Palin: God ‘blessed’ with me a platform on Fox News to defend myself
Sunday, November 24, 2013
Wednesday, November 20, 2013
I renew my objection
I renew my objection to the veneration of Ms Oprah Winfrey.
I mean, seriously, the Presidential Medal of Freedom? What exactly are the criteria for this award?
According to Wikipedia:
It recognizes those individuals who have made "an especially meritorious contribution to the security or national interests of the United States, world peace, cultural or other significant public or private endeavors".
Okay, so giving this award to Bill Clinton? Sure, why not? Not for anything he did during his presidency, but for the humanitarian work he's done since, sure.
Gloria Steinem? Absolutely.
Loretta Lynn? Hell yeah.
But Oprah?
What meritorious contribution has she made to world peace, cultural, or any other significant endeavor?
Nothing against Ms Winfrey, who seems like a perfectly nice person, but her show was garbage. And any positive contributions she may have made to the world are surely outweighed by her promotion of the absurd magical thinking of "The Secret."
That an intelligent grown woman like Ms Winfrey could be suckered into this "if you wish for something hard enough, it will come to you" claptrap is mind-boggling.
Now here's what a Presidential Medal of Honor looks like:
I mean, seriously, the Presidential Medal of Freedom? What exactly are the criteria for this award?
According to Wikipedia:
It recognizes those individuals who have made "an especially meritorious contribution to the security or national interests of the United States, world peace, cultural or other significant public or private endeavors".
Okay, so giving this award to Bill Clinton? Sure, why not? Not for anything he did during his presidency, but for the humanitarian work he's done since, sure.
Gloria Steinem? Absolutely.
Loretta Lynn? Hell yeah.
But Oprah?
What meritorious contribution has she made to world peace, cultural, or any other significant endeavor?
Nothing against Ms Winfrey, who seems like a perfectly nice person, but her show was garbage. And any positive contributions she may have made to the world are surely outweighed by her promotion of the absurd magical thinking of "The Secret."
That an intelligent grown woman like Ms Winfrey could be suckered into this "if you wish for something hard enough, it will come to you" claptrap is mind-boggling.
Also, if you really really believe in faeries, Tinkerbell will live!
It would be laughable if it weren't so offensive. And it's offensive in two ways. First, it's offensive because it's a scam, taking money from the gullible and desperate. Second, it's offensive because it's a new form of victim-blaming. Oh, you're poor? I guess you didn't concentrate hard enough on attracting wealth! You're sick? Should have spent more time attracting good health! It's horrible. Also, she's responsible for Dr. Oz.
The least gross picture I could find.
Now here's what a Presidential Medal of Honor looks like:
Tuesday, November 19, 2013
Debt Ignorance
Dishonest ignoramus Sarah Palin has been getting a lot of shit lately for tossing this word-salad about the debt:
Our free stuff today is being paid for today by taking money from our children and borrowing from China. When that money comes due and, this isn’t racist, so try it, try it anyway, this isn’t racist, but it’s going to be like slavery when that note is due. Right? We are going to be beholden to a foreign master.
People were offended, and rightly so, for her invocation of slavery (for future reference, if you have to preface something with "this isn't racist," just don't say it.) but I was mostly struck by her profound ignorance of how debt works. It's fine to be ignorant about debt, but then you don't get to be passionate about it. I'm completely ignorant about chemistry, and I have no strong opinions on the subject tother than I maintain that meth is bad and I don't care who disagrees!
But I hear this line from the "fix the debt" types a lot lately, this "when the note comes due. . ." The note doesn't come due. The not e never comes due. It's like your mortgage or your car note, you have to keep making payments until it is finally paid off. It's not like you buy a house, take out a 30-year mortgage and then you sit around for 30 years until a guy from the bank shows up and says "okay, time to pay that 200 grand you owe."
There is never going to be a time when China or anyone else shows up at our front door saying "I demand that you pay me that trillion dollars today" and then we don't have the trillion dollars so a judge sentences us to be China's butler and hijinks ensue. (I've been watching Seinfeld re-runs)
Also, we do not need to fix the debt. It will need to be adressed eventually, like say, in the Bill Clinton administration, when we were running a surplus and starting to pay it down and then George W. Bush completely undid all that progress because Republicans are the party of fiscal responsibility, yea!!! But you work on debt reduction during prosperous times, not during a recession. And yes, our debt is very large, but here's a little perspective:
Our debt to GDP ratio is in the same neighborhood as Germany which is the strong Eurozone economy, the one that has to bail everyone else out. And look at Japan! Their debt to GDP ratio is over twice as high as ours. Is anyone panicking over Japan's "debt problem?" (actually, I don't know, maybe they are.)
Anyway, I kind of lost track of my thread of thought. I guess my point is that just as those who thump the Bible the most seem the most ignorant of what Jesus actually said, those who are the most passionate about debt seem the most ignorant about it. Also, God do I hate Sarah Palin. What a fraud!
Our free stuff today is being paid for today by taking money from our children and borrowing from China. When that money comes due and, this isn’t racist, so try it, try it anyway, this isn’t racist, but it’s going to be like slavery when that note is due. Right? We are going to be beholden to a foreign master.
People were offended, and rightly so, for her invocation of slavery (for future reference, if you have to preface something with "this isn't racist," just don't say it.) but I was mostly struck by her profound ignorance of how debt works. It's fine to be ignorant about debt, but then you don't get to be passionate about it. I'm completely ignorant about chemistry, and I have no strong opinions on the subject tother than I maintain that meth is bad and I don't care who disagrees!
But I hear this line from the "fix the debt" types a lot lately, this "when the note comes due. . ." The note doesn't come due. The not e never comes due. It's like your mortgage or your car note, you have to keep making payments until it is finally paid off. It's not like you buy a house, take out a 30-year mortgage and then you sit around for 30 years until a guy from the bank shows up and says "okay, time to pay that 200 grand you owe."
There is never going to be a time when China or anyone else shows up at our front door saying "I demand that you pay me that trillion dollars today" and then we don't have the trillion dollars so a judge sentences us to be China's butler and hijinks ensue. (I've been watching Seinfeld re-runs)
Also, we do not need to fix the debt. It will need to be adressed eventually, like say, in the Bill Clinton administration, when we were running a surplus and starting to pay it down and then George W. Bush completely undid all that progress because Republicans are the party of fiscal responsibility, yea!!! But you work on debt reduction during prosperous times, not during a recession. And yes, our debt is very large, but here's a little perspective:
Our debt to GDP ratio is in the same neighborhood as Germany which is the strong Eurozone economy, the one that has to bail everyone else out. And look at Japan! Their debt to GDP ratio is over twice as high as ours. Is anyone panicking over Japan's "debt problem?" (actually, I don't know, maybe they are.)
Anyway, I kind of lost track of my thread of thought. I guess my point is that just as those who thump the Bible the most seem the most ignorant of what Jesus actually said, those who are the most passionate about debt seem the most ignorant about it. Also, God do I hate Sarah Palin. What a fraud!
Monday, November 18, 2013
Richard Cohen is worse than I thought
So I thought that maybe Richard Cohen's "hey, maybe slavery wasn't such a great thing after all" column was some sort of aberration, I mean he does have a regular column in one of the top papers in the country, so I figured he must have some sort of intelligence or insight or something that makes him worth reading.
Christie’s tea-party problem
And awaaaay we goooo!
The day after Chris Christie, the cuddly moderate conservative,
Okay, Richard, I've gotta stop you right there. I know you haven't even completed your first sentence, but "Cuddly moderate conservative?" By what standard could Chris Christie possibly be considered "moderate?" I guess if your spectrum runs from Dennis Kucinich on the left to Attila the Hun on the right, Christie might be in the moderate conservative section along with Genghis Khan and Ming the Merciless. But cuddly?
Unless, is "cuddly" a euphemism for fat?
He's the cuddliest motherfucker ever to scream at a schoolteacher!
The day after Chris Christie, the cuddly moderate conservative, won a landslide reelection as the Republican governor of Democratic New Jersey, I took the Internet Express out to Iowa, surveying its various newspapers, blogs and such to see how he might do in the GOP caucuses, won last time by Rick Santorum, neither cuddly nor moderate. Superstorm Sandy put Christie on the map. The winter snows of Iowa could bury him.
Sure, let's pretend Iowa is relevant. Their whopping 6 electoral votes have been known to be the deciding factor in at least zero past elections.
From a Web site called the Iowa Republican, I learned that part of the problem with John McCain and Mitt Romney, seriatim losers to Barack Obama, “is they were deemed too moderate by many Iowa conservatives.”
And yet, both of them won their Republican primaries.. And if either of them had carried Iowa in the general election, they would still have lost. And since Iowa went for Obama in 2008 and 2012, it seems unlikely that they would have preferred a candidate further right than McCain or Romney. Either way, If Christie's running for president, which he almopst certainly is, he does not need to worry about fucking Iowa. In 2008 Mike Huckabee won the Iowa caucus. How much good did that do him? You know who didn't win Iowa? Ronald Reagen in 1980. Seems to me he did pretty well in the rest of the campaign.
And 2012, how did the Iowa caucus turn out? Just ask President Santorum!
Iowa not only is a serious obstacle for Christie and other Republican moderates,
No. It isn't. See above.
Iowa not only is a serious obstacle for Christie and other Republican moderates, it also suggests something more ominous: the Dixiecrats of old. Officially the States’ Rights Democratic Party, they were breakaway Democrats whose primary issue was racial segregation. In its cause, they ran their own presidential candidate, Strom Thurmond, and almost cost Harry Truman the 1948 election. They didn’t care. Their objective was not to win — although that would have been nice — but to retain institutional, legal racism. They saw a way of life under attack and they feared its loss.
What an apt analogy! Except that the Iowa Republicans aren't going to break off into their own party or nominate their own candidate. The only real comparison is the racism.
Today’s GOP is not racist, as Harry Belafonte alleged about the tea party, but it is deeply troubled
Not racist? Says who? You can't just make that blanket statement without something to back it up.
Gee, where does Belafonte get these crazy ideas?
So, anyway, up 'til now, it's just idiotic drivel, but here comes the truly awful part:
People with conventional views must repress a gag reflex when considering the mayor-elect of New York — a white man married to a black woman and with two biracial children.
Wait, what? What the fuck?
That seriously reads like something you'd see on Stormfront or something. You think that someone who gags at the sight of an interracial couple is a person with "conventional views?" Blatant racism is a conventional view?
(Should I mention that Bill de Blasio’s wife, Chirlane McCray, used to be a lesbian?)
NO. No you shouldn't. Not in this context. If you want to mention that fact in a discussion about the fluidity of human sexuality, then sure, mention away. If you're discussing things that bigots are disgusted by, no. Don't mention.
Seriously, how long is the Washington Post going to continue to let this ass be a part of their op-ed page? Aren't they embarrassed? Have they no shame?
Saturday, November 9, 2013
Just call us mint jelly. . .
. . .'cuz we're on the lam!
We're gettin out of town, layin low til the heat dies down. Should be back in about a week.
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