Needlenose

Better not forget the extra foam, barrista, this gun has a hair-trigger!

Regardless of how lame the Obama Administration has been, the recent and upcoming SCOTUS rulings on gun control should be a wake-up call about how wrong the Naderites were about how there is ”no difference between the Democrats and Republicans.’  Shrubya had 8 years to replace retiring liberal and moderate justices with reactionary activists.  The result?  Sometime this summer you are going to wake up one morning in a country where all gun control laws have been abolished.

You can get a preview of things to come by watching the gun nuts parade around with their weapons in our restaurants and national parks.  I bet it won’t be long before we have some dramatic shootout, where one of these unhinged, delusional vigilantes tries to stop an armed robbery and blows away some poor coffee patron.  Or maybe a couple of these loons will shoot at each other, thinking they are stopping a robber!  Hard to guess, but I’m sure it will happen soon, and sure it will be bloody.

Given the current extremists in the court, my guess is that we are one lawsuit away from a similar overturn of Roe v. Wade.

So stop your whining, suck it up and work hard to make Obama successful, now and in his next run – because we are just one Scalia or Thomas heart-attack away from an appointment of a real justice and a non-loony majority.

Trial by Monster Truck

I can’t determine which is crazier – the claim that Obama shouldn’t be President because he wasn’t born here, or the belief by a large majority of Repugs that he didn’t wind because little old ACORN managed to steal 9.5 million votes.

Are they stupid, crazy or does this just demonstrate the success of the big lie technique as applied by Faux News and the Wrong-Wing Media Echo Chamber?  Or all three?

Combine this with the obvious popularity of Caribou Barbie among the wingnut set, and you come to realize that Idiocracy is closer at hand than 500 years in the future.

Maybe we could make the Khalid Sheikh Mohammed trial more popular with the Palin crowd by including monster trucks, flamethrowers and chainsaws.

*Update 11/24/09* case in point:

Although Obama seems to be having some trouble getting unity among his own party in Congress, there is some good news – 8 Republican Representatives  crossed party lines to vote with the Dems on the recent climate change legislation.

Although I’ve occasionally decried the leadership of Pelosi and Reid, the looming GOP attacks on these 8 Representatives could give Pelosi something to work with in the form of a small group of ‘quislings’ to give the appearance of bi-partisan support to legislation and offset the more disloyal and conservative Democratic Representatives.  Definitely 8 Reps to keep an eye on!

In related and joyful news, Al Franken is now Senator Al Franken, because “he’s good enough, and smart enough, and doggone it, Minnesotans like him!”

I’ve spent the last 8 years called the Republicans the Repugs.  But the Dumbocrats are also screwed up.  The one thing their devilish counterparts had going for them was party unity.  As wrong as they always were, they worked together like pack animals to destroy America.

Check out the Dumbocrats – on the eve of having a fillibuster-proof majority in the Senate – they can’t back their own man in the White House – the stupid jerk-wads won’t close Gitmo.  WTF?

Harry Reid has got to go!

The Repugs, riding the wave of public indignation, are having a field day with the AIG executive retention bonus crap.  And why shouldn’t they?  It was a Dem legislature that stripped out the provision to cap the bonuses of firms getting Federal bailouts to keep afloat?

I mean, $163 Million sure is a lot of money, right?

Well the public should get a sense of perspective, and call the Repugs out for their feigned amnesia – I mean where the fuck was all the ‘indignation’ when goddman Shrubya & the Repug Congress of the day lost $12 Billion in the ” biggest transfer of cash in the history of the Federal Reserve” in a ‘rebuild Iraq’ program that had Zero oversight and accountability?

It’s time for a reality check here – that is 2 orders of magnitude larger than when the Dems just pooch-screwed away, and what’s more – at least we know where the $163 Million ended up (and we might be able to get it back through a special tax)!!  The $12 Billion just vanished without a trace.

And that’s not including another $10 Billion spent on no-bid contracts with unenforced oversight handed out to Shrubya cronies on “questionable or unsupported charges in Iraq reconstruction contracts.”

There are days when I believe they put funny pills in the American drinking water supply.  Seriously.

From the state-by-state capsule election preview by Chuck Todd of MSNBC:

If I were the Republican Party, I’d make Michigan and Colorado my petri dishes for experiments to get the party’s groove back. Until the GOP can appeal to secular independents in the West and working class Democrats in the Midwest, they are going to be a minority party.

Good to see comments like that about the other party for a change.

Check out what McCain’s ‘friends’ that he is ‘proud of’ are doing – Sacto & San Bernadino Repugs post sleazy racist attack pics on their website and in their publications. An excerpt:

In San Bernardino County, a Republican women’s organization sent a monthly newsletter to its members that carried a racially insensitive depiction of Obama. “Obama talks about all those presidents that got their names on bills. If elected, what bill would he be on? Food Stamps, what else!” read the caption above an “Obama Bucks” bill cartoon image in the latest edition of the Chaffey Community Republican Women Federated newsletter. The independent community organization is not a part of the state Republican Party, and its newsletter is distributed to a few thousand members in the county.

Next to the senator’s image was a bucket of fried chicken, a slab of ribs, a slice of watermelon and a pitcher of Kool-Aid. Diane Fedele, the organization’s president, took responsibility for the image and apologized “if it offended anyone.”

*Update* The Brown Shirts are vandalizing ACORN offices and making threatening the lives of staffers, following McCain’s B.S. anti-ACORN talking point in the debate.

Looks like the reactionaries are pulling the same ‘trash Democratic registrations‘ scam that worked so effectively for them in 2004.  Seriously, this shit will continue until we change the law to make this activity a felony involving serious prison time, rather than letting these bastards off with petty-cash fines.

But the thuggish actions of shadowy Repug proxy groups pales in comparison to the “official” attempts to disenfranchise potential Democratic voters in swing states on the part of well-placed Repug operatives:

States have been trying to follow the Help America Vote Act of 2002 by removing the names of voters who should no longer be listed. But for every voter added to the rolls in the past two months in some states, election officials have removed two, a review of the records shows.

The newspaper said it identified apparent problems in Colorado, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Nevada and North Carolina. It says some states are improperly using Social Security data to verify new voters’ registration applications, and others may have broken rules that govern removing voters from the rolls within 90 days of a federal election.

It has proved surpisingly easy for the Repugs to manipulate a few thousand votes in a few counties in a few swing states in the previous two elections without causing riots. The bottom line is that Obama needs to do what Kerry and Gore were unable to do in ’04 and ’00 – win by a margin large enough in the swing states to prevent the Repugs from winning by theft, say 10%.

So keep up the hard work, ignore the pundits already calling an Obama victory – winning the swing states isn’t enough, he needs to win big in those states.

English professor and liberal gadfly Jack Gillis emailed this to me (and several others) the morning after the State of the Union address:

——————————————————–
Quote from Bush’s speech:

“A simple chemical reaction between hydrogen and oxygen generates energy, which can be used to power a car producing only water, not exhaust fumes. With a new national commitment, our scientists and engineers will overcome obstacles to taking these cars from laboratory to showroom so that the first car driven by a child born today could be powered by hydrogen, and pollution-free.”

Let’s do some math. In 1992, Al Gore published a book in which he predicted the replacement of the internal combustion engine in 25 years (probably by a hydrogen engine), for which comment he was cruelly, deceptively and dishonestly excoriated by the GOP. 1992 + 25 = 2017.

Last night, Bush said substantially the same thing except he said “the first car driven by a child born today.” If Learner’s Permits are granted at 15 1/2 (as in most states, I think), 2003 + 15 = 2018.

So, according to the GOP logic, calling for hydrogen cars by the year 2017 is “Banning cars!” “Destroying freedom!” “Absolutely flaky!” but calling for hydrogen cars by 2018 is “Visionary!” “Brilliant!” “Bold!”

Remember way back when — oh, just over a week ago — when I mentioned that the bad news on the federal budget deficit was going to get worse? Well, that didn’t take long, did it?

“The U.S. budget outlook continues to deteriorate,” wrote William C. Dudley, an economist at Goldman Sachs, after analyzing the government’s latest revenue data. “Our estimate of $300 billion for fiscal 2003 looks somewhat optimistic.”

If you were planning on receiving Social Security in about 20-25 years, I’m afraid it’s time to start making other plans. After an eight-year break, the Republican strategy to reduce your reliance on government programs (by systematically bankrupting the government) is back in effect.