Skuby Dooby Do

I'm glad it's a long way to New Jersey but Bill Skuby, who owns Skuby & Co. Lifestyle Clothing in Spring Lake, N.J should be happy too.  I think I felt something snap in my head when I looked at the ABC News web page this morning and saw the thing he has in his store window.  Quite frankly I'm not sure I'd be able to restrain myself.  It's not that I actually advocate an act of violence against him or his property and I certainly don't want the Government to deprive him of the right to be a stupid, ugly, bigoted, ignorant and anti-American bastard ( no insult to involuntary bastards intended here.)  I'm all for the right to sedition.

But I'm only human and a picture of the President of the United States dressed as a semi-naked witch doctor taped to a tombstone and a bold face title with OBAMA CARE in which the letter C is a hammer and sickle, makes me have bad thoughts; very bad thoughts. Why is it that the two legged vermin who insist we worship a flag like some religious icon, that we swoon in an ecstasy of Chauvinistic self-praise at every mention of our often ugly history can condone the kind of disrespect that makes the world laugh contemptuously at our delusional stupidity and willful ignorance.

 

No, Skuby, the health care plan drafted by Republicans in conjunction with the health care corporations has less to do with Communism than you do with sanity or honesty for that matter. Switzerland, the holy land of Capitalism and Conservatism has a similar one and arguably the best health care and healthiest population anywhere and they spend a hell of a lot less then we do.  You're an idiot, Skuby Doo.  You're an idiot not only for putting a disgusting picture of the President on a tombstone but more of an idiot for telling us:

"if Mitt Romney had the same plan as the president; his picture would be in the window."  

You're worse than an idiot, you're a liar, because Slippery Mitt did have that plan until he decided to sell his withered soul to the Devil and run for President. Did you forget?  And no, you're not a racist and if there's racism now, it's Obama's fault, he says.

"This is America, isn't it?Aren't we able to say and do pretty much what we want to do?"

 Asks the scummy Mr. Skuby. I really wish that were true, but then we'd have to condone tarring and feathering and probably worse and if this idiot isn't one of those dumb Limbaugh loving lizard brained bastards who wanted to put people in jail for criticizing W, I'd be very surprised.  You should be thankful we can't do pretty much what we want to do to you.  Damned thankful if you know what I mean, wink wink, nudge nudge.

So, I'm glad people are shunning your store and I truly hope you'll go broke and be unable to file for bankruptcy protection because of the Republican "reforms" and that you'll lose your health insurance and be unable to replace it because of the interrupted coverage.  I hope your kid needs an operation and runs up a quarter million dollar medical bill you can't pay and so you'll lose everything and wind up on the street with a tin can so I can go by and piss in it.Why don't you ask the Koch Brothers for a handout?

Reality Show

Oh who cares whether Ryan or Biden "won" this TV spectacle? Vice presidents don't count, unless you think about Cheney, and although Romney is a sock puppet with the strong arm of  the radical authoritarians making his lips move, I don't see him being led around by Ryan as another Darth Cheney.  Who cares anyway? It's not as though the public has become smarter or has learned from experience.  These things are only a game and never, ever does a President resemble in office what he tried to resemble on camera and the platform they sell at the convention is rarely more than a facade.  There's a difference between dealing with the world as it is and dealing with the tableaux, the passion plays, the street theater, the Potemkin Village we take for reality.

So CNN says his supporters think Ryan expressed himself better.  I don't know. I have better things to do with my time, but assuming he did, does anyone think that getting the angry rabble to cheer is the indicator of suitability to administrate a Democracy -- even a pretend Democracy like ours?  Obama's haters were quick to syllogize at us in 2008 that he gave good speeches and Hitler gave good speeches, and therefore Obama is another Hitler. Who cares what such people think?

So the Romney/Ryan thing gives rousing speeches, albeit captious and dishonest ones. So the real truth is not quite as rousing, easily summed up to the satisfaction of one's enemies, or blamed on 'Libtards.'  Who gives a shit?

I had a conversation with someone last night.  An engineer, a very nice guy, a very devout Baptist and fellow Radio Amateur about the peculiar state of the ionosphere.  We're supposed to be near a sunspot peak and yet HF propagation is generally poor, without the Summer openings on 10 and 6 meters we've waited years for. I joked about writing my congressman. He quipped about killing all the lawyers because, as he said, "they'll only blame it on Global Warming and George Bush." He wasn't smiling.

So easily is scientific consensus and massive data dismissed and so easily the destruction of the US economy according to the 30 year experiment with trickle down, debt-doesn't-matter and wars-pay-for-themselves-when-we-cut-taxes agenda as given us by the Republicans. Truth doesn't matter, so how can these 'debates' mean anything?

Really -- why should I listen to these things?  I already know who has built a three ring circus around  the argumentum ad captandum argument, learned to enrage the public with lies and profit from the rage they ignited. No, I'm not going to tell you that Romney will exterminate minorities or that Ryan is a Nazi who wants to put Grandma in a camp, but the people who pull their strings have perfected the same rhetoric, the technique and the ability to harness tribal enmity, bigotry, superstition and self-pity.  They know how to make you passionately believe things that are self-contradictory, follow policies that always and dramatically fail and they know how to get their way. So sure, Romney won and Ryan won and whether or not they're elected, George W. Bush and Global Warming have sealed our fate, or at least made it unlikely that anything will ever be the same. 

The Presidential Election: Time to Turn the Debate to Substance

My friend Leslie over at Parsley's Pics posted an article, "God Forbid Should Biden Not Perform Perfectly," in which she chides "fickle liberals" for continuing to focus on bemoaning their disappointment in President Obama's debate performance last week.

Another friend commented that liberals finding Obama's debate performance to be lackluster are not responsible for Obama's slipping in the polls.

I agree that in spite of the incessant fixation on Obama's "poor" performance from some liberals, there is no direct correlation of the criticism from some of the President's base and current polls that show him with fewer Electoral College votes than last week. 

However, the chronic complaining hasn't accomplished anything positive either. Liberals and conservatives have for the most part already decided who gets their vote. The target group in these last few weeks are the Undecided. As the candidates rev up their appearances and their ads, each hopes to grab those who are undecided and tip the scales in their favor in the hallowed swing states.

The problem that I have with liberals and the noisy critique from some quarters lamenting Obama's debate style is that it aides the opposition in keeping the focus on trivialities rather than substance. The other problem that I have is that the undecided are important and the way to snag them isn't with expressions of disappointment in the president's performance. He has a staff to evaluate the weaknesses of his debate performance and how to liven it up so that he too can present fluff over substance and thereby compete with Romney.  

I just don't think that continued expressions of disappointment about the first debate communicates any reasons to the undecided why they should support the president. No one is going to be drawn to support a candidate whose own base keeps declaring him to be a loser.

It's similar to a business that's floundering. If you want to attract investors to shore up the business and make it profitable again, you don't do so by publicly focusing on the company's failings.

The media keeps rehashing the debate as if Obama's IQ suddenly dropped by 30 points. It was a misstep and instead of wailing and gnashing of teeth, my view is that we, meaning liberals, need to do everything that we can to shift the focus back to the issues and meet the fixation on style over content with solid facts. Facts are unchanging, unlike Romney's version of reality.

I'm not interested in in-house debates among liberals. We all want the same thing. What we have here is a difference in approach. I think that getting Obama re-elected is the priority and we need to do whatever it takes to make that happen, including cutting out all the in-house bickering among liberals about our candidate. As lousy as Romney is, and as much as some elements of the GOP are unhappy that he is the candidate, for the most part, they publicly stand behind him. Conservative bloggers don't as a rule express any serious displeasure with Romney's performance, even when he tells 27 lies in 38 minutes. (Fact Check: Romney Told 27 Myths in 38 Minutes During the Debate)

We've beaten the debate performance drum long enough; I think it's time for a new rhythm.

---

(I was feeling down after hearing on the evening news that Romney was polling higher after the first debate, until I checked out Nate Silver's blog, 538: "Mitt Romney gained further ground in the FiveThirtyEight forecast on Monday, with his chances of winning the Electoral College increasing to 25.2 percent from 21.6 percent on Sunday." All increases are not equal.)--Oct. 8: A Great Poll For Romney, In Perspective

Columbus

Were you aware that there is a movement to rename Columbus Day "Exploration Day"? It's true: a general celebration of exploration, rather than the glorification of just one man.

First celebrated nationally in 1937, Columbus Day pays homage to Christopher Columbus' arrival in the Americas. It is, needless to say, viewed very differently by different groups of Americans. Some people forget it's a holiday at all. Some Italian Americans see it as a point of cultural pride. Other people — especially Native Americans — point out that Columbus personally oversaw the murder and enslavement of thousands and see the holiday as an intrinsically cruel celebration of the beginning of a massive genocide and generations of oppression.

Christopher Columbus, much like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson after him, is a widely mythologized figure, remembered in song and story for having discovered America, thereby proving once and for all that the world was round.

Thanks to the miracle of the American educational system, that's pretty much all most Americans know about the story. It also happens to be complete crap.

First of all (and this argument is actually known by most Americans), how could he have "discovered" America when the Native Americans were already there? Or when the Vikings were in Greenland, and possibly points south, from the tenth century through the mid-fifteenth century?

(There's also the theory that Chinese Admiral Zheng He discovered America in 1421, but that's been mostly debunked - Zheng He [a.k.a. "Cheng Ho"] stuck primarily to known trade routes, and visited India, the Middle East and Africa, the islands around them, and some various stops in Asia.)

On top of which, the people of Europe were well aware that the world was round: Aristotle had proven that in the 4th Century BC.

You might also think that Queen Isabella of Spain gave him her jewels to fund the trip: actually, she turned him down. It was King Ferdinand who overruled her and paid for half the expedition; the other half was financed by Italian investors who Columbus had lined up.

What were the names of his ships? The Niña, the Pinta and the Santa Maria, right? Well, that's not even entirely accurate: the Santa Clara was nicknamed Niña ("Girl") because her owner was named Juan Nino of Moguer.

A lot of the mythology comes from Washington Irving, who, in 1828, wrote "A History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus, which actual scholars have called "fanciful and sentimental." (Really? The guy who wrote "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and "Rip Van Winkle" might have an active imagination?)

Columbus never set foot in North America: after his first voyage (he had four), he was named Viceroy and Governor of the Indies (which as far as he was concerned, was mostly Hispaniola), and he poked around in the adjoining islands, which included Cuba; his third voyage touched down briefly on the north-east corner of South America, and on his fourth voyage, he actually explored part of the Central American coast.

But he wasn't a particularly good or moral man. He tortured, killed and enslaved the local people; when the native Taino people of Hispaniola revolted at their treatment and killed the men left there as a colony from the first expedition, Columbus demanded a quarterly tribute in gold and cotton. Anyone over the age of 14 who didn't deliver had their hands cut off and was left to bleed to death.

He and his men frequently kidnapped and raped the native women. One of Columbus' childhood friends, Michele da Cuneo, wrote about one such incident this way:

While I was in the boat, I captured a very beautiful Carib woman, whom the said Lord Admiral gave to me. When I had taken her to my cabin she was naked - as was their custom. I was filled with a desire to take my pleasure with her and attempted to satisfy my desire. She was unwilling, and so treated me with her nails that I wished I had never begun. But - to cut a long story short - I then took a piece of rope and whipped her soundly, and she let forth such incredible screams that you would not have believed your ears. Eventually we came to such terms, I assure you, that you would have thought that she had been brought up in a school for whores.

After his third voyage, some of his sailors revolted, claiming he'd lied to them about the wealth they'd be able to find in the New World (which, by the way, Columbus was still saying was the Orient); that, plus continued reports of his treatment of the natives, caused the Spanish Crown to order his arrest and return to Spain.

He only spent six weeks in prison before the crown ordered his release; after all, he'd paid back his debt, and more, in gold and slaves. He was allowed to make one more expedition, with the Santa Maria and three smaller ships. All four were destroyed, and Columbus and his men were stranded on Jamaica for a year before they were rescued. (The new governor on Hispaniola hated Columbus, and refused to allow any of his ships to rescue them.)

He returned to Spain, where he lived out his last two years of life. He tried to get the Spanish Crown to pay him 10% of all profits from the New World, as they'd agreed before his first voyage, but since he'd been relieved of his duties as governor, Spain didn't feel they needed to pay him. (The lawsuits filed by his heirs because of this lasted through the end of the 18th century.)

So Columbus opened the Americas to European settlement, and made Spain the preeminent power in the area for many years; he also managed to bring one other thing back, along with gold and slaves: he introduced syphilis to Europe. The initial outbreak is thought to have killed more than five million Europeans.

Chick-Fil-Ahole

"Families are very important to our country. And they're very important to those of us who are concerned about being able to hang on to our heritage. We support Biblical families, and they've always been a part of that."

Jesus, can't anybody see the logical disconnect between families being important and the right of some Bible pounding chicken plucker to interfere with the civil rights of his fellow citizens?  Freedom is important too and sure as hell, this kind of religion doesn't support freedom and has spent centuries killing people for thinking and acting free.

Well I guess not and it's just another example of how religion poisons everything; corrupts the critical faculties and undermines democracy.  Yes, it's Chicken Man Dan again "supporting Biblical Families" with a carefully extracted and deep fried opinion from a few extracts from the Greek section added on to the Hebrew Bible in the 4th Century CE.  

Tradition does not convey a right, particularly a right to interfere with freedom, nor does one "tradition" have the right to declare itself official in this free country any more than the smell of frying birds conveys wisdom or power or decency. 

So what about Lot's family, Abraham's family and all those Biblical examples of polygamy, romps in the sack with the serving girls, mistreatment of women, selling one's daughters into slavery and prostitution and the like?  Never mind.

Look, there's nothing that can't be supported by that pile of political hogwash written, edited, redacted and selected by ancient bastards greedy for power and that isn't being used by their smiling, Jesus plated contemporary imposters like Dan Cathy.  To be sure, he has the protected right to be an asshole, to act like he's got some special insight, to justify his petty, arrogant, small minded opinions about chicken plucking with what he calls the Bible and I call a fraud,  Indeed that's much more of a "heritage" than gay bashing, that horrible compilation of ancient ignorance having been used for every ill purpose including slavery, destruction of Native cultures and the burning of innocent women in this sad country.  And of course I have the right to call him any name I like, now that he's a public figure.

I have the right, as an American, to call him a malicious and ignorant and self-righteous idiot and we all have the right to take our hunger for greasy chicken to KFC or to that vacant lot a mile from here where they sell home made chicken, barbecue, greens, black beans and rice on the weekends and where they have a smile for everybody and mind their own goddamned Christian business.

"Chick-Fil-A Doesn't belong in Boston," says Mayor Thomas Menino. " you can't have a business in the City of Boston that discriminates against the population . . . and we're not going to have a company, Chick-Fil-A, or whatever the hell their name is, on our Freedom Trail."

Me neither, Mayor -- me neither. 

What a Doocebag!

With a name like Doocy, one probably grows up with countless attempts to make fun of one's surname. I doubt I could come up with a new one, but why ridicule the man's name when you can stand by and watch him smear it himself; making himself the idiot's action figure, the bobble-head doll of arrogant, self righteous religious authority and enemy of everything the United States ever stood for or was supposed to stand for and still pretends to be all about.

Yes, I'm talking about religion again and I sure as hell wish you would too, because that bundle of authoritarian offal with a cross stuck on it stinks so bad, I'm sure you could smell it on the moon. Where is the resistance to this endless calumny, this unceasing assault on our freedom, in our classrooms, our meeting places, our legislative assemblies?

On Fox today, (where else?)  Stevie the Dooce made fun of religious freedom and our protection against official State religions by mocking Pennsylvania State Representative  Babette Josephs (D) for declining to recite that nauseating formula declaring the United States of America to be what it's constitutionally forbidden to be: Under God.

Good for her and like her, I haven't dignified that 'Satanic Verse' since the Republicans shoved it up the National ass in 1954, taking time out from their struggle to keep the 'coloreds' in their place and making sure the races didn't mix. Time out from making sure people lost their jobs because of their politics.

“I wonder if she refuses to use money because money has ‘In God We Trust’ on it?” 

chortled the coiffed and polyestered Doocy through three quarters on an inch of pancake makeup; totally forgetting a legendary tantrum of a certain Jewish agitator concerning money with God written on it being in the Jerusalem Temple, but like so many of these Christian pretenders, hiding behind some perverted pretense they call 'faith' as they hide their inner secrets behind stage makeup, behind patter and persiflage with their scummy Fox familiars,  He's an enemy of almost anything good, anything that stands for freedom, for respect, for kindness, decency, democracy and yes -- American Values and American law.  Is that schoolgirl giggling supposed to make us forget or be embarrassed by the fact that neither citizens nor their elected officials may be required to make religious oaths?   No, Doocebag, I don't trust your God and if I had the opportunity to shove the constitution and a Gutenberg Bible sideways up your gaping anus I would feel like an instrument of justice and a defender of America. Do you wipe your foul ass with the Constitution because it has that Establishment clause?  Do you pay for sex with money that has God on it?

I almost expect blood to ooze from beneath my fingernails as I try to avoid the most obscene and vulgar maledictions against Doocy and his gibbering boyfriend Brian Kilmead; foul mouthed imprecations and excrement encrusted execrations against that evil Republican empire that employs them to eat at the heart of America like a parasitic worm.  It's hard to do and words come to mind, thoughts I don't dare to mention.  Yes, it's hard not to dream of  these evil men being in fact under some angry God -- like a dead, oozing cockroach under an iron boot heel.

Lies and consequences

I think there's a kind of hysteresis in politics.  You get a certain effect from telling a bold lie, but you don't lose nearly all that gain by retracting it, so it pays to lie.  You may gain 100,000 votes by saying your opponent is a cannibal, but if you only lose 30 or 40 thousand when you admit "I was wrong to say that" why not keep lying?  There's no limit to how many you can tell and a good part of the public, who really wanted to hear bad things about the other side will tell themselves you were forced to retract it by "the liberals" and it's really true - he's a cannibal from the dark jungles of Kenya. It pays to lie even when you get caught. It doesn't hurt to say one thing to one group and another thing to another. You may actually gain support from people who will think you're being a big man for correcting yourself and will forget that you deliberately lied, deliberately tried to cash in on the meanest and nastiest and most dishonest impulses of the public to get votes.

No matter how much the candidate lies, we can count on the fact that the public is as least as dishonest with themselves and often far more so.  If one tells one's family that taking a pay cut won't add to the family debt, one has a tough sell, but the candidate is talking to people who want to believe they would be much better off  if their personal tax load were lightened and so they will listen eagerly and listen dismissively when the truth is explained. Tell them their taxes are actually lower than ever and they won't listen. Show them that nearly everybody pays 25 to 30 percent of what they earn and they'll put their hands over their ears and chant liberaliberaliberal.  I think this is why the Romney ad I heard this morning on TV could get away with claiming that an independent study proved that Obama planned to tax the average Joe an extra $4000 next year ( and presumably by executive fiat. )  Not one of his likely supporters will bother to check any facts that support their beliefs.  First comes the distrust and anger and dislike, and then the reasons we tell ourselves and others. What we want to hear is what we hear and when we hear it, we stop listening further.

So Romney may substantially reduce any loses he suffered by his 47% gaffe by admitting he was "Completely wrong."  Takes a big man, after all and of course, we all know that there are still huge numbers of loafers and leeches and welfare queens driving Caddies -- enough to cause us to scrap any attempts at helping people become productive again, keeping children from falling hopelessly into inextricable cycles of crime and poverty and disease by using MY HARD EARNED MONEY that all belongs to ME and of course NOBODY EVER GAVE ME ANYTHING. And isn't it annoying that we have to be so "politically correct" and just like we can't say Merry Christmas any more we can't call 'these people' by our traditional words?  I mean traditional values mean something.

The Presidential Debates: Round One

Romney: Full of sound and fury and saying nothing of substance. 

The first presidential debate focused on policy, not zingers to provide fodder for tomorrow's headlines. There were big, significant topics--entitlements, taxes and spending, the deficit, and education.

I wasn't enthused about Obama's performance but I didn't find his answers rambling as some are proclaiming; he actually said what he would do and why. 

Romney spoke in negatives. He stated what he was not going to do but never said what he was going to do. For example he insisted that his proposed tax cut will not add to the deficit; however he never explained how a 20% reduction in each marginal tax rate, across the board, could be implemented without adding to the deficit  Such a tax cut would result in a significant reduction in revenues and Romney's proposed tax plan also includes a $3 trillion increase in military spending, an increase that the military has not requested  A decrease in revenues and an increase in expenditures don't add up to no increase in the deficit or as the President said, "It's math, It's arithmetic." 

By the way, the President directly challenged Romney's assertions in clear, concise language:

"The fact is that if you are lowering the rates the way you described, governor, then it is not possible to come up with enough deductions and loopholes that only affect high-income individuals to avoid either raising the deficit or burdening the middle class," Obama said. "It's math. It's arithmetic."--Obama

I found it interesting that Romney's style was to claim agreement with Obama's policy on some key issues. Romney declares that he agrees that the financial industry needs regulation but wants to promote his own plan and wants to repeal the Dodd-Frank regulatory act. He alleges that he supports the version of Obamacare that he engineered as governor but finds fault with how Obama didn't obtain any consensus and shoved health care reform down our throats.  He insists that he agrees that public education must be a key focus.

The question, which the President did raise, is why is Romney keeping the details of his alternative plans on these major issues secret? Are they too good to be true?

I don't think that the President hit a homer but neither do I think that Romney won. I'd call it a tie. Romney essentially said nothing except to parrot vague generalities about the need to get the country back on track with no specifics as to how he plans to do that. President Obama didn't go for the jugular. It's not the man's style and frankly I think that his approach is more effective in the long run. Attack and confrontation provide temporary satisfaction but folks eventually stop listening to someone who shouts a lot.

It's one debate. I'm not ready to dismiss Obama as ineffective. In 2008, he didn't walk to the same drummer as most presidential candidates. The odds were against him getting the nomination. He didn't shout and confrontation was not his style. He was measured and detailed  in presenting his platform. Why would you expect this man to morph into the Godfather? I'm not certain as to why, but this president is often judged based more on who his followers want him to be rather than who he really is.

The Duhbate

Open thread.

Really, David Gregory?

So, I thought I'd email "Meet the Press" today.

So, let me get this straight. You had Ralph Reed on, to impugn the honesty of Barack Obama.

First, it might have been nice if you'd disclosed that he was working for Mitt Romney. That might have been a basic level of truth that you could have established at the beginning. Just a thought.

Second... Ralph Reed? Seriously? Didn't he work with Jack Abramoff to steal from Native Americans in at least two states: the Choctaw in Alabama and the Tigua in El Paso, Texas? (I believe his entire résumé was an email to Abramoff reading "Hey, now that I’m done with electoral politics, I need to start humping in corporate accounts! I’m counting on you to help me with some contacts.")

You have a thief and a liar on to discuss the honesty of the President of the United States? Without talking about HIS background, or about the fact that he is now working for the Romney campaign? Did you miss a few classes when you were getting that journalism degree?

I'm just curious.

Sadly, I didn't have the emails for either David Gregory or his executive producer Betsy Fischer Martin, or I'd have gone straight to the source.

Remember, folks. This is what the GOP likes to call the "liberal media." Go figure.