With patriots like these, who needs Osama?

by Capt. Fogg

You may agree with Florida Governor and former Medicare pirate Rick Scott's oft stated opinion that regulations kill jobs. You might also be an idiot. But at least, our skinhead governor, AKA Fourteen Felony Rick, energized by getting away with no punishment after his company scammed the taxpayers out of the better part of a billion dollars and lost 2 billion for his stockholders, doesn't make national policy based on dangerous and hollow credos and thinly veiled criminal enterprises.

We have to leave that to the Congressional Giggle Gallery and Anarchist Marching Band. In their haste to slash anything worthwhile the government does in order to prove that the Government does nothing worthwhile, they forgot to fund the FAA.

Maybe Ronald Reagan would smile at this second assault on air travel safety, but maybe even the Gipper would gasp at the notion that regulation of air traffic and air carriers is inherently bad. Firing air traffic controllers because they were understaffed, ill equipped and overworked seems questionable, but at least Reagan had the decency to fire them outright rather than just deciding not to pay FAA employees. Airport inspectors (who needs airport inspectors?) are now being told to charge their own expenses to themselves if they insist on being such parasites and after all, that mysterious bony hand will assure that the airlines will do a better job of tightening the wing bolts when nobody is watching over their shoulders.

So far this idiocy has claimed nearly a hundred thousand jobs in the last couple of weeks. Let's not even think about the threat to public safety and call it Personal Responsibility instead. After all, you really don't have to fly.

Speaking of idiocy, is there yet anyone so despicably demented, deluded and just plain dumb to insist that firing people creates jobs? They hope there are that many Teaheads of course, since they'd like to shift responsibility to the air carriers on the theory that foxes do the best job of watching hen houses and do it cheaper ( and maybe pass the savings on to Congress.)

What the hell, let's just forget to pay Congress, cancel those benefits and pensions and privatize the whole snake pit. I mean, it's essentially privatized already and the HMO's and the oil companies and the Telecoms can pay their damn benefits.

But let me make this clear to those who inevitably try to avoid blame by saying "both sides are guilty." The Republicans did this. The Democrats tried to stop it.

Let me explain why. For each week the FAA isn't on full duty, airlines pocket about $200 million from bogus ticket fees — because, thinking you don't know what's going on, which if you're a Fox Following Tea smoker is a safe bet, the airlines hiked up prices and are pocketing the difference. If the Corporate Aristocracy is happy, the lackeys are happy and if the public is broke, so much the better - they'll work for less. Such is the Genius of idiots.

The Dino Voter's Brief and Simple Guide to This November's Elections

Reading the accounts of the Coming Electoral Apocalypse – or so the pundits are forecasting, if one takes them seriously – is an exercise in frustration for anyone who values basic rationality.

I can understand someone being a Republican born and raised and always voting that way by force of habit or perceived affinity of interest, but anyone who thinks handing over control of even part of the government to the Grand Old Pachyderm is going to restore equilibrium or "shake things up" fails to understand the nature of that particular elephant. It's sort of like handing over your ship to a passing crew of pirates because you're dissatisfied with the way your captain runs the boat.

I suspect that underlying the shake-em-up rationale is the notion that the Republicans know best how the economy works. Nothing could be more distant from the truth – as a general rule, THEY UNDERSTAND ABSOLUTELY NOTHING ABOUT HOW A SUSTAINABLE CAPITALIST ECONOMY WORKS, which you can see by the way most of them behave every time they gain a working majority in Congress. They act like pirates, slashing and hacking the tax base and raiding the public treasury for the benefit of their wealthiest backers before the dullards who voted them in start to catch on, however fleetingly, to what's happening. If the Republicans regain the House, I'll not trouble myself much with politics for the next few years because I think I've come across this script before, and it's just not worth hearing or watching.

So here's the simple-dino line: O Human Democrats, quit nattering and yammering, just vote. Vote, and thereby limit the damage Republicanist piracy can do -- for the umpteenth time -- to our country. Doesn't matter if you're dispirited or not entirely happy with the Dems, just do it.