I want my Obamaphone!

The younger generation, and to me that means almost everyone, sees a cellular phone as something much more than a telephone.  It's a symbol even if everyone and his 5 year old kid has one and the semiotic value has much to do with the snob quotient, the joy of having something before anyone else has one, and very little to do with making phone calls. So judging from the jealousy in Rush Limbaugh's voice, the phone to have, the phone he doesn't have, is the Obamaphone.

No, being filthy rich won't help, in fact it has no price and it's so exclusive it doesn't actually exist.  It's just another vintage lie from past Republican campaigns, wandering zombie-like from lectern to podium to  press conference to blog page to radio show.  Yes.  Yes indeed.  There is one born every minute and a Tea Party con-man to take him.

If you're dumb enough to believe that Barack H. Obama is handing out free telephones to the gleefully unemployed "takers" along with the free money he takes from you and hands out to leeches and bums and welfare queens -- you're just the sort of person the Tea Party wants on its side.  That's why they keep telling you you can't have one of these phones even though your life's blood is being drained in order to pay for thousands of them.  That's Tea Party Dumb.  That's Drudge Report Dumb.  That's the sort of dumb Kansas Senatorial candidate Milton Wolf  hopes Kansans are when he uses this moldy, mangy, sleazy and threadbare lie  to make people so angry they'll vote for a piece of shit like him.

Recently a frozen virus was dug up in Antarctic ice and it's still viable after 300,000 years.  Republican lie makers can only dream of such near-immortality, but their lies do last, don't they?  They still believe Democrats started the Great Depression, that Barack Obama started the near-Depression years even before he was elected and they still believe 47% of Americans live tax free and get free money, food, lodging and telephones and people like Rush Limbaugh pay far too much of their hard lied-for income so that lazy black women can have free cellphones to talk on while they lay around eating free food and waiting for the welfare check.

Now there has been a program in place to provide phones for the indigent so that they can look for jobs, but it's private money and it was started by George W. Bush, just like the recession and two wars and the record spending and unemployment they think you're dumb enough to blame on Obama.

And are they right about you -- you Tea Party stooge, you Limbaugh-listening, Fox-following empty headed fool?  If you're one of those, eat your heart out.  You can't have an Obamaphone or one of those special Welfare Queen Edition Cadillacs or any of that free money and you can't have a country with any future either. And that's no lie.

I'll be happy to read your palm, too.

I make no claims to psychic powers (or, to be honest, to the existence of psychic powers), but I'm willing to make some predictions. The GOP candidates are going to keep kicking each other in the crotch up until the convention. Ron Paul might or might not stay in, but the three front runners? They're all in it for the long haul.

Mitt Romney will be the eventual candidate, but first he has to overcome two handicaps: the fact that the Religious Right Wing distrusts Mormons, and more importantly, that he comes across as a privileged huckster, a rich kid trying to sell used cars. He's used to being surrounded by two types of people: shameless sycophants willing to laugh at anything he says, and other billionaires. He has no idea how to connect with ordinary people, because he only sees them at a distance: he's Dan Ackroyd in the beginning of Trading Places.

Santorum swept the South, but doesn't realize that he has less than no chance of attracting a majority of Americans. He's turned off about 80-90% of women by indicating that he doesn't care if they're going to die in childbirth, they're taking that kid to term. And then, just because he opens his mouth and random stuff falls out, he decided to lose another 16 percent of the electorate by telling Puerto Ricans that they needed to speak English.

OK, Frothy, is it a good idea to make fun of somebody's cultural heritage? Here's a hint - I live in New Mexico - want to guess what state you just lost entirely? Here's another - do you speak Latin? Think about it.

And Gingrich? He's got no more chance of getting elected than a radioactive skunk, but he's staying in, because he feels like he deserves to be elected king president.

I've got to admit it: I may have gotten frustrated in 2008 watching Hillary Clinton snipe at Obama. But I've got to say, it's much more entertaining watching the GOP do it to each other from the other side of the fence.

That's why the GOP is panicking and trying to prevent people from voting. Tea parties across the country are pushing for measures like "voter ID laws" despite the fact that there is exactly zero voter fraud. Is it a good idea to require Americans to show ID in order to vote?

More than 74,000 people who skipped voting in past elections might have been excluded from data used to estimate how many voters lack state-issued identification... Earlier this week, the Election Commission said nearly 217,000 registered voters in the state lack a state driver’s license or photo ID. That already was nearly 40,000 more than the election agency had previously estimated.

Studies show that these measures mostly affect young, minority and low-income voters, as well as voters with handicaps: in other words, strongly Democratic groups and people who think Obamacare is a good idea. Funny how that works, isn’t it?

The Justice Department already had to stop Texas from taking the vote away from more than 300,000 Texans, because they'd be likely to be voting for Obama.

And there is one very specific reason they want to do this. One conservative lawmaker even admitted it - they couldn't let out-of-state college kids vote where they were going to school, because they'd be "voting as a liberal. That’s what kids do — they don’t have life experience, and they just vote their feelings."

Legal American citizens have already been prevented from voting, and it’s only going to get worse. Because the GOP knows that the only way that there isn't going to be a black man in the White House in 2013 is if they steal the election.

Talkin' To The Man III

Dear Congressman West,

Just to recap, over the weekend you made the following statement:

This is a battlefield that we must stand upon. And we need to let President Obama, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and my dear friend, chairman of the Democrat National Committee, we need to let them know that Florida ain't on the table...

Take your message of equality of achievement, take your message of economic dependency, and take your message of enslaving the entrepreneurial will and spirit of the American people somewhere else. You can take it to Europe, you can take it to the bottom of the sea, you can take it to the North Pole, but get the hell out of the United States of America.

Of course, when confronted by a reporter asking you to clarify your statement, instead of standing behind your openly moronic quote, you chose to deny having said it. Which kind of makes you a pussy, doesn’t it?

The other thing is that I did not refer to any person leaving. If you go back and read the transcript of the message that I gave, it was about equality of achievement, it was about economic dependence, it was about enslaving the American entrepreneur’s will and spirit. That message needs to leave this country.

That's crap, Allen. You don’t get to say idiotic things to pander to the paste-eating lunatics and inbred mouthbreathers hiding in the swamps of Florida, and then back away from it. You said it, and only a coward lies about his own past.

Of course, you have a lot to be ashamed of in your past, don't you? Strangely, you and I have a lot in common. Both of us entered and left the military in the same years: of course, having said that, only one of us wasn't forced to retire instead of going to jail for torturing Iraqi policemen.

I'm not going to say that makes me a better person than you: it would be the sum total of your life that proves that. And I'm not going to tell you to get out of my country, because unlike you, I have some concept of the ideals that this country was founded on, and I support them.

I will say that you are a shallow, deluded, lying gasbag who is not fit for public service; please resign in disgrace from a second government job. Get the hell out of my Congress.

With all due respect,*



Bill Minnich
Albuquerque, NM



* None
_______________

Snail-mailed this afternoon (without links or video) to:

Representative Allen West
3111 South Dixie Highway, Suite 308
West Palm Beach, Florida 33405

Pledge Scams as Ambush Politics (And why the No Tax Pledge Violates the U.S. Constitution)

Two pledge scams have been in the news lately: The so-called Family Pledge (covered by Nameless Cynic in this post, The American Taliban) and Grover Norquist’s so-called No Tax Pledge. Although seemingly unrelated, these pledges share at least one trait in common: To bully public officials and hold them hostage. More to the point, pledge scams are a form of ambush politics designed to preclude any reasonable debate on any subject by coercing compliance without forethought as to implications, impacts, or alternative solutions.

The No-Tax Pledge represents a case in point. As a Damocles sword wielded by nihilists over the heads of GOP chumps, it is the singular cause of gridlock in the current debt default debate. Here is what a debt default will mean:

• A downgrade in the credit worthiness of the nation;
• Interest rate increases on home mortgages, auto loans, student loans, and credit cards;
• Worldwide turmoil in bond and equity markets;
• Steep losses in the value of homes and retirement accounts;
• Interruptions in Medicare, Social Security and VA disbursements;
• And a crippling double-dip recession.

In other words, it is not just GOP stooges who are being held hostage; it is the American economy and We, The People … all on account of an anti-tax lunatic fringe wielding The Pledge to play brinksmanship at our expense.  When these GOP stooges took their oaths of office, they also pledged to uphold the U.S. Constitution, which requires them among other things to honor the nation's debts. Does this mean Grover Norquist holds more authority than the U.S. Constitution?  In allowing themselves to be suckered, the GOP have turned themselves into fools as well as hypocrites.  And they have no one else to blame but themselves!

It reminds me of a nursery rhyme I once read to my kids …