35% top marginal rate to a 39.6% top marginal rate. Let’s not have anyone ask him about or call him on this issue specifically. Shrill.

Basic Human Rights

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton:

Some have suggested that gay rights and human rights are separate and distinct; but, in fact, they are one and the same. […] Like being a woman, like being a racial, religious, tribal, or ethnic minority, being LGBT does not make you less human. And that is why gay rights are human rights, and human rights are gay rights.

It is violation of human rights when people are beaten or killed because of their sexual orientation, or because they do not conform to cultural norms about how men and women should look or behave. It is a violation of human rights when governments declare it illegal to be gay, or allow those who harm gay people to go unpunished. It is a violation of human rights when lesbian or transgendered women are subjected to so-called corrective rape, or forcibly subjected to hormone treatments, or when people are murdered after public calls for violence toward gays, or when they are forced to flee their nations and seek asylum in other lands to save their lives. And it is a violation of human rights when life-saving care is withheld from people because they are gay, or equal access to justice is denied to people because they are gay, or public spaces are out of bounds to people because they are gay. No matter what we look like, where we come from, or who we are, we are all equally entitled to our human rights and dignity.

It is, however, a mortal certainty that a) Obama is no different than Bush –and– b) that the 2012 election will have no impact whatever on the policy of the country. A pox on both their houses, and all that. May as well not vote, or just vote for whomever makes me chuckle on the day and just learn to live with the GOP-tapped nominee as a result. Nothing will change anyway.

Well, let’s just check in on what the GOP candidates are thinking re: the gays and their “rights”:

Governor GoodHair:

there is a troubling trend here beyond the national security nonsense inherent in this silly idea. This is just the most recent example of an administration at war with people of faith in this country. Investing tax dollars promoting a lifestyle many Americas of faith find so deeply objectionable is wrong.

President Obama has again mistaken America’s tolerance for different lifestyles with an endorsement of those lifestyles. I will not make that mistake.

Meh, he has no chance anyway. What about perennial frontrunner Rick Santorum?

Obviously the administration is promoting their particular agenda in this country, and now they feel its their obligation to promote those values not just in the military, not just in our society, but now around the world with taxpayer dollars.

He said he’s for traditional marriage, and now he’s promoting gay lifestyles and gay rights, and he’s fighting against traditional marriage within the courts, and I think he needs to be honest.

I said “Meh;” show me somebody up front. How about Newt, on the horror of gay marriage:

I believe that marriage is between a man and woman. It has been for all of recorded history and I think this is a temporary aberration that will dissipate. I think that it is just fundamentally goes against everything we know.

Reminiscent of Cain’s “wash it off” approach.

And, of course, Mittmentum holds the same basic view on most days:

The story on same-sex marriage is that I have the same position on that, that I had from the very beginning. I’m in favor of traditional marriage, I oppose same-sex marriage. At the same time, I don’t believe in discriminating in employment or opportunity for gay individuals. So I favor gay rights, I do not favor same-sex marriage. That has been my position all along.

Elections have consequences. There are major differences between the governing approach of the two major parties. You’re getting one or the other come 2012. Vote. Vote in primaries, especially. Show up to town halls. Occupy things. Yell and scream if you feel the need. But vote. Every time. It will make a difference. Maybe not a difference that’s immediately and tangibly Your Own Personal Heaven, but even the little ones add up. Just like this.

Really poor children, in really poor neighborhoods have no habits of working and have nobody around them who works so they have no habit of showing up on Monday. They have no habit of staying all day, they have no habit of I do this and you give me cash unless it is illegal.

Newt Gingrich, disgraced former Speaker, defends his opposition to child labor laws in truly convincing fashion. Ladies and gentlemen, your GOP-2012 front runner.
Source: Washington Post