Why I continue to call them "tea baggers"

I greatly lament the death of nuance in our culture, and it's perfectly exemplified by the so called 'tea party' movement. A 'movement' so removed form popular culture that they initially referred to themselves, they picked their own name, with a euphemism for someone having balls dunked in their mouths. They picked their name, we just laughed at them for it.

But that's not the reason I continue to call them tea baggers. I do that because they're the people that were carrying signs of such nuanced political insight as "Keep Government Out of my Medicare." The sheer weight of their intellectual curiosity is scary. These are the same people that carried signs of Obama as a monkey, or eating bananas, or a tribal witch doctor with a bone in his nose and claimed they were not racist. These are the same people, like Michelle Bachmann, how decried Rick Perry's HPV program, that actually can save lives, as an unacceptable intrusion into personal choice but then says if elected she'll pass a law forcing women seeking abortions to have an intrusive medical procedure designed specifically and unapologetically to push women to not have the abortion, using government to force her moral and religious ideology on the rest of the country.

It's not government these people have a problem with, it's other peoples government they have a problem with. Anything that empowers someone else by default threatens them. It's a zero sum game for them. I've stated this before. If someone else has their rights expanded, then by their faith based math their rights are being restricted. it goes hand in hand, it's accepted faith for these people. They hate other peoples government.

Lastly, the entire "movement' is bogus. It's 90% disaffected Republicans that left the party for various reasons since Reagan, and the other 10% are the same old small l libertarians that have been sniffing around the GOP for decades, showing up at caucuses and voting for Ron Paul and generally being a pain in the party's rear end. The entire thing is being paid for and organized by establishment GOP groups and fronts like AFP and the Koch's as well as American Crossroads, which is a Gingrich op for God's sake.

And that's why I continue to call them tea baggers, because they continue to open their mouths and prove their ignorance every day. They have no clue they're being used, though they're starting to find that out, same as the evangelicals did when Bush and the party leadership dumped them after the elections. These people are tools, and not themselves, but for someone else.

Why raising taxes is the right thing to do.

The vast majority of Americans support raising taxes on the super wealthy. A majority supports raising them on the merely wealthy. And a significant minority supports raising them on everybody. Americans want to pay down their debt but the Republicans won't let them. Remember when paying for wars was patriotic? Remember when just paying your taxes was patriotic? But that was before the government became the problem.

Here's what it boils down to;
Democrats; We want to raise taxes but will compromise and cut spending too.
Republicans' Okay, we'll let you compromise.

The Democrats have cut spending. They've cut a lot of spending. It's time to let temporary tax cuts expire. It's time to make a real effort to pay off our war debt. It's time the American people actually paid something for the wars 1% of our population is fighting in our name. Tax cuts during war time, how hollow our patriotism, how cheap our freedom.

It's time for all Americans to step up and do their duty, including the rich and industry. It used to be the American way.

Bigotry is not racism.

Okay people, let's once again consider the differences between racist and racism with bigotry and bigot. Most of what gets labeled as racism today is nothing more than simple bigotry. A racist believes in the superiority or inferiority of one or more races over the other. A bigot is someone that treats a group of people with intolerance or some level of animosity because of what or who they are. A bigot doesn't have to think someone is genetically inferior, a racist does.

Racist and racism have been so grossly misused and abused that they've all but lost their true meaning. They're nothing more than sound bites now. And that's a shame, because when real racists come along we're likely to ignore them until it's too late. It's also a shame that the words have lost all their power with their meaning. Please stop to make the distinction instead of adding to the knee jerk reactionary moralistic outrage bull crap that permeates our national discourse today.

Everyone is bigoted in some way, everyone is fearful of something, the new, the different, change, the loss of control. That's an evolutionary defense mechanism. But God gave us the good grace to rise above our base instincts. Some just more grace than others.

Florida's modern day poll tax; Pt. II

So what about clinic certification and inspection costs? What tests do the state accept? Do they inspect testing facilities? Do they contract with local companies? What if there are no testing facilities in a large rural area? What if the people are in home due to health issues, do they have to pay extra for the tester to come to their home?

People knee jerking their support for this law aren't thinking it through. The percentage of over all welfare recipients on drugs is not going to be that high. if you think it is, you're completely ignorant of the stats. So called 'generational welfare' recipients are a low percentage of people on welfare nationally. It's going to be high in places like maybe Miami slums, but lower in more rural or other areas. It's not going to be the same everywhere.

No one is considering the ongoing costs to both businesses and the state in enforcing and certifying these testing facilities and results. Is there a provision for false positives? Even people in prison if they get tested positive, the sample gets sent to another facility to get retested for a false positive. Does it factor in medication people might be on?

This is nothing more than a modern day poll tax, specifically designed to discourage people from applying for welfare at all. It's not going to lower costs in the long run, it's nothing more than base, empty politics. If they were serious about it, they would have made the law pay for all tests upfront and then bill or sue the people that fail. Instead, they're treating everyone as if they ALL use drugs. It's knee jerk puffy chest partisan politics, nothing more.

Florida's modern day poll tax.

Governor Rick Scott (I won't even get into his personal history or how the hell the piece of shit got elected in a state full of fucking old people) just signed a law in Florida requiring everyone applying for welfare to pay for and take a drug test first.

Now, at first glance that might not seem so bad. But rethink it. People have to pay for the drug test first. They can get reimbursed by the state once they are accepted into the program. If they do not get accepted, for any reason, even unrelated to the testing, they do not get reimbursed. They have to pay to apply for a government service they might not even get accepted to.

This is blatantly a modern day poll tax, designed specifically to keep people from applying for welfare in the first place. You think the state is going to accept just any old drug test result? No, they are going to contract with private testing agencies, either by subcontracting some company directly or by making them pay to get 'certified' by the state to be an 'official' program tester, which is almost certainly to lead to ongoing re-certification fees by the state, inspecting fees so people aren't running 'clinics' out of the home or a garage. So there's more fees and more costs.

When they first passed the breathalyzer law in Michigan the state contracted two companies to run it state wide. Of course they didn't have facilities everywhere so they had to contract with local businesses like truck and car accessory places. What the fuck did these sub sub contractors know about anything? The program was a fucking mess. You had two choices, period. And depending on where you lived, you might have only one choice if there is only one place in town and they only contract one service. It was a state sanctioned monopoly, and it didn't work for shit. Even the people that worked at the local car accessory place admitted the program was fucked up, so bad at the time, only a couple years into it, they were think of dropping it.

But back to the current ideological war on society. This is just one more front in the ongoing war against social programs. It's designed specifically to prevent people from even applying. If they were serious about it, they would have written the law to allow the state to pay for all pre-application testing and then bill or sue the people that fail. But they didn't. On purpose.

They're applying for fucking welfare! They don't have any fucking money! And if they get denied for reasons other than drugs, they're still out the fucking money!

It's a modern day poll tax. It's open war on poor people. It's nothing less than the abdication of social responsibility to consumer market capitalism.

The new color of racism is green.

US politicians; On Sale! Buy Now!

So I thought Citizens United wasn't supposed to open the flood gates of corporate money? Wasn't that the line from the conservati­ve majority of the USSC that ruled on it as well as every other conservati­ve in the country spouting out their ass about it?

The point here, or rather what should be the point but obviously isn't, is that businesses do business as a "person" for business purposes only. Rather than listing every corporate officer by name on every transactio­n they do, they do it as a business instead. But being a "person" doesn't mean you're a citizen, or that you have the same rights as a citizen. Just ask the sorry bastards down in Gitmo.

And that's the kicker for corporatio­ns. Just because they're "people" doesn't mean they're citizens. Can they vote? I would think the primary basis of claiming citizen rights would be to be able to vote. They can not. They are not citizens, and they have NO inherent right to free speech what so ever. The people that work there can do whatever they want, the business can not. Or, again, rather, should not. But here we are, flood gates open, up to our necks in corporate influence on our national policies.

People have long claimed that US politician­s were for sale, now we know they are. All they need now is a price tag around their necks.

Is Newt out already?

I knew it was only a matter of time before Newt blew himself up, but I had hoped he would at least make it to the actual debates and bloody up the field some before he imploded.

But here we are, showing his circus contortionist training by screwing himself in the ass.

In short, he called Paul Ryan's Medicare plan "right-wing social engineering." That is a direct out of the mouths of too smart for their own good babes quote. But that wasn't enough for a pro like Newt, he had to go on a mini rant on how he would push for an individual mandate which, of course, though trumpeted at first by The Heritage Foundation, has now been sullied and dirtied by Obama's filthy black socialist hands.

This is Newts problem, he's too smart. He knows too much stuff, it makes it hard to stay on the myopic ideological talking points, especially when they don't make sense. Newt simply forgot and started talking truth and, actually, previous conservative dogma. It's hard to keep up with what they support and oppose at any given point in time.

The only way of keeping the private for profit insurance driven health care system is some form of an individual mandate. Everyone has to be included or it won't work, the costs won't go down, and it'll fall apart. This is why conservatives are now pushing so hard for state exemptions, they know if enough states opt out it won't work nationally.

So minus the individual mandate, the only other option is government health care. Conservatives need to swallow this nasty load and get it over with. Short of an individual mandate forcing the vast majority of people to buy insurance, or direct government health care, the current system will collapse.

Newt knows this, he just forgot he's not supposed to say it out loud.

The new and imrpoved House Un-American Activities Committee

Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Islamic faith?

Or are you one of those 'First Amendment terrorists?'