Let me see if I got this straight: Hong Kong is paralyzed with protesters in the streets because of what? The people get to vote on their government officials, but the only candidates on the ballot have to be pre-approved by the ruling elite.
My question is, when did Hong Kong become the 51st state?
Not since Democratic Governor George Wallace stood in the Alabama schoolhouse door has there been an uglier political stunt than what the congressional Republicans are now perpetrating. Not coincidentally, Wallace would go on to lead his simpatico reactionaries to a third party, one they would eventually abandon for Republicanism and morph into the Tea Party movement.
Over time, Wallace himself would come to regret and apologize for his belligerent stupidity. Sadly, today’s Johnny Rebs and neo-Copperheads will likely carry theirs to the grave. And the future of the Republican party along with it.
They’re not just stupid, they’re stupoids — half-human/half-robot beings engineered to exhibit knee-jerk stupidity whatever the situation.
They were all over the Sunday morning new shows, parroting the same stupoid talking point: “We’re going to do everything we can to keep the government open while protecting our constituents from the devastating effects of Obamacare.”
Riiiiight… Even if that means shutting down the government or defaulting on our debts, regardless of the harm that does to the entire country.
Gee, that sounds so familiar. Where have I heard that before?
Oh, yeah. “We destroyed the village in order to save it.”
How’d that turn out?
Re Egypt: Is it a coup, or isn’t it?
This would simply be a case of an unsolicited language police technicality, except for one thing: the news media and politicians won’t give it a rest.
Politically, it matters because an official finding that it’s a coup would trigger a cut-off of military aid to Egypt. To the rest of us, it matters because all the time wasted on the pointless distraction of bickering would be better spent on substantive issues.
A few of the real answers the American people need:
So, was it, then, a coup?
Those who answer yes argue that since the military overthrew the elected government, that makes it a coup.
Those who answer no argue that, even though the military ousted the government, they then installed an interim civilian government rather than seizing power for themselves, therefore it’s not a coup.
It turns out, there’s a perfectly good label that applies to that sort of situation: putsch – a sudden and decisive change of government illegally or by force.
A coup may or may not be a putsch, and a putsch may or may not be a coup.
But as of today, with the military’s declaration of a de facto state of martial law, it’s a distinction without a difference.
Apparently, there really is a Bumphuc, Egypt.
Old Southern joke: A state trooper pulls over a little old lady and asks her, “Ma’am, do you have any I.D.?” and she answers, “‘Bout whut?”
Yes, Hillary Clinton is right: North Carolina enacted legislation made up of the Who’s Who of voter suppression efforts.
And yes, the Suppressitories are right about one thing: all voters should have to present a valid picture ID at polling places.
But (cue the drumroll, please) both sides are also utterly clueless: neither side says absolutely anything about addressing the underlying problem, namely that there are millions of Americans – actual citizens – many if not most of them poor, elderly, with limited transportation and mobility, who lack a valid, universally accepted, identification card.
Republican silence reinforces the charge that they’re flagrantly targeting those people in order to make it more difficult for them to vote.
Democrats’ silence invites the charge that they’re simply grandstanding to their base.
Here’s a novel proposal: FIX THE DAMN PROBLEM!
If census takers can go door-to-door and count them, someone can go door-to-door and help them get proper IDs. If state and local governments won’t undertake the task, then local Democratic parties and civil rights groups should pounce on this opportunity.
Look at just some of the things, not even counting voting, you can’t do without a valid picture ID:
If you really care about these unfortunate Americans, get off your butt, get organized, and actually help them.
Because meanwhile, the little old lady still has no I.D.
After weeks of schoolyard taunting by China and Russia, President Obama flexed his muscles and refused to sit at the lunchroom table with Vladimir Putin.
Yee-ouch! That’ll teach ’em a lesson!
This isn’t the first time Putin has orchestrated a humiliatingly awkward moment for an American president. Remember the Russian invasion of Georgia in 2008, with Putin sitting next to George Bush on stage, elbowing him and making jokes while Bush looked like a helpless douchebag? Probably not, but that’s what happened.
In the zero-sum game of international power politics, anything that makes the US or its president look weak makes China and Russia look stronger, hence the high-stakes game of keep-away played with Edward Snowden substituting for Barack Obama’s science homework, complete with the ruffians’ minions standing in the shadows waving and shouting, “Ooh, ooh, throw him to me! I wanna play!”
So, like it’s not bad enough that Putin makes Obama look like the class wimp, now the chickenhawks in Congress are prodding him to cancel America’s participation in the 2014 Winter Olympics, ostensibly because of Russia’s criminalization of homosexuality, among other issues.
What a stupid idea! I say, let the gays begin!
Imagine the possibilities:
If Putin wants to play the part of a Bond movie arch-villain, he deserves some good ol’ American in-your-face ridicule!
Today it was revealed that Florida congressman Ted Yahoo, R-Yoho — or is it Ted Yoho, R-Yahoo? Yeah, that’s it. No, wait, I think they’re both right; they’re interchangeable — told a hometown Tea Party revival meeting that Obamacare’s 10% tax on tanning salons “is a racist tax” as it only affects white people.
According to one newspaper report, the audio from the meeting shows, “At that point, the crowd at the joint meeting of the [local] Tea Party groups erupted in cheering, laughter and clapping.”
Another elected nitwit defended Yahoo/Yoho, “It’s not racist. It’s not that somebody’s superior to another, but it’s discrimination in that it only taxes one group … which is light-skinned people that usually like the tanning beds.” (That didn’t help.)
Clearly, the body politic’s squamous cell carcinoma has metastasized and is eating its brain…
The old Cotton Belt’s eponymous congressman, Tom Cotton, announced his candidacy for the US Senate seat from Arkansas now held by Mark Pryor.
In his not-quite-screwed-on-straight self-nomination speech (watch it – you’d think somebody just shot his hound dog) he actually said, “It’s time to say enough [sic]. Arkansans need a senator who will stand with them and stand up to Barack Obama. A senator who will say no more to the crony capitalism…”
This, from a politician whose election in 2012 was bought and paid for by America’s ultra-right-wing extremist billionaire boy’s club!
(Update 2013/08/11: Today’s New York Times ran a front page report on newbie congressmen receiving copius campaign cash from their capitalist cronies on Wall Street. Take a wild guess who’s on the list.)
Where he’s from it used to be considered a personal disgrace to even have a Republican in the family. I guess some aspects of the 1950’s weren’t so bad after all…
In 2003 Hillary Clinton was still the new kid on the Senate Armed Services Committee when Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld testified during the Bush administration’s run-up of the war in Iraq.
Under questioning as to why investigators had failed to turn up a single cache of Saddam Hussein’s infamous weapons of mass destruction (WMD), Rumsfeld famously retorted, “The absence of evidence is NOT evidence of absence.”
If only Hillary had answered, “Sometimes it is,” she could have avoided the blunder that would prove fatal to her initial presidential campaign.
But no one on the committee, nor in the media for that matter, exposed the fallacy in Rumsfeld’s glib response: that if you search everywhere that something could possibly be and you don’t find it, then the only reasonable conclusion is that it doesn’t exist.
The Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld axis of evil wanted the nation to conclude that everybody knows Saddam has WMD and therefore the failure to turn them up only proves how fiendishly clever he is, and so he must be destroyed. (To this day, they fend off reporters’ questions with “All our European allies believed he had them,” as though that constitutes actual justification.)
Lacking a defensible reason not to (i.e., wussing out), Hillary tragically surrendered to this windbag of massive deception (wmd) and voted with the majority of Congress to authorize the war in Iraq.
Fast forward to early 2008 and she held a commanding lead in national polls among all segments of Democratic voters – especially women and blacks – save for the anti-war faction. Then the results of the Iowa caucuses of the Iowa Caucasians came in. Barack Obama, the anti-war candidate, claimed a shocking victory.
Overnight, Clinton’s campaign staff and strategy imploded. Meanwhile, black voters in South Carolina turned to one another and said, “White folks voted for Obama! Good lord, if they can, I can, too.”
And the rest is history. Clinton’s campaign continued its meltdown, as Obama’s gained momentum until the nomination was his.
Moral: Presidential wannabes can’t afford to be cowered by sophomoric aphorisms.
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