Are you friggin kidding me? What part don't they get???

When the CBO released it's report on the effect of the stimulus, it was good news to me. From Reuters:

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act put between 1.4 million and 3.6 million to work in the third quarter of this year, a time when more than 15 million Americans were unemployed, CBO said.

It also boosted national output by between 1.4 percent and 4.1 percent during that time, the CBO said.

During the third quarter, the economy grew by an annual rate of 2.5 percent. Economists say a rate faster than 3 percent is needed to make any noticeable dent in unemployment.

The CBO's estimates have consistently shown that the $814 billion package of tax cuts, state aid, construction spending and enhanced safety-net provisions has blunted the impact of the worst U.S. recession since the 1930s.

*snip*

Not all elements of the Recovery Act got the same bang for the buck, the CBO said.

Direct spending on highway construction, water-system upgrades and energy efficiency were among the most effective, the CBO said, while tax breaks for businesses and higher-income people cost more in lost revenues than they made up for in increased economic activity.(emphasis mine)

The R's, aka the Party Of No, either found another way to spin it or just fucking ignored the CBO's report. What they would rather do is make damn sure that those lazy fuckers on unemployment don't get another government handout...aka another unemployment check, starting at midnight tonight. That's why you have assholes like Rep. John Shadegg (R-AZ) actually arguing that unemployment checks don't do shit for our economy:

According to calculations by the Congressional Budget Office, Moody’s Economy, and myriad other economists, unemployment benefits are the single best way to pump money into the economy and generate economic activity, as the unemployed are very likely to spend all of the benefits they receive (thus moving money into local businesses). But during an interview with MSNBC’s Mike Barnicle today, Rep. John Shadegg (R-AZ) scoffed at the notion that unemployment benefits help the economy. “Unemployed people hire people? Really? I didn’t know that,” Shadegg jeered:

BARNICLE: What about the fact that unemployment benefits pumped into the economy are an immediate benefit to the economy? Immediate…
SHADEGG: No, they’re not! Unemployed people hire people? Really? I didn’t know that.
BARNICLE: Unemployed people spend money Congressman, ’cause they have no money.
SHADEGG: Aha! So your answer is it’s the spending of money that drives the economy and I don’t think that’s right. It’s the creation of jobs that drives the economy…Actually, the truth is the unemployed will spend as little of that money as they possibly can. Job creators create jobs.
BARNICLE: Have you ever been unemployed? Have you ever been unemployed?
SHADEGG: Yes, I have.
BARNICLE: What did you do with the money? Save it?

Any moron with two brain cells to rub together knows that people on unemployment spend those checks as soon as they get them. They spend them on rent, food, gas, clothes for the kids, heating their homes, all kinds of friggin things they need to survive, something Rep.Shadegg is obviously very unfamiliar with. Again, from the ThinkProgress link:

As The Wonk Room noted, some economists estimate that allowing benefits to expire could cause economic growth to “fall by one half to nearly 1 percentage point,” as well as throw hundreds of thousands of people into poverty. And while Shadegg joked that he will be unemployed come January since he is retiring from Congress, next year he will be eligible for a federal pension (if he opted for one), as he is turning 62 and served on Capitol Hill for more than five years. 

We can only hope that John Shadegg takes a very long fucking walk on a very short pier...real soon, before he can collect one friggin dime of that federal pension.What. A. Fucking. Douche Nozzle. Stupid fuck just drove my blood pressure through the roof.

Jesus H. Christ, I hate stupid lame-ass arguments that make no sense what so ever, I despise Republicans and I despise John Shadegg with every fiber of my being.

From our Dept of WTF? -Homeland Sec shutting down websites under DMCA

Since when is Homeland Security involved in copyright infringement which is what the DMCA- Digital Millennium Copyright Act is? Well, they are now as per a RawStory writeup sent to me by RJ this morning, which states the Feds have shut down 76 sites and counting. From the RawStory link:

The Homeland Security Department's customs enforcement division has gone on a Web site shutdown spree, closing down at least 76 domains this week, according to online reports.

While many of the web domains were sites that trafficked in counterfeit brand name goods, and some others linked to copyright-infringing file-sharing materials, at least one site was a Google-like search engine, causing alarm among web freedom advocates who worry the move steps over the line into censorship.

All the shut sites are now displaying a Homeland Security warning that copyright infringers can face up to five years in prison.

*snip*

Homeland Security's ability to shut down sites without a court order evidently comes from the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a Clinton-era law that allows Web sites to be closed on the basis of a copyright complaint. Critics have long assailed the DMCA for being too broad, as complainants don't need to prove copyright infringement before a site can be taken down.

Where is the due-process for this fuckery? Why would Homeland Security be involved when it doesn't have a friggin thing to do with protecting the...cough... 'Homeland'? Eric Holder, who evidently has nothing better to do than protect the public from counterfit handbags and such, released a statement on the seizures:

"With today's seizures, we are disrupting the sale of thousands of counterfeit items," U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said. "We are cutting off funds to those looking to profit from the sale of illegal goods and exploit the ingenuity of others. And, as the holiday shopping season gets underway, we are also reminding consumers to exercise caution when looking for deals and discounts online. To put it simply: If a deal seems too good to be true, it probably is."

Yeah, you go get em Holder, you refused to prosecute Tom Delay or any of the Bush Administration's henchmen that tortured people, but this shit is real-fucking-important right dude?

How friggin pathetic is that? Chalk another one up for The Corporatocracy. Protecting their rights is so much more important than anything else out there that needs protecting.

From the WSJ, EFF has the following comment on these seizures:

Peter Eckersley, senior staff technologist at the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation, said Friday that his group had "a lot of concerns" about authorities seizing Internet domain names without prior notice. The civil-liberties organization has been lobbying against a proposed law known as COICA—the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act—that would give the government additional powers to move against sites involved in copyright infringement, even if they weren't located in the U.S.

Senator Ron Wyden has vowed to stop COICA before it gets to the floor of the senate for a vote in this session. The bill would then have to start over during the new session next year, which will be controlled by the rightwing nutters for the most part. Personally, I love that Wyden will use one of the Rethugs favortie tactics....holding up a bill in committee.

Wikileaks newest: US spys on it's allies.

Once again Wikileaks has released hundreds of thousands of pages, many that were classified secret, to the NYT, DerSpeigel, UK's The Guardian and a couple other foreign news sources. Some of the releases (roughly 9000 documents/cables)  are from as early as Feb of this year, meaning they will affect the Obama Administration and of course...Hillary Clinton, per TruthOut's analysis.   From The Guardian writeup (all emphasis mine):

The cables contain specific allegations of corruption, as well as harsh criticism by US embassy staff of their host governments, from Caribbean islands to China and Russia. The material includes a reference to Putin as an "alpha-dog", Hamid Karzai as being "driven by paranoia" while Angela Merkel allegedly "avoids risk and is rarely creative". There is also a comparison between Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Adolf Hitler.

The cables names Saudi donors as the biggest financiers of terror groups, and provide an extraordinarily detailed account of an agreement between Washington and Yemen to cover up the use of US planes to bomb al-Qaida targets. One cable records that during a meeting in January with General David Petraeus, then US commander in the Middle East, Yemeni president Abdullah Saleh said: "We'll continue saying they are our bombs, not yours."

Other revelations include a description of a near "environmental disaster" last year over a rogue shipment of enriched uranium, technical details of secret US-Russian nuclear missile negotiations in Geneva, and a profile of Libya's Muammar Gaddafi, who they say is accompanied everywhere by a "voluptuous blonde" Ukrainian nurse.

*snip*

Topics covered range from the technical detail of secret US-Russian nuclear missile negotiations in Geneva, to an intimate personality profile of Colonel Gaddaffi, the eccentric Libyan dictator, who they say is nowadays accompanied everywhere by a "voluptuous blonde" Ukrainian nurse.

The cables cover secretary of state Hillary Clinton's work under the Obama administration, as well as thousands of files from the Bush presidency.Clinton led a frantic damage limitation exercise this weekend as Washington prepared foreign governments for the revelations, contacting leaders in Germany, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf, France and Afghanistan.

US ambassadors in other capitals were instructed to brief their hosts in advance of the release of unflattering pen-portraits or nakedly frank accounts of transactions with the US which they had thought would be kept quiet. Washington now faces a difficult task in convincing contacts around the world that any future conversations will remain confidential.

The White House, via the State Department released the usual condemnation of the leaks, stating the usual reasons:

The state department's legal adviser has written to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and his London lawyer, warning that the cables were obtained illegally and that publication would place at risk "the lives of countless innocent individuals … ongoing military operations … and cooperation between countries".

Oh hell yeah the 'cooperation between countries' will be compromised and possibly damaged as it shows how the US really trusts no one, spies on everyone and relies on that old adage: Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.

Wikileaks has said they will redact certain names to protect the innocent...or perhaps to protect the guilty..hard to say...but all the news agencies have said they will do the same as well. More from The Guardian writeup, which discusses our spying on everyone and every country:

The cables published today reveal how the US uses its embassies as part of a global espionage network, with diplomats tasked to obtain not just information from the people they meet, but personal details, such as frequent flyer numbers, credit card details and even DNA material.

Classified "human intelligence directives" issued in the name of Clinton or her predecessor, Condoleezza Rice, instruct officials to gather information on military installations, weapons markings, vehicle details of political leaders as well as iris scans, fingerprints and DNA.

The most controversial target was the UN leadership. That directive requested the specification of telecoms and IT systems used by top officials and their staff and details of "private VIP networks used for official communication, to include upgrades, security measures, passwords, personal encryption keys".

You can go to The Gaurdian's site here and download key data from the embassy cables and wade through them yourself or read the NYT's seven plus page synopsis here.  Why in the blue hell do they need some of that shit, especially on our so-called allies? The cold-war never ended it seems...no matter what the fuckers in DC tell us.

Did you deal with any neocon relatives yesterday?

Yesterday was a good day....until the drunk neighbors in house A decided to have a group asskicking with neighbors in house B, which is right across the street from our humble abode. Cops came out twice and, the broad with the biggest mouth went to jail....ah...nothing says Happy Holidays like people with baseball bats and shovels! Thanksgiving at it's finest! At least it was entertaining in a sick twisted way, since the football game we were watching didn't do much for me fantasy-wise.

If you however, spent your time w/relatives of the rightwing variety, too bad you didn't read this article first: 5 Ways to Deal With Your Conservative Relatives This Thanksgiving. From the writeup, things to use against obnoxious aunts, uncles, distant cousins or siblings:

Given this month’s volatile political climate, chances are someone’s going to break the no politics/no religion rule and say something to make your blood boil as you sit around the table this Thanksgiving. When that cringe-inducing moment arrives, whether it's over appetizers or dessert, you want to defend the honor of progressives and their ideas without coming across as snotty, snarky, or out of touch. And without letting the situation devolve into violence. (You’re a pacifist, right?)

So how does one deal with the conservatives at the family table while avoiding a massive food fight? Stay calm and relaxed, and follow these simple guidelines.

1. Brush up on Obama conspiracy theories.

2. Point out the infighting on the Right--and keep yourself out of it.

3. Bring up the Koch brothers.

there are more and they are quite good. These will also work for Christmas family gatherings so bookmark the link!

HotTub Tommy Delay convicted!

Read it here. He refused comment as he left the courthouse. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

What I am NOT thankful for....

The State of Working America is something I am not thankful for, nor am I proud of. Tao, a wonderful intelligent human and fellow blogger, whom I just recently discovered, does informative, enlightening and damn educational blog posts on whats wrong with Amerika and why. I mention Tao because his recent series on Progressive Economics is a must read..so go fucking read it before the carbs and shit make you lazy tomorrow.

Back to the first link from EPI (Economic Policy Institute)...the series today is about poor children. It literally makes me cry, then highly pissed the fuck off when I read shit like this:

More than one in five children under age 18, and almost one in four children under age six, were living in poverty in 2009. The Figure, from EPI’s forthcoming State of Working America Web site, shows how poverty rates for different age groups have changed in recent decades. Widespread job loss during the latest recession, along with reduced hours and slow wage growth, have all contributed to higher rates of poverty.

I live in one of the poorest neighborhoods in Bakersfield, it's called Oildale and btw..not by choice. Oildale was created way back when, for the white folks that were showing up to work the oilfields that had been discovered, and later became a magnet for folks escaping the midwest when farming became non-existent during the Dust Bowl era. Parts of The Grapes of Wrath is based largely on Oildale and what went down here during the Dust Bowl era.The worker camps, which were really nothing more than prison camps for the poor field hands which we now call farm workers, are part of the history of this area. Oildale is nothing more than wooden ramshackle houses or cheapass rundown apartment complexes and every face you see is at or below the poverty level. But enough about my 'hood'. Back to the EPI report:

Individuals are officially considered poor when their family income falls below the poverty threshold.  The 2009 poverty threshold throughout most of the United States was an annual income of $14,570 for a family of two and $22,050 for a family of four (thresholds are higher in Alaska and Hawaii). The comparatively low poverty rate among the over-65 population is largely attributable to Social Security, which lifts millions of seniors out of poverty.

First off..I call bullshit on the official poverty threshold. If we are struggling on my spouse's social security and my disability payments, I damn sure know every family in Oildale is doing the same thing. The cost of living in Bakersfield is a whole lot less than say...Detroit, San Diego, Los Angeles, Houston and probably every other larger city in the U.S. So, I can't begin to imagine how families with children, or the disabled, or the unemployed survive in other areas and cities. The folks that live and work in this neighborhood make minimum wage, you can bet your sweet ass on that fact and if you are disabled or unemployed you live in Oildale as well...because it's the cheapest area there is around these parts. The EPI report on minimum wage and it's decline and effect doesn't make me feel warm and fuzzy either:

The minimum wage is not worth nearly as much as it was decades ago. The Figure, from EPI’s forthcoming State of Working America Web site, shows the inflation-adjusted value of the minimum wage since 1960, in 2009 dollars. When adjusted for inflation, the minimum wage was worth $8.54 per hour in 1968, compared to the current minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. Based on a typical, 2,000-hour work year, the 1968 inflation-adjusted minimum wage would equate to an annual salary of $17,080 per year, versus $14,500 for today’s minimum wage. (The Figure shows a 2009 minimum wage of $6.84 because the minimum wage was increased in the middle of that year.)

Although each legislated increase in the minimum wage has served to increase its value, the Figure shows these increases have generally been short-lived, with inflation naturally eroding its purchasing power over time. As a result, the current value of the minimum wage is well below its historic peak in the late 1960s. EPI’s 2009 paper Fix It and Forget It notes that increasing the minimum wage stimulates the economy by giving workers more spending power. It proposes amending the minimum wage law to guarantee a consistent wage standard that will ensure that it keeps up with inflation and overall wage growth.

Since we can't expect the Federal Government to 'fix' everything, we..the generalized we...need to rely on our State Government to help out the folks at the bottom of the ladder, many who are at the bottom through no fault of their own.

Well, in Cali, that ain't happening because Ahnold has gutted or ended every fucking program that helped the poor or disabled since his worthless ass took over. I feel quite sure that he did that because, as most folks know...the poor and disabled have no voice in our state or federal governments. They Don't Count and their votes count even less to those in power since historically poor folks don't get out and vote.

And that is wrong on every fucking level that you can think of.

Voting isn't a priority when your ass is poor or just struggling to make it from one day to the next...sorry but it's not.No matter how hard I try to get these folks around me registered to vote, I hear the same thing from them...nothing is gonna change girl....and I can't argue with them because it hasn't changed in Oildale for over a hundred years.

And the Politicians count on that.

It's the carbs, not the tryptophan people!

Since the real reason behind Thanksgiving is that the Native American's kept the white folk from starving their friggin asses off, I find celebration of this day ridiculous. Families that have a get-together on Thanksgiving day usually end up with someone drunk and making a total ass out of themselves...I know this personally as I have done it many a time. If you are a vegan, you probably could give a shit about the following information. From Wikipedia:

One belief is that heavy consumption of turkey meat (as for example in a Thanksgiving or Christmas feast) results in drowsiness, which has been attributed to high levels of tryptophan contained in turkey.^{[53][54][55][17]} While turkey does contain high levels of tryptophan, the amount is comparable to that contained in most other meats.
Furthermore, post-meal drowsiness on Thanksgiving may have more to do with what else is consumed along with the turkey and in particular carbohydrates. It has been demonstrated in both animal models^[56] and in humans^[57][58][59] that ingestion of a meal rich in carbohydrates triggers release of insulin. Insulin in turn stimulates the uptake of large neutral branched-chain amino acids (LNAA) but not tryptophan (trp) into muscle, increasing the ratio of trp to LNAA in the blood stream. The resulting increased ratio of tryptophan to large neutral amino acids in the blood reduces competition at the large neutral amino acid transporter resulting in the uptake of tryptophan across the blood-brain barrier into the central nervous system (CNS).^[60][61]serotonin in the raphe nuclei by the normal enzymatic pathway.^[56][58] The resultant serotonin is further metabolised into melatonin by the pineal gland.^[10] Hence, these data suggest that "feast-induced drowsiness," and in particular, the common post-Christmas and North American post-Thanksgiving dinner drowsiness, may be the result of a heavy meal rich in carbohydrates which, via an indirect mechanism, increases the production of sleep-promoting melatonin in the brain.^{[56][57][58][59]} 

^{Personally, I like the stuffing best which of course is carb laden since it's usually made with bread products. The furry critters at our house simply love Thanksgiving as they are the ones that get all those fucking leftovers. Enjoy your day anyway, especially if your a sports-crazed wingnut like moi. ;)}

 

Ayn was so full of sh*t- bet her eyes were brown.

The rightwingers really love the hell out of....cough..so-called philosopher, but really just a fucking novelist with only two big sellers, Ayn Rand. Personally, I think the broad was nothing more than a rich, uppity cunt that thought the majority of the world was there to make her and her buddies in the Corporatocracy more money.

The idiot that started our financial slide into hell, Alan Greenspan, was a friend and follower of Rands btw. She later cast him aside after he went to work for the gasp...government.  Matt Taibbi says it best for me in the latest Alternet Q&A with him regarding his new book:

She was this great novelist who wrote all these very ponderous long novels like The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. The general theme of all of them was that there were two classes of people: the producers and the parasites. In her books, the producers were the great industrial figures who actually created businesses and commercial empires, and everybody was somehow feeding off of them. You were either making something, or you were a parasite. That ethos is still very much alive; it’s part of the Tea Party rhetoric. They talk about “water carriers and water drinkers” and split the world up into those two categories. Greenspan actually spent a lot of time with Rand, they had these little tea parties at her house, and he was under her tutelage. He was one of her protégés who directly carried the flame for her religion. But it was ironic that he ended up being the chief regulator of the economy that had been an anathema to everything that she believed, being a government regulator. Yet he somehow did it and didn’t feel contradicted about it.

The religion of Ayn Rand...how telling is that? Talk about class warfare, that nasty cunt believed in two classes, the have's and have not's who's only goal in life should be to service the rich...or as she thought of them...the producers. I got a good view of how popular this cunt has become by reading this article entitled: 10 Shameless Right-Wing Tributes to Ayn Rand That Should Make Any Sane Person Blush.The article points out that since it seems the religious wingers are taking a backseat to the teabaggers now, Rand has been elevated to the pinnacle of Nutterville, thanks to the likes of Glen Beck and other alum's of Nutter U. The article identifies Rand's followers as Randroids...I love it! Here is an interesting passage:

An excellent example is this March 2010 nugget from the Christian Science Monitor: "Apple vs. GM: Ayn Rand knew the difference. Do you?"

You may wonder what "Apple vs. GM" means. (God help us, not an iCar!) But Yaron Brook and Don Watkins of the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights aren't talking about anything so dull as a market conflict -- they're talking about a moral struggle between "producers" like Apple -- those few, sterling individuals who wrest value from the earth -- and "looters" like GM, whom they describe as "pseudobusinessmen" whose "business isn't business, but political pull."

You'd think Brook and Watkins could find better examples of looters than GM -- Enron, say, or Goldman Sachs, or Jack Abramoff. But Randroids are generally quiet when such people use political pull to amplify profit, even illegally. (In fact, way back in the scandal-ridden days of 2002, USA Today did a story about suits who found themselves harassed by "prosecutors, regulators" and "a Republican president"; these poor, rattled execs read Ayn Rand, USA Today said, to "remind themselves that self-interest is not only the right thing to do from an economic standpoint but is moral, as well.")

Apple has it's products manufactured in China. This is interesting to me since Apple computers are the most expensive fuckers on the market.  HP also manufactures most of it's systems overseas as well, but at least I can friggin afford one of those. GM manufactures all but 15% of their vehicles in the US and all Enron ever did was drive the price of electricity through the fucking roof...But back to the Randroids...They have been waiting forever for the movie version of Atlas Shrugged. Well, it went from a major studio $70 million dollar production with Angelina Jolie to an indy version with a paltry budget of $5 million bucks. Again, from the Alternet 10 Shameless tributes  writeup:

The $5 million project is now only part one of a proposed Atlas Shrugged trilogy (the three parts to be titled Atlas Shrugs, Atlas Takes a Load Off and Atlas Shows All You Bastards, presumably). Mediaite's Frances Martel is dazzled: "The progress on the set of Atlas Shrugged," she gushes, is really "a much more important story to both pop culture and the political world" than, say, the recent Shirley Sherrod scandal, which the damn liberal media chose to follow instead "because race is a sexy thing to cover," unlike wonkish subjects like Hollywood movies.

I rest my case...the Randroids are such fuckwads, it gives me a migraine just thinking about them and their allegiance to Rand and her self-absorbed bullshit that masquerades as philosophy.  Besides, if Limbaugh, Beck and other extreme rightwing nutters quote this woman, it shows you how fucked up she really was.

Repubes file brief supporting attempt to kill HCR act in federal court.

Mitch McConnell and Thirty-two of his fellow Corporate bootlickers filed the amicus brief. From Jurist:

Thirty-three Republican senators filed an amicus curiae brief [PDF] on Thursday supporting state attorneys general in their legal effort to have the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) declared unconstitutional. The brief, filed in the US District Court for the Northern District of Florida supports the suit's proposed arguments that the PPACA violates the Commerce Clause [Cornell LII backgrounder] of the US Constitution. In making their argument, the senators attacked the individual mandate, arguing:

    Indeed, in more than 200 years of debate as to the proper scope of the Commerce Power, the Supreme Court has never suggested that the Commerce Power allows Congress to impose affirmative obligations on passive individuals, or to punish individuals for failing to purchase a particular product. To the contrary, every landmark Commerce Clause case has dealt with congressional efforts to regulate different kinds of activity under the Commerce power. In every significant Commerce Clause case the Supreme Court has always had to decide whether Congress may regulate a given form of activity.

The Hill lists the 33 signatories to the brief, all of whom voted against passage [roll call] of the bill.

Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum filed the lawsuit in March, which is joined by 20 states and the National Federation of Independent Businesses (NFIB). The suit was allowed to proceed in October, despite an attempt to dismiss. On Thursday, McCollum sent a letter asking 13 other state attorneys general to join Florida in the suit. A federal judge in Michigan ruled in October that the law is constitutional under the Commerce Clause as it addresses the economic effects of health care decisions and it does not represent an unconstitutional direct tax. In August, a federal judge allowed a similar lawsuit filed in Virginia to proceed on narrow grounds, addressing only subject matter jurisdiction and the legal sufficiency of the complaint. Several days later, McCollum cited the ruling in his response to the Obama administration's motion to dismiss the Florida challenge, filed in June.

Stayed tuned as this fight will be long and ugly. I personally think the HCR bill was a weak-ass piece of shit, but it's a start I guess and something to be protected from the assholes that support the Corporatocracy.

It's a Sports Sunday Extravaganza at our house, so I gotta go set up all my fantasy football, nascar and basketball teams. Yes....my leftwing ass loves nascar.

R's fail to stop NPR funding.

And a sinister HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Sorry, but that is my reaction to their fuckery. From the link:

A legislative effort by House Republicans to prevent NPR from receiving public funding failed Thursday.

By a 239 to 171 vote, the House approved advancing a teleworking bill without the language that would bar local public radio stations from using taxpayer dollars to purchase NPR programming.

The public money at issue was funding to the stations from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

The Republican move came in response to the controversy over the termination in October of journalist Juan Williams' contract with NPR.

Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) , the second-ranking official in the House Republican leadership, introduced the legislation as part of the GOP's YouCut initiative in which members of the public recommend cuts in federal spending.

If you wish to read Cantor's statement go to the link because I won't post that fuckwits bs on this here blog.

Anti-choice nutter convicted of stalking doctors.

Philip "Flip" Benham, a self-righteous asshole, was thankfully convicted of stalking physicians who provide the legal medical procedure called abortion. He is a...cough.. pastor in NC. From the link:

A North Carolina pastor has been found guilty of harassing Charlotte-area abortion providers with Wild West-style "Wanted" posters.

WSOC-TV in Charlotte reports the Rev. Philip Benham was convicted Monday of violating a state law that prohibits residential picketing. Benham was sentenced to 24 months of probation.

He's the director of the anti-abortion group Operation Save America. Benham distributed flyers showing the pictures and home addresses of local abortion providers. Prosecutors say that amounted to advocating violence against the doctors.

The 62-year-old pastor says the conviction violates his First Amendment right to free speech. He plans to appeal.

Oh hell yeah, we all should have the right to hassle and try to intimidate Doctors at their homes for doing something which is NOT against the law. Benham thinks his rights should come before those of others.  Philip Benham is a Douche Nozzle of the week candidate. Wish the fucker was going to be wearing prison orange and doing the perp walk.Benham is an American Terrorist. He is no better than Al-Qaeda.

Don't you just love the name of his organization - Operation Save America. What a load of horseshit. Why do these bags of batshit always think only they are saving America? Deluded fucktard. We need to see more of these anti-choice assholes convicted of harassing doctors that do legal medical procedures...only then can we hope that we will not see any more murders, ala Dr. Tiller.

Nutter U alum, Rep-elect Andy Harris asks: Dude, where is my govt funded healthcare????

Oh this fuckery is rich...indeed it's almost funny if it wasn't so hypocritical and disgusting as a double standard. It exposes the rightwing nutters for what they are...ignorant fucks who expect one thing for themselves and a lot less for those they represent in Congress.. From Countdown tonight, a discussion on the whining of newly-elected Rep. Andy Harris from MD's first district who was down right pissed-the-fuck-off when he found out, during a House orientation meeting that his govt funded healthcare won't kick in until his fuckwitted, two-faced ass as been in office for at least a month.

Bear in mind this self-serving fuck is actually a Doctor (like Rand Paul), and also completely against the Public Option AND most if not all of the HCR bill passed this year. I am providing the transcript from the Countdown video below for those who have slow internet connections and can not watch the video at the bottom of the post. :

...... there's the case of the gentlemen from maryland who will join congressman weiner in the house of representatives january. part of republican representative-elect andy harris' campaign platform was he was four square against health care reform. yesterday during his freshman orientation harris threw a fit receive his government subsidized health insurance. according to politico, harry, who's a doctor, was incredulous he would be sworn in on january 3rd but because of federal law his government-subsidized health insurance wouldn't kick in until february. according to a congressional staffer who wrnsed the blowup he asked the two ladies answering questions why if had to take so long, what he would do without 28 days of health care. harris asked if he could purchase insurance from the government to cover the gap. buying health insurance from the government? especially when there's some sort of gap in your work insurance? hey, congressman-elect, you might be on to something here. you could call it -- um, uh -- the public option.

Good old Andy Harris said the following during his campaign:

.....this is one place where i disagree with our congressman. he said public option was a good idea. i think it was a terrible idea.

except for him. harris, ousting maryland's frank cranibil on a one-issue campaign, anti- health care reform insisting there was nothing that otherwised the government to be involved in. it. his health care and his hissy fit. this is the only employer i've ever worked for where you don't get coverage the first day you're employed, he said. which must be troubling for people in his district who don't get coverage any days that they're employed.

>>> let's turn to msnbc contributor dave wagel.

>> good evening.

>> government health care is evil, i want my government health care right now. is it enough of a tea party microcosm to put up a statue of congressman-elect harris, and if so how tall?

>> whoever leaked this to politico knew what they were doing. this was a live grenade coming at a republican who some republicans were hopeful would become a credible spokesman on health care. and he's tried to spin this. his latest spin which he told a baltimore station tonight was that he was taking a point about how ironic it is everyone's required to buy health care because of this health care law but the government employees don't have it for a month which doesn't really -- the reason people are angry. y?yknow, he -- republicans like to put up these guys who have experience in the medical field as spokesmen on this. he canceled an interview with the " baltimore sun" he scheduled. he dialed this back because it did seem to everyone who wasn't there, which is all of us, like a tantrum that was hypocritical tantrum.

>> the -- the thankfulness that harris should be expressing in here, statistic from the kaiser family foundation. it did an annual survey of employer provided health benefits. 74% of covered workers face a waiting period before coverage is available. the average waiting period is 2.2 months. he's coming out well in that part of the equation. are there any tea partyers who have put their health insurance where their mouths were during the campaign? has anybody refused, anybody stand up at this meeting and go, this doesn't apply to me because i have to have principles because i said there's no government health care, i'm not going to take this?

>> well, no, not really. i mean, congressman weiner was making good points earlier that this wasn't really vetted in every single campaign. it was -- what they were running on was so anti-obama policy, so pro-repeal, that they didn't really go much further in explaining this. they're going to try and dismiss this as a gotcha, which it feels like. this is a problem, though, a lot of democrats see with the incoming republicans. they don't really tie their theory of policy to the way this stuff works. and they claim democrats don't, but you know, look at unemployment benefits. it's considered a punch line to republicans that extending unemployment benefits will do anything but make somebody a permanent surf of the state who lives off government benefits. we know that that's not something that people who have been in a tough time for six or seven months and who need that money believe. in terms of what they want to do on -- or what they say we should have done on t.a.r.p. ore things like that. they say everything would have worked out great if we let the banks collapse. things like that. i mean, they ran as populists. a certain kind. they said all these problems are obama's fault and it's tougher to defend ? what they believe when real issues come up like this.

>> is there any indication as you described dr.-elect harris here, his reaction to the reaction to this. any suggestion that this has struck him? i was suddenly thinking of the scene from " citizen cane" where the corrupt politician says to orson welles, this is going it be a lesson to you. does congressman-elect harris have any idea what this meant symbolically to people who have been fighting for health care or health care reform?

>> no. the lesson he's going to take from it is he shouldn't trust reporters. this -- he -- harris, background, ran for congress in 2008 and knocked off an incumbent who was more liberal. gillcrest endorsed the democrat who held the seat. he was a proto-tea partyer. he was one of the guys that ran back in the club for growth, actually and said if you compromise on anything you don't deserve to be in politics, if you don't apply this very short litmus test on every issue and vote against things then you're doing your country a disservice. he's going to have harder tests than this. come january when they start voting on taxes, when they vote on health care repeal, and when they vote on the debt creoleiling, for example, they're going to test whether this stuff works. so far he's had trouble explaining how this blanket policy works in practice.

Ain't that some shit? This whiny fuck demands his government-funded healthcare NOW, but he would deny the same to millions of Americans if given the chance.  Not to mention that he has no clue that most employers in the US require a waiting period before benefits such as health-care insurance kick in for new employees...which the fucktard Andy Harris is as the Representative-elect for MD's 1st District. .

Friggin outrageous! He doesn't even realize how stupid and self-serving he looks/is. Those jackasses that voted this lame-ass into office will get what they deserve hopefully. I pray to Buddha they do.

Gay 14-Year-Old Bravely Defends Teacher to Michigan School Board

Give this wonderful kid his props. Makes me wonder if all of us that truly support LGBT rights and hate-crime legislation, would be able to do what 14 year old Graeme Taylor did. From the link:

Last month, Michigan high school teacher Jay McDowell was suspended for a day when he booted a kid from his classroom for making hateful comments about gays. (The kid was also wearing a belt buckle with the Confederate flag on it.) In the wake of it, a chorus of people showed up to a school board meeting to support him, including students and fellow teachers delivering impassioned speeches. But none was so moving as young Graeme Taylor, 14 and out, speaking not only about the overarching righteousness of McDowell but about his own experiences being gay in the classroom. Must watch HERE:

I am humbled by this child.  I am highly pissed that the homophobes suspended that teacher for attempting to show that little hatred indoctrinated child that hating is wrong and never should be tolerated..

The video doesn't have an embed code, or I would of put it up.

Surprise, C&L has the embed video:

Where ignorance is bliss - Bachmann and the tea party.

Filched from MadMikesAmerica

Taibbi has a new book out if you don't know. Its called "Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America.".I do plan to purchase his book, but thankfully Matt is publishing bits and pieces of it at Alternet. I do snicker at the title of his book as I too refer to most politicians as Grifters and/or Carpetbaggers. The chapter subtitle currently on Alternet: By rallying behind dingbats and morons like Palin and Michele Bachmann, the Tea Party has made anti-intellectualism its rallying cry.

I firmly believe that this fuckery started, in earnest, during the 08 election by the biggest and one of THE most ignorant wingtards of them all-Sarah Palin. Being a well-read, smart and/or college-educated person is bad according to the Nutter U folks like Palin, Bachmann and that idiot extraordinaire from TX, Louie-voters shouldn't be able to elect senators- Gohmert. These assholes love to tout their belief in the Constitution, yet they really don't understand it and would remove basic rights that all Americans have enjoyed, some for over two hundred years. But I am rambling, so here is a small excerpt from Matt Taibbi's book where he discusses The Grifter Class and why the extreme right love them to death:

So long as this stuff is not widely understood by the public, the Grifter class is going to skate on almost anything it does -- because the tendency of most voters, in particular conservative voters, is to assume that Wall Street makes its money engaging in normal capitalist business and that any attempt to restrain that sector of the economy is thinly disguised socialism.

That’s why it’s so brilliant for the Tea Party to put forward as its leaders some of the most egregiously stupid morons on our great green earth. By rallying behind dingbats like Palin and Michele Bachmann -- the Minnesota congresswoman who thought the movie Aladdin promoted witchcraft and insisted global warming wasn’t a threat because "carbon dioxide is natural" -- the Tea Party has made anti-intellectualism itself a rallying cry. The Tea Party is arguing against the very idea that it’s even necessary to ask the kinds of questions you need to ask to grasp bubble economics.

Bachmann is the perfect symbol of the Dumb and Dumber approach to high finance. She makes a great show of saying things that would get a kindergartner busted to the special ed bus -- shrieking, for instance, that AmeriCorps was a plot to force children into liberal "reeducation camps" (Bachmann’s own son, incidentally, was a teacher in an AmeriCorps program), or claiming that the U.S. economy was "100 percent private" before Barack Obama’s election (she would later say Obama in his first year and a half managed to seize control of "51 percent of the American economy").

Earlier in the article, Taibbi admits that understanding economics and the financial world is hard if you don't have a degree or expertise in that area. I will be the first to admit that I rely on various sources to explain different parts of the economic world to me. But that said...teabaggers don't even try to understand the economic system or issue, they just buy into whatever bullshit the R's spew from their pieholes. Sadly, two of the most vocal fuckwits, one just reelected, Palin and Bachmann, have no friggin clue about how anything works. The final passage from the Alternet reprint of Taibbi's book excerpt:

Our world isn’t about ideology anymore. It’s about complexity. We live in a complex bureaucratic state with complex laws and complex business practices, and the few organizations with the corporate will power to master these complexities will inevitably own the political power. On the other hand, movements like the Tea Party more than anything else reflect a widespread longing for simpler times and simple solutions -- just throw the U.S. Constitution at the whole mess and everything will be jake. For immigration, build a big fence. Abolish the Federal Reserve, the Department of Commerce, the Department of Education. At times the overt longing for simple answers that you get from Tea Party leaders is so earnest and touching, it almost makes you forget how insane most of them are.(emphasis mine)

Life in general isn't simple anymore. Raising children in this decade is a horror story that makes me glad my only spawn is 31 years old and on his own. Cooking dinner and hoping to hell you aren't poisoning your loved ones. Feeding your pets and then worrying that they just ate something that will kill them.  The Corporatocracy is always finding ways to get us to give them our money, be it cheap goods from China or Vietnam, extending credit and then jacking the fuck out of the interest rates, crying wolf about their bad investments or, like the Chamber of Commerce, telling us that anything Obama or the liberals want is pure, unadulterated socialism that will bring the US to it's collective knees.

Hey Big Spenders!

We all know that the recently held election, what I like to refer to as the silly season, was the record-breaking mutha of all muthas when it comes to cash the candidates spent in total and that which was spent outta their own off-shore bank accounts. OpenSecrets has the pdf breakdown here, but left me give you a few of the highlights or lowlights per vote, depending on your personal ideology.

Whitman's self-financed spending total -- $119 million and counting -- utterly dwarfs that of any self-funded candidate who's competed at the federal level, running either for a congressional seat or the presidency, a Center for Responsive Politics study indicates.

Meggy's per vote personal payout is somewhere between $57 bucks and $47 bucks, depending on who's math you use. Then, there is this guy. Poor Jeff Greene, the D candidate for Senate in Floriduuh, who spent $23,808,789 of his own dinero. Each of the 284,948 votes cast in his favor cost $83.55. Jeffy only had $4,000 coming from outside contributions btw.

Sure, he had to buy a shitload less voters than Meggy, but the result was the same in the end. Both lost but Greene lost in the primary to Kendrick Meek, not the general like good ole Meggy Whitman. Meek lost ugly in the general of course to Rubio's tea party loving ass. Gawd help those people in Floriduuuh.

Oh, and Jerry Govenor Moonbeam Brown spent a paltry $6.34 per handle pulled for him. I just had to toss that in there, it warms the cockles of my little black heart every, single friggin time I read it.

Linda McMahon blew a cool $46,600,161 on her campaign. Her per vote total is somewhere around...wait for it....


A fucking whopping $100.07 per vote.Give or take a few bucks.


Everyone's favorite NV wingtard Sharron Angle really screwed the pooch with $97 bucks per vote. But that includes the total amount raised by her and her teabagging friends, not her personal largess, spent trying to smear and beat her opponent. Speaking of which, Searchlight, NV's Harry Reid spent quite a bit less @ $69 per vote to beat her fuckwitted ass.
All that money, all those female losers (all with R's after their name), it's a damn shame they had more money than brains, at least when it came to running for public office... ain't it?  snicker.....snort.

They did it, they released Aung Suu Kyi!

From the LA Times article

I found something to be glad about this cold dismal day that found me at the Vets office @ 6am. Those batshit fuckwads in the military junta, that run Burma into the ground, finally released her. From the LAT:

Reporting from Yangon, Myanmar —
Opposition leader and Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi was freed Saturday in Myanmar after years in detention as a huge crowd presented flowers and chanted "Long Live Suu Kyi."

Soldiers armed with rifles and tear gas launchers pushed aside the barbed-wire barriers blocking her street at 5:15 p.m., leading to a gleeful dash the final 100 yards to her gate. Twenty minutes later, the slight pro-democracy opposition figure known here simply as "the lady" popped her head over her red spiked fence to a roar from jubilant supporters.

"It's very happy to see the people," she said, barely audible over the chanting. "It's been a very long time since I've seen you."

Suu Kyi, whose been in detention for 15 of the last 21 years in a country under brutal military rule, promised to speak at greater length Sunday at the headquarters of her political party.

"I'll have a loudspeaker then," she said to laughter. "I won't say anything more now, since you can't hear me anyway."

Her party, the National League for Democracy, won by a landslide in 1990 but the results weren't honored by the regime. And it was forced to disband recently after deciding to boycott last weekend's controversial election. Full election results have not been released, but Union Solidarity and Development Party officials, the party backed by the regime, have indicated it has won close to 80% of the seats.

It made me smile through my tears. And for once, I am glad that I was wrong about something.

1 in 3 females soldiers are sexually assaulted, but Gays will harm the military moral?

From Gritv:

General James Amos, the new commandant of the Marine Corps, recently told reporters that he was concerned about a possible loss of unit cohesion and combat readiness if "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell" is repealed. It's the umpteenth time we've heard this.

According to SWAN, the Service Women's Action Network, one in three women is raped or sexually assaulted while serving in our military. I heard a Marine Corps captain choke back her pain this week. Her cohesion's barely holding up; is that just fine with General Amos?

Misogyny and homophobia go hand in hand. Listen to any service person talk about their training. Much of it actually encourages female-hate, or the hatred of the femme within. So no wonder "fag" is a label to be terrified of. The military will never be safe for LGBT people until it's safe for females and it's not. It's deadly.

Laura Flanders full piece via video below:

Will Aung San Suu Kyi be released? - Don't bet the farm on it.

Her house arrest term is set to expire any day now. But the Burmese bastard Junta that runs the country is afraid of the power of this tiny and now elderly woman....so my guess is she won't be released. But her loyal followers still hold on to hope. From The Independent:

The military authorities who oversaw last weekend's controversial election have given no formal indication the 65-year-old will be released when her current term of detention formally expires tomorrow. Yet members of her National League for Democracy (NLD) have been cleaning their offices in anticipation and foreign diplomats are readying themselves for the opportunity to meet her. In Rangoon, said one Western diplomat, there was a "mood of hope, and yet expectation."

"I believe she will released on the evening of 13 November," said her lawyer, Nyan Win. "We have no plans for a celebration, but it will be a very happy occasion for our beloved Lady."

Many warn against such expectation. In Rangoon, where security is tight, the mood remains outwardly calm despite the anxiety of Ms Suu Kyi's supporters. Another diplomat said it was more likely that the Nobel laureate would not be set free. On previous occasions when she was due to be released, the junta changed its mind.

I have written 11 posts on the subject of Burma, Aung and the military junta douche nozzles that rule with a deadly iron fist there. If you wish to read or peruse them, just put Burma in the search box, or click here...but I digress. Since I am mostly a negative bitch, I feel this wonderful woman will still be held prisoner in her own house, probably until the day she dies or until the junta is overthrown....whichever comes first. The junta will gain nothing from releasing her. They do not care about the citizens of Burma, that is obvious...so why in the blue hell would they release her?

But deep down inside my soul...I hope that she is. I would love to be wrong on this topic, I really would.

Honor the Consciences of Our Veterans

Yesterday a 24 year old soldier, Corporal Brett Land was buried here in his hometown of Bakersfield. His life ended in the hell hole called Afghanistan. He was a wrestler in high school. He had people here who loved him. But he is just another statistic in our endless warmongering. From the local news link above:

Land graduated from Bakersfield High School in 2005. He joined the army three years later. While Land was in the service, he met his wife Sarah. They have a newborn daughter Rileigh, but Land never got to hold her in his arms. She was born three weeks before he was killed.

Someone tell me what the fuck is Happy about that????
I find nothing Happy about Veterans Day when we still have thousands of our citizens fighting and dying for a corrupt Afghan government and yes I am talking to you President Obama when I say check out the graphic below the video, courtesy of  Dark Wraith. . Video From BraveNewFoundation:



This isn't a Happy day, its a Solemn day, its a day to think about all those young lives snuffed out like a match stick or soldiers that will forever suffer from their injuries, including PTSD, in our forever wars that have nothing to do with freedom..Iraq and Afghanistan are about power and domination. This is how this anti-war person sees Veterans Day as long as even one of our soldiers is still in Iraq or Afghanistan:

Irony, karma or payback?

Hello fall, glad you are back! I was tired of 90+ temps and humidity off the charts. It has been a miserable summer here in the San Joaquin Valley.

Now, the meaning of the post title. When I became an emancipated minor, my father refused to allow me to take my car when I moved out of the nightmare we called a home. I paid for the car, as I worked full time and attended college. I made the mistake of letting my father put the auto in his name so the insurance would be 'cheaper' for me to pay.

As a 17 year old, I paid rent to my parents and paid for all my personal needs. I carried a full load at college and worked full time. With both my parents alcoholic's it was a horrible, violent, tense place to live so I left. They had the police drag me back time and time again...until I wised up and got a lawyer and became an emancipated minor.

This pissed my father off greatly as he was going to lose his 200 bucks a month I paid him in rent. He was and still is a spiteful mean sumbitch. He is now 80 years old and mentally out to lunch. Fast forward to the present...

His doctor has repeatably warned him not to drive over the last 9 months and, as I have noted in several past posts, my father refuses to play by the rules. He drives drunk constantly and also has memory lapses which leave him unaware of his surroundings or how he got there. The final straw for me and my younger sister was when he called her one night and told her he had no idea where he was, eventually we found out he was in Anaheim, a long friggin way from his home in Escondido..but I digress.

Two weeks ago, I filed an unsafe driver report with Cali's Dept of Motor Vehicles. While I was in San Diego this past weekend, the hearing notice came for my father. It came to my sisters house, so I was the chosen one to serve this notice on my father.

His doctor will skewer him in the report DMV will request, I have no doubt about that and, I have laid out for the DMV, in writing, all the instances of unsafe driving and memory lapses behind the wheel of that huge SUV of his for the last year.

Dear old dad will not win this one I pray to Buddha...there are too many people who know about his alcohol problems and his falling into whats known as alcohol-induced dementia.

Laying in bed last night it occurred to me that I am the one that will be taking his car away, just like he did to me decades ago. I did not feel any remorse at the thought. I felt relief that I did what had to be done to save innocent strangers from being killed by this drunk, pathetic old man who refuses to listen to reason, who would rather drink booze than eat a morsel of food and who refuses to take his medications because they cost him money he would rather use to get drunk.

When I handed him the hearing notice two days aggo, he got angry, which was what I expected.

Just like I felt when he refused to allow me to take my car with me when I moved out of his house.

So, is it his karma, is it irony or is it selfish payback for me? My emotions are spinning out of control this morning as I can't stop thinking about this. He has gotten out of so many drunk driving stops because he flashes that fucking law enforcement badge of his, but that retirement badge won't do squat for him at the DMV on the 30th of this month. I hope he gives up driving after they yank his license, but like my father's doctor, I doubt he will. I just hope to hell he gets pulled over before he kills someone, because the next time he gets lost and calls my sister who will then call 911, they won't be able to take pity on a mentally deficit, former law enforcement officer...they will have to arrest him...won't they?

The Friday F*ck-off edition.

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Give Peace a chance..

Do I think we will see peace in our lifetime? Sadly no, but that doesn't mean we can not scream from the rooftops that we need to give peace a chance.

Because the warmongering....well...it just ain't fucking working, ya know? It didn't work in Vietnam, when Lennon sang this and it sure as hell ain't doing anything but bankrupting our nation and others. Not to mention, killing millions of innocents around the world.



Today is Blogblast for Peace...so blast this fucker so loud your neighbors can hear it.

How we got here...

Via The Progress Report:

A CAMPAIGN OF OBSTRUCTION: When the economy was spiraling out of control, Republicans filibustered the recovery. When out-of-control health premiums threatened to sink the entire federal budget, Republicans conspired to make health reform Obama's "Waterloo ." When persistent unemployment cried out for a more aggressive Federal Reserve, Republicans blocked Obama's Nobel Prize winning Fed nominee . Even something as basic as regulating the same Wall Street banks that nearly destroyed the American economy nearly fell before a GOP filibuster. This campaign of obstruction was not limited to big ticket items. As of last August, fully 372 bills had passed the House -- many of them unanimously -- but few of them are likely to every receive a vote in the obstructionist-laden Senate. Meanwhile, Obama's judges are being confirmed at only half the rate of President Bush's, and Republicans even stalled key economic policy makers in the midst of a recession. As this campaign of obstruction began to undercut the economic recovery, the GOP doubled down. Republicans repeatedly blocked job-creating and small business-promoting legislation, often killing essential measures or requiring ambitious plans to be pared down into nearly nothing. And this obstructionism helped keep in the economy in the doldrums, the obstructionists' standing in the polls steadily grew.

FLOODING THE AIRWAVES: Republicans did far more than simply blocking Obama's agenda, they also waged a multi-billion dollar disinformation campaign to poison the electorate on this agenda. Emboldened by the Supreme Court's egregious Citizens United decision , the right-wing U.S. Chamber of Commerce waged a $32 million campaign to defeat the President's allies in Congress, and this campaign was just the tip of a massive iceberg of disinformation. Right-wing front groups like 60 Plus and future Florida Gov. Rick Scott's (R) Conservatives for Patients' Rights waged a multi-million dollar campaign to tarnish health reform -- often making outlandish claims that the Affordable Care Act would slash Medicare benefits or outlaw private coverage or euthanize grandma. This disinformation campaign was not limited to health reform. Republicans blanketed the airwaves with attacks on President Obama's successful program to save the auto industry -- a program which saved more than one million jobs . The Recovery Act saved approximately 1.2 million jobs and even right-wing economists believe that it boosted the economy by 4 percent , but Republicans have done everything in their power to ensure that no one knows about these successes. Republicans have manufactured economists who deny the effectiveness of the stimulus. They falsely claim that it has not created a single job, and they repeatedly label it a "failed stimulus" -- even if they also have no compunctions about stealing credit for the law's success whenever it benefits them politically to do so.  Two years of disinformation has taken its toll. Although only one-quarter of voters oppose the actual provisions of the Affordable Care Act , pluralities have been so convinced that the law is poison that they now embrace repeal.  Likewise, two-thirds of voters share the false belief that the Recovery Act either hurt or did not affect the economy.

That voters bought into the fuckery foisted upon us by the graduates of Nutter U aka, the GOP/Teabaggers...well, it really jacks my jaw. Not once did any of the Rethugs tell us how they would fix anything, including and not limited to the economy, job loss to overseas nations or reforming healthcare.

That the Democraps refused to tout their accomplishments and play hardball like the Rethugs also pisses me the fuck off. Only at the end of the election cycle did the Dem's start lobbing negative, mostly true, ads at the assholes on the right. That's when you saw Boxer and Brown pull ahead...only then.

$141Million & all I got was this lousy Tshirt.

Poor Meggy. Dumb ass blew a whole lotta her own cash, by some estimates, around $40 bucks a vote. That hurts, but I love it! Check ou tthe  Politics Daily piece on Meggy and her $141 Large.What that money  could of done besides buying  shitty, negative,lying political commercials:

-- a year's worth of city services (the 2011 city budget) for Longview, Texas ( population: 78,000.)
-- three weeks worth of claim payments for damages related to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, paid to both people and businesses.
-- efforts to turn around worst-performing schools in Pennsylvania, with money from the federal stimulus package.
-- a 125,000 square-foot, 4-story new hospital wing at St. Vincent's Medical Center in Bridgeport, Conn., including a cancer center.
-- energy-efficiency and renewable-energy programs in five states and one territory, with money awarded by the Obama administration last year.
-- pollution controls at three refineries in Kansas and Wyoming, from settlements between petroleum refiners and the federal government.

My o fucking my, thats one helluva list ain't it?

Which do you want first...the good news or the bad?

Pelosi delivered 240 bills to Reid and the Senate the last two years. Lets see what the Rethugs under Boehner do in the next two. Reid will still be running the show in the Senate. Personally, Reid has never done anything to really impress me. I guess his dealing behind the scenes must be the key.His speech tonight was kinda neat and very humble, which ole 'Give em Hell Harry' is known for. Searchlight, NV is nothing more than a wide spot in the road, I have been there..

Scew it, this is how I see it for the next two years:

So we really can expect DC Gridlock for the next two years, its not rocket science for christs sake. From McClatchy:

Congressional Democrats — their moderate ranks dramatically thinned on Tuesday — are going to be dominated by liberals eager for government to do more to ease the nation's economic pain.

As a result, "We're not about to get what people want," said Maya MacGuineas, the president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonpartisan budget watchdog group.

Instead, we're likely to get partisan gridlock.

The confrontational tone was clear from the GOP winners Tuesday night — "there's a tea party tidal wave and we're sending a message," proclaimed Kentucky Senator-elect Rand Paul.

*snip*

The pledge's centerpiece is a punch aimed squarely at the Democratic gut: It calls for repealing this year's health-care overhaul, extending permanently all Bush-era tax cuts and imposing budget discipline by rolling back most domestic spending to 2008 levels.

President Barack Obama and Democrats in Congress won't go along. Forecast: gridlock.

That's not what Americans want. By 77 percent to 22 percent, registered voters want Republicans to work with Obama to get things done rather than stand firm to the point of gridlock, according to the latest McClatchy-Marist poll. Nevertheless, gridlock's coming to Congress — at least for the opening months.

We just want the bastards to quit pandering to the Corporatocracy and work for the people and our bottom line for fuck's sake. Both parties.

Voters dumped the most progressive Senator, Russ Feingold. For me, that's the bad news. His district went 180 degrees the other way. Friggin amazing to me. I don't want a pundits view of why either. I want someone who voted for Feingold for years to tell me why in the blue hell they went for the guy with the (R) behind his name and what he can do that Russ Feingold can't.

Obama is still calling the shots as Congress will never get the votes to overturn his veto . Suck on that mutha fuckas...suck on that.