It's the abortion deficit, stupid.

Brooklynbadboy at the KOS:

Republican Governor Mitch Daniels of Indiana has ticked off social conservatives by declaring that the next Republican president will "have to call a truce on the so-called social issues." Tony Perkins of the FRC responds:

"Nothing is more fiscally responsible than ending the taxpayer funding of abortion and abortion promotion."

Right. Abortion is causing the deficit. These people are completely insane, folks.

Here we are past the trillion dollar mark on Bush's wars to get the people who knocked those buildings down: hundreds of thousands, if not millions, are dead; Bin Laden is still free; our military is stretched so thin that soldiers are doing multiple tours with no end in sight; the costs to the VA for caring for all the injured vets are just starting to come in; George W. Bush goes around bragging about torturing people; millions more hate us for our heavy-handed and bloated military adventures; and Tony Fucking Perkins thinks ending abortion is the best fiscal restraint we can come up with.

These people aren't insane; they're vicious, lying mother fuckers who want the world to hate us so much that Armageddon comes in their lifetimes. And any fucker who agrees with them or votes for them deserves the lake of fire they think will go only to those who don't believe like they do.

Good thing so many of the Family Research Council's friends are into homosexual sex. No need for birth control or abortions there!

Epic Fail: The Bush [Criminal] Record

The reverse Robin Hood crime syndicate known as the Cheney Cabal never hid the fact that they wanted to put more money in the hands of the richest, based on the twisted theory that once they had more, the rich would invest, create jobs, and more money would magically appear everywhere.

Right.

The hopeless idiots who voted for these crooks, meaning all the working class fools who hate hippies from the sixties so much that they still vote for the fascists who will beat them up on the news, are now trying to blame their new President for the full latrine hole in which they now find themselves. They're not going to pay attention to the latest proof that they were used by the cynical politics of KKKarl Rove in order to steal a lot of money, followed by a last minute bail out (Bush's TARP) of all the rich people who were standing around saying "We don't know where all the money went."

Maybe they thought that the war on poverty they inherited meant they were supposed to kill poor people? What other excuse could there be for the draconian policies of tax cuts for the rich, spending cuts for the poor, and bailouts for the ultra-rich? Looking back, they were so successful at screwing poor people that it must've been a plan from the get-go, since the only things these people were successful at were things they had planned from the start, like starting war in Iraq.

Of course, they were good at planning the starts of things. Not so good at the rest. How's that ownership society going now? The ultimate pottery barn rule: Bush broke everything, now we own it, and it's worthless.

If only we were really Closing The Book On The Bush Legacy:

On every major measurement, the Census Bureau report shows that the country lost ground during Bush's two terms. While Bush was in office, the median household income declined, poverty increased, childhood poverty increased even more, and the number of Americans without health insurance spiked.

The one success story? The rich got much, much richer.

Since poverty is the lagging indicator, we're going to be seeing numbers like this go up for a while yet, and we're going to see the treasonous apologists for these war criminals try to blame the new guy, just like they tried to blame Clinton for 9/11, despite the warnings that OBL was determined to strike IN the US.

Thousands died that day because the Bushies were asleep at the National Security wheel. Or drunk. Or choking on pretzels. Or just didn't care, since, as the PNAC (project for a new american century) said late in the Clinton years, they'd need a new Pearl Harbor to really get involved in the Middle East. Now, since they got what they wanted (don't the spoiled frat brats always?), I'm assuming they, at the very least, did nothing to stop what they were hoping for. So, they used the same kind of indifference on programs that actually helped people get out of poverty, or get affordable health insurance, or a mortgage within the means of which they could live.

Say, for example, you want to milk all the money you can out of people at the bottom, and make sure it goes to the top. Obviously, you'd cut taxes on the wealthy and cut programs for the poor. But there's plenty of other things you can do. Ignore hurricanes that hit black people, for example. Make sure you decrease funding into things that might protect black neighborhoods: levees, for one. Or cut superfund sites funding, since a disproportionate share of minorities live near those sites. Or, you could string out a costly racket known as the Iraq war, sucking money up into the military industrial complex, lining Halliburton pockets, while running up a deficit designed to starve "a beast" that you're trying to shrink to a size that you can drown in a bath-tub, although Grover Norquist's bathtub must be a little bigger than most. Or, speaking of water, you could just not prosecute clean water act violations. Millions "saved." Unless by millions, you mean people...

If you really wanted to be a vicious bastard, you could sue states that tried to let people who were suffering die with dignity (no big end-of-life bucks for the HMOs), you could make sure teen pregnancies skyrocket, (don't make me look up the Freakonomics on the chains of poverty in which pregnant teens and their kids get locked), and you could arrest cancer patients for smoking pot (no money for big pharma in an easy-to-grow plant).

All good plans, if you're looking to put money back into the hands of those who need it least. Of course, if you believe the Reagan lie that government is bad, then you probably love what Bush did. It's hard to go to church and explain to people how Jesus would have approved of more people in poverty, more children going to bed hungry, more people dying due to lack of adequate health care... But, fuck that, eh? Just make shit up!

"It's not my fault they're poor!" How about "The Lord helps those who help themselves"? Maybe "I shouldn't have to pay to help lazy bums or their kids"? That's a great one. Or, how about the biblical version of let them eat cake?

And thou shalt eat it as barley cakes, and thou shalt bake it with dung that cometh out of man.--Ezekiel 4:12

Never mind Mark 10:25. Everything can be explained away with the ultimate bumper-sticker legacy of the Book of Reagan (1:1):

I got mine, fuck you.

Of course, if you think government is always bad, you're wrong. But, like trying to convince you that the earth is 4 billion years old and we evolved from lower life forms, that our carbon blanket is warming us up, that the earth goes around the sun, that the government's not going to pull the plug on your Grandma, that our president was born in Hawaii, or that Hawaii is a US State, you're not going to believe me. You think what you think, and then there's the truth, and never the twain shall meet.

Good luck with that. And thanks for the shit sandwich.

Anyone Still A Republican After Today is Officially a Fucking Idiot

Sarah Fucking Palin:

The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's "death panel" so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their "level of productivity in society," whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.

The America I know and love doesn't exist anymore. If it did, lying scumbag idiot torture apologists who promote the agenda of racist violence whores who respond to collateral damage with shrugs and smirks would be rounded up and jailed, when a conviction was achieved from a Jury of their peers (if there is such a thing), and sued for slander when a conviction is not achieved, and laughed out of town in all the other cases. They certainly wouldn't be given a bigger soap box, a following of brainwashed bigots who couldn't find the truth if you rammed it up their collective retentive asses, and a war chest of millions of dollars from the lunatic asylum masquerading as a news organization and a supposedly legitimate political party that now represents the south, the Mormon corridor, and Maine (for some insane reason I have yet to figure out).

But just for a moment, I'm going to stop typing, chase the squirrel away from the bird feeder again, and fantasize about a society in which we all get to vote on Sarah Palin's "level of productivity in society" and, based on our vote, determine that she should have to spend the rest of her years in seclusion, in some sort of God-forsaken hell-hole where news cameras never go, where health care is only for the very rich or very poor or very old or very incarcerated, and where her monthly check from the government is the majority of her income, where she has to live, with her whole damn genetically challenged family and unmarried teenage mother daughter, on $600 in food stamps a month, while borrowing money from friends and family to pay the rent...

Ah, fantasy...

What to do with that 401k...

You are the steward of your 401k. After Enron, I warned everyone I knew that these people were playing fast and loose with the rules. Sure, Phil Gramm got a few things through in the late 90's but once the Bush free marketeers got into it, it was just nuts. I think Goldman Sachs was leveraged 33 to one for god's sake. Hank Paulson him self got the SEC to change the rules that he took advantage of, and then when he became treasury secretary, basically bailed himself out.

You don't have to be a genius to know if you pile up a bunch of money and don't pay anyone to guard it, it will disappear. The Bushies did this with cold hard cash they sent to Baghdad on pallets! Billions if cash right from the US Treasury. Then, they did it 1000 times bigger with credit default swaps and unregulated insurance instruments. The average 401k guy gets told to buy and hold, the long run is good, stay in stocks if you're young, yada yada yada... Meanwhile, they're pocketing your money, buying jets and private islands in countries with no extradition, no income tax, and no minimum wage.

Just imagine what would have happened if we fed this GOP genetic mutation our social security funds.

So, is the 401k a bad thing? Should you be buying in right now? Well, you can get some good stuff cheap right now. But the next time you smell a bubble, put it in a money market fund. I wish people had the option of just going into an index fund with no fees. In the long run, that's better than all that damn day trading anyway. But who knows... It could be Mad Max world soon, in which case you'll want to invest in sharp boomerangs and gasoline.

Conservative Catharsis: Don't Blame Obama

There are no principles left on the right, only tactics and bluster, as if John Bolton himself has taken over the GOP diplomacy wing. At this point, looking back on all the facts I collected at this site, which proves conclusively that the entire Bush administration committed treason, repeatedly: I don't really care what they say. When you say as much shit as the right wing has said in the last few decades, it renders your speech meaningless. We are for x except when we're not. We're against y except when we're not. Now we're going to do that which we told you not to. Then we're going to tell you not to again.

I often tell myself I could be a better conservative than them. It wouldn't be hard. I have libertarian bones, like most Americans. We want the government to protect us and leave us alone, that delicate balancing act that, in a world of nanotechnology, is going to get harder and harder to perform. But it's really not that tricky. Conservatives should be reality based, do what would actually make us safer (which is more like Ron Paul's position than John Bolton's).

They should not be afraid of logic which leads to a conclusion similar to Dennis Kucinich. The liberal left and the reasonable right have much more in common than most of them would care to admit. If the Nationalist Times could get over its racism, they'd have some decent solutions about some things, like keeping government out of medical decisions, a position long held by the libertarian liberals on issues like abortion, medical marijuana, and euthanasia.

But first, the conservatives of the US need a catharsis: George W Bush ruined this country. Rush Limbaugh may be hoping Obama fails at big-government rescue, but it's really too late. George W. Bush (aided amply by Dick Cheney and Rush) drove this country right off a cliff, and Obama is trying to stitch together a big enough parachute to save the whole car. It's probably too late to save the car. But it is not too late to save those occupants who are willing to start stitching their own little parachutes, and we can wind up falling a little slower with a contraption that's going to look a little like the seagulls James lassoed to carry his giant peach.

We'll probably still have a hard landing, but maybe we can slow it all down enough to not break our legs when we hit. All the "conservatives" -- and I would argue that there really aren't many any more -- who can't realize that they were wrong about Bush, wrong about Iraq, wrong about Cheney, wrong about trickle down economics, and wrong about practically every social issue from Terry Schiavo to Sodomy, are going to have to crash. Continuing on at this point as if George Bush wasn't the worst president ever, as if Dick Cheney doesn't belong in prison, as if Donald Rumsfeld doesn't deserve to be "sleep deprived" for days, is the intellectual equivalent of a quivering bowl of decomposed fruit with ditto head flies swarming around it.

If I were a conservative right now (and in many ways I am), I would be encouraging bigger investment in infrastructure that will make our communities more resilient. I would be encouraging micro-loans to the poor to help them start small local businesses. I would demand that food stamp programs only get increases if the recipients can use that money at farmer's markets and on community supported agriculture programs. I would strongly encourage small, local power producers, and companies that create on site energy creation, especially in rural areas.

If I were a conservative right now, I would strongly encourage people to grow their own food in organic victory gardens or urban rooftop gardens, or community gardens on empty lots, like they're doing in Detroit now. The roots of the conservative philosophy lie in independence. This disaster brought on by the insolent teenager of a president and his Dr. Strangelove sidekick offers a chance for conservatives to get back to their roots and encourage the people of this country to become independent, to help each other, and to reward behavior that makes things better, while punishing those who make it worse.

Today's LA Times has a great story about the Mad Maxing that's going on right now, in this case at abandoned construction projects around southern California.

At its Oakland site, structures dating to World War II were to have been demolished by now to make way for 1,000 homes and a shopping center.

But workers walked off the job when their payments stopped, leaving behind piles of debris. A nine-story hospital the developers planned to raze was invaded by squatters.

In the Sacramento River Delta area of Contra Costa County at SunCal's planned Delta Coves housing development, blowing sand is filling in a new lagoon, and crucial water pumping systems are unmonitored.

Eight years of robber barons in charge has left us in a world we are much more equipped to deal with than many think. One of the facts (I know, conservatives, it's hard to get used to the idea that there are facts to be found outside of Fox News) that LA Times story touches on is that the thieves who show up in these abandoned construction projects are there to take copper wire and other commodities that are valuable. These people have been watching the robber barons do this to the whole country for the last 8 years. They are watching now as they all get away with it. And while there may not be a Wall Street worth plundering ever again, there will be things that aren't tied down. And unless those things are protected by armed guards, they will be stolen. In the Mad Max world Bush has left us with, people are left on their own to survive with whatever they can find.

We have the know-how and where-with-all to create resilient communities that produce their own power, grow their own food, and live sustainably without oil or coal. We just have to get used to the idea that we've been robbed. We have to start over, from scratch, with very little to help us besides government and abandoned industries to supply scraps. To what extent a federal government will be able to help a system that needs a lot of independent nodes, we will see. One reason I've chosen to not become a conservative is that I believe the government can help.

But it's going to need some basic conservative help, or it can easily get out of control. Hopefully, there are some conservatives willing to step up to a podium, admit that Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/Limbaugh conservatism is over. Bombastic, disagreeable, authoritarian, top-down, imperialistic, interventionist assholes are going to have to step aside and shut the hell up for a while. They had 8 years to do what they assured us was the absolute right thing to do, and it turned out they were lying, torturing thieves who literally stole billions of dollars (in deregulated Ponzi schemes, or by taking pallets of cash directly out of the US Mint and flying it to Baghdad where it disappeared). Any talk of government spending being out of control is just more of the same shit that trickled down their legs since Reagan. This government is going to spend on infrastructure and people, and the most the conservatives can hope to do is direct some of it in ways that they prefer.

The conservative in me would like to see the investments lead to more independence and less centralization. Is there any principal more important to conservative philosophy? At this point, it seems more likely that President Obama will preserve that principle more than the GOP will.