Some People Can't Win For Losing

Mitt Romney was seen on Mars during a recent business trip.

Barber, Samuel - Agnus Dei (Adagio for Strings), Choir of Tr

Allman Brothers "Sweet Melissa" - acoustic/unplugged 1990 - Greg Allman ...

Dr Stuck's Au Naturale Pre Election Nerve Tonic

Baby Screech Owl

via Buzzfeed

Mitt Romney For President

via The Democratic Strategist

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Thoughts On Our Presidential Election

There are parameters peculiar to this country that polling cannot really capture, without some very provocative questions by pollsters. We are still in unexplored waters, since experiencing the first black president of the US. And now we are for the first time experiencing reelection of our first black president.. Which, in many ways is very different than the initial campaign in 08.
While Obama voters like BO, they no doubt have felt uncomfortable with having the issue of race so front and center on an almost daily basis, for so long a period. I am actually heartened by the steady support PBO has had from the core dem base. You can see it in Gallup's monthly polling on the president and approval from his party. But there is a small contingent that is, imo, looking for any reason to go with Romney this time. Some are conservative dems, others are dem leaning indies.

And whatever votes O got from moderate republicans, has pretty much vanished in the 4 years every POTUS experiences successes and failures. Even though, in my lifetime, I can't think of another president that has faithfully made the effort to keep his promises in a campaign, of 08/ And when was the last time a dem presnit passed sweeping health care insurance reform.? Or, passed the largest discretionary spending bill in history, largely for long term progressive causes like alternative energy R and D? It is why the GOP thinks he is reincarnated Lenin, that has beat them time and again, despite scorched earth unloyal opposition.

Simply put, Obama had to be much better than any white first term president. Every day, all day, to keep the racially anxious on board. All it took was a single bad night of debating, to cause the surreal shitstorm that has ensued. Race by no means is the only factor in play for the freakout of freakouts. But it is an important one in a country that has been divided ideologically at around 50 50, dem and gop for a couple of decades now., Not to mention the race effect motivating formerly slacker wingnuts that have snapped to, with an Obama in their WH. Maybe these deeper motivations are some behind the flux in polling over one event, that was not a loss on substance, but of style, for an incumbent the public has watched daily for 4 years now. And by most accounts, seemed tired and listless, but still spot on for what he has supported policy wise. Romney is still a dubious snake oil salesman, and it is hard for me to see him getting elected.

Creepiest Photo of the Day

Via/CBS

SANTANA: ABRAXAS - Full Album Remastered -

Show You My Love - Natalie Riccio

Denis Leary - Kiss My A$$

Aftermath of the Health Care Decision

I am reading all sort of sour grapes parsing and pissing on how this will hurt dems and Obama into the future. I do call bullshit. There is nothing better than winning on the dems signature issue. Yes, the wingnuts and msm are going to harp on OH noes!! Taxes. But that is bullshit for a law already passed and being implemented. There is nothing short of the wingnuts sabotaging or repealing the ACA, which is highly unlikely, for this law to march on to full effect in 2014, and those with policies see for themselves that they have more rights now, than before, and if trends continue, rates either won’t go up much, or start coming down. And that the mandate will only affect those, mostly young, who skip out on buying health insurance because they are young and seeming healthy, and will have to now dip a little into the beer fund. Winning is not the best thing, it is the only thing. And the last big hurdle has been leaped. Romney and nutters will attack the court, Obama, liberals, and likely Kermit the Frog in flailing attempts to mislead, but Romney has the onus of many faults, MANY faults to overcome to beat Obama, the least of which is that he passed an ACA as a governor of a state. And won’t be able to parse that very far under some kind of federalist meme. And besides, after a few weeks or even days on the news cycle we will be back to what this election is mostly about, and that is the economy. And now, a huge industry has had the fog cleared up by white wingnut hope, John Roberts, of all peeps. There is nothing to mourn here, for liberals, beyond the fact that we live in a totally fucked up country in many ways, and there is absolutely no good reason to cry in our crawlers over that. There is only plodding on, day by day, to unfuck things. What else we gonna do

All We Need Is Better Liberal Messaging

I used to think like this concerning voters, and how so many of them vote against their economic interest, and just need some good ole liberal religion and dem party platfoming as the party that cares about the working man or woman. I don't think this so much anymore, at least to a large degree outside the margins.

They are busy, certainly, but they are most of them, at least versed in the meta of the big issues in this country. I think they get as much minutia as they want, and have fairly well thought out,  at least in terms as knowing want they like and don't like about the parties and their positions on issues.

People are tribal, above all else,  and in this country that usually boils down to race and religion. Economics only plays a larger role in times of economic deprivation, and is reciprocal to the level of that deprivation.

We have more white people, so we have more white people voting for that tribe they belong to, all else being equal. And they are not only the majority of citizens in this country, they are also more religious, in a fundamentally religious country.  And that usually carries specific strains of protestant thinking that is also enmeshed in the political world, and democracy, as they practice it.

Most white people are not stone racists, but they fear the different to varying degrees. And that is not just the purview of white people. It is human nature, and primal. These are the reasons they vote for republicans, that tell them what they need to hear for comfort, outside of the realities of basic economic needs. That can and has trumped this id fueled mindset, but not to a degree, yet, in the mostly wealthy and plentiful nation on earth, for the reasons for basic survival. There is some of that going on now, and a general feeling of things going south. But it hasn't made most of them hungry enough,  nor deprived enough of the  other basics of comfortable existence.

And what I believe now, is that will be the only time they become teachable beyond the cultural signposts of their tribe. That doesn't mean liberals and democrats should not continue loudly to educate them. Just that expecting positive results from this teaching, is likely to lead to disappointment, and thinking we just have to do more of it, and they will get it. Persons of color in this country know deprivation quite well, and the pain of rejection and repression. There is no real reason why most white people should understand this, having never experienced it. At least in most of our lifetimes. It's a hard school breaking down primal fear, and kinship with the familiar, and letting go of all the wasted energy to remain king of the American Hill. Though demographic changes may well fix that.

So what do we do. We keep trying to elect people who get it, and keep trying to pass laws that will change peoples lives for the better. One foot in front of the other.  The logic of reality will do the rest. If we are lucky, and it's not too late.

Why Conservative?

My experience in life around all sorts of people with all sorts of personality traits, has taught me there is a minority subset of persons I believe to be fundamentally wired to be conservative, and wingnutty as well. If I had to put a percent around it, that could be the number 27. I don’t have any scientific data to back that observation up, but am convinced of it.

I don’t know if there is a corresponding congenital liberal, likely cause I am one of some stripe. So that muddles the mind a bit for the sake of objectivity.

But most republicans, I think, are not predisposed or destined to be wingnuts by their genetic wiring. Whatever else may lead these kinds of conservatives to act like they do, seems to have a common thread of lack of empathy, or concern for their fellow humans. They may care about family deeply, and even others for their own reasons. BUT, they have the option of simply not giving a shit about people in general, and by coalescing around a political gathering point, like a pol party, provides all the reinforcement needed to not give a shit, if they so desire. There is safety in groups no matter what the issue, but the GOP lends a fig leaf for those who choose to be assholes, if they so desire.

I see the GOP, above all else, as the lazy party full of morally lazy people, because it takes effort and pain to give a shit about your fellow man. And is easy to throw up all sorts of meaningless placards of this or that philosophy or belief, to justify going thru life a self absorbed dickweed. Things like the GOP mantra of ‘personal responsibility”, to not lend a hand to the hungry or the sick, in a manner that makes a difference.

Of course, until they, the wingnuts, gets caught with their hand in the cookie jar. Then it is somebody elses fault, probably a liberal to blame for their failures, some how, some way.

A Good Word For Our Government

I am not afraid of my government. I suppose that is because having worked in it for more than a few years, I have an idea how it functions. The right wing is the worst demonizing and fear mongering about men in black doing this or that evil thing to them, on a whim. And while there is certainly concern about too much power currently given policing agencies throughout the state and fed government, that is mostly a function of a right wing court for several decades, and too many citizens favoring tough policing, and that excesses won’t happen to them. But there are those on the left who feed this paranoia outsized to reality.

Our fed government is, and has been, and should be considered one of the good things about this country, and is actually very resistant to much tampering by politicos from any ideological stripe and ill intent. It is like the immovable object and irresistible force all at once. And has been built over the centuries to resist change and manipulation for broader pol purposes.

If you have worked for any federal agency, you would know that everything, and I mean everything, is under this or that regulation, that almost always chugs along as a force unto itself, toward whatever purpose it was created by congress, in the first place.

This mindset is reinforced by many layers of oversight, both internal and external to any one agency or department. It is a matrix set in near concrete, and only changes slowly, or by direct congressional mandate.

That does not mean what congress directs the government bureaucracy to do should be taken as something that should be done, but it does mean, it can within human imperfections, be expected to do what it is ordered to do by the congress and the president and the courts.

This bullshit about blown up fear from right or left that the government is a big boogyman out to get your ass, is simply, by and large bullshit. And most of the time, when folks in positions of responsibility go off the reservation, they get caught at it. It is very difficult to get away with misbehavior for very long, even at the top levels, without people finding out.

So, by all means, keep an eye out for shit like the Patriot ACT to remain temporary, and restrained, and other borderline shit, and agitate like hell to curb excess police powers the courts and congress have created, but fuckers like Chuck Norris, the right wing in general, and some on the left. Give it a rest, trying to make citizens terrified of their government through exaggerated accusations, without any or much evidence, to back up such claims.

We really do, with all our many other problems, have a solid federal government, that moves like a mindless robot doing what the regulations say it should do.

Building A Better Wingnut

Wingnuts are all about control, and they don’t want government doing good things for people that need it, because they lose control of those people for their own political designs.

And that control is greatest when counting possible votes in the future, due to the lizard brane knowing it is lizard, and therefore predatory, for wealth and concentration of wealth by whatever means necessary that is stealthy enough to slip by the rubes what they are really up to.

The reason they are against a government safety net, besides not personally caring about those in need, is that without that gov help, the hungry and desperate would turn to their allies in the wingnut churches. Where loyalty and survival are traded for the mind, spirit, and a loaf of bread, to ultimately keep the jeevus party in power with the political and religious strings attached to anything they provide for the needy.

Amarillo Brew Crew's Girls jumping on trampolines

Mitt Romney versus Reality

girls on trampoline

Modern Day Roller Derby Bomber Real Girl Fight

Today In Dumb and Desperate

The GOP has cast aside what little shred of factoid they may have thrown up in the past, to full on fecal slinging for whatever might stick with the dumbest of the dumb.

Another case in point of seeking bipartisan cover for their kill medicare with The  Granny Dumpster Diving Act To Reform Medicare, AKA, the Ryan Budget.

Now, Republicans are pushing to box in Rep. Steve Israel (D-NY), chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, as a former supporter of the “premium support” concept.

Republican staffers on the powerful Ways & Means Committee noted that Israel voted for the concept in 2003, in a later-jettisoned House version of the prescription drug benefit that included provisions requiring Medicare to compete with private plans, albeit not on the scale of the Ryan plan.

Got That?. They are traveling back in time to 2003, for a  vote on a jettisoned bill by a single democrat under the primary auspice of prescription drug coverage for medicare, whereby Rep Israel voted no on the current Ryan "let's kill medicare budget" bill. There aren't clown shoes big enough for those clown feets.

The Republican Presidential Candidates

No one can stomach Santorum other than the home schooled evolution deniers, and even then, some of those won’t as well. Santorum is a true believing extremist, well beyond any norm for religious candidates for POTUS. And with overtones of fascist theism.

America is a religious country when pollsters call citizens and ask if they are religious, and many will even claim they believe in the Genesis version of events for creation. But that is where it ends for most, and begins at repulsion of religious imposition on their daily lives. They want their birth control because they like to fuck, and like their abortion for often the same reason, plus they have daughters.
Rick is the worst kind of big government wingnut, and that is why the other wingnuts don’t like him, and are frightened by the prospect of a Santorum run. And the indies would just crush him, not to mention women folk. He would likely put a bug up lazy moderate voters and dem voters to go vote. Gingrich would do that too, but the other wingers know Newt is a follow the money corporatist above all else, and is mostly acting the part on other wingnuttery. He’s crazy, but not insane, as Santorum is.

And also too, Rick is a pure regressionist, economically. He is Ryan squared in that department, the worst kind of militant Jesus believer, picking winners over losers and discarding the rest. A Santorum campaign would get at least 40 percent, but very possibly not more than that, and would likely drive a stake through what is left of GOP electability for the near term, at least. Giving Obama and dems a huge win.

He is the male supremacist prototype with the certitude he is right according to a holy book he interprets, and comes with all the other white supremacist tendencies of the south, which is why he did so well there, I suspect.
I think if Newt ever made it to president, he would likely be another GWB. Hair trigger with the military and all out corporate stooge, with some sense of the limits of right wing policies the country could accept. Then there is Romney, the Tom Ripley candidate that is impossible to foresee what he would do, other than favor the wealthy. The rest would be a day to day affair of who he thinks he needs to please most

A Current State of Affairs

I think the GOP of today is a “built” entity, mostly for the purpose of winning elections and power. Most of the elements that include a sense of decency and country were already taken by the democratic party, so they had to build an oppo party that could cobble enough votes to win elections.
And it began with the Southern Strategy and immediately before that the Red Scare Bircher types, and from there added on The Moral Majority, and later in the 90’s disparate groups like Neo Cons and the quisling libertarians. All of this glued around the existing core of conservatism, being status quo maintenance and hoarding and protecting wealth, privilege and the power that comes from that hoarded wealth.
They had to win elections to maintain that core, so they put together a Frankenstein Party and invited all the whackadoos in to join up for the cause. The religionists and their sexual police are just front and center for the present, later it will be the neo con turn with Iran and bombing brown people. Then the xenophobes will have some fun with immigration reform when Harry Reid brings it up soon. And the wheel of misfortune will turn to each faction for the limelight. A horror show of id fueled mayhem and insatiable appetite for control or destruction, one or the other.
But the Frankenstein Party, soon found out it also needed a uniting dear leader top down person to keep the wingnutting effect to a minimum and the crazies to all behave themselves enough to get elected and stay elected. Ronnie Reagan, then George Bush.
But the inmates got restless as the excesses piled up under Bush and Cheney, massive transfers of wealth via tax cuts, military industrial complex gluttony, and a practiced end to any and all financial and business regulation that led to TARP ONE and the implosion of the conservative movement as it was—a cogent theory on paper, practiced with a degree of restraint and deflection to not cause the rubes to ask pesky questions as they were being robbed blind.
Now the crazies all want to run the show, and there is no one to make them behave, no Reagan , no Bush, and the majority southern contingent bullied itself into the clown car drivers seat, and we are where we are.

More Republican Head Shrinking

It is about getting and keeping power, in the end. It is the aphrodisiac for the weak minded to assemble under the banner of republican. Some of them hate women, some hate people of color, some hate everyone not white, but republicans have had the economy of a predator that usually doesn’t waste energy on what matters least to their aims.

And for right wingers, that is power. The full frontal assault on women’s health issues is not economical, and the lizard has gone mad for lack of prey. Because of forces out of its control. So it is stupid assaults on various voting blocks to please other voting blocks. But women make up 52% of the electorate, way more than the religionists that want to control sex for some bizarre allegiance to God.
All of this, at least the all out nature of it, is a sideways attempt to get votes. But the ratio of alienated voters from their actions, almost certainly will far outstrip any gains they may make with other voters.

They can’t stop the numbers increasing for those who vote, and won’t vote for them, at least without fully breaching the constitution, and they can’t change who they are, at least enough or fast enough, so we get self destructive malicious attacks, lashing out to regain control of single issues, like birth control, which is surrogate for attempts at wielding religion as a weapon beyond the constitutional firewall in our system of government, another road fraught with treasonous implication.
When all the spiteful fury is spent for desperate attempts at keeping power, and after they have lost those ill advised assaults, like on women’s health, I honestly don’t know what they will do. It will be a point of reckoning for us all.

Shrinking the GOP Mind

The primitive brane lives in all of us, for sure. And to different degrees, these lower mind functions are filtered through the conscience mind to recognize, reason, and filter that kind of primal thinking. For whatever reason, hereditary, childhood experience, simple environment, the people I call wingnuts, seem to be lacking the elements to process a higher consciousness, to manage these primal impulses. And they are run by compulsive reaction that forms their world view.

It is fear to blame, imo, mostly, of one sort or another, right on up to the existential kind, that rules their behavior and ultimately their political formulations. The filter is either very weak or non existent to separate out what is important and what is not in conducting their lives.

There are those wingnuts who are just sociopaths and hucksters taking advantage of the frantic world of right wingers. But most are simply drenched in a kind of all consuming terror, and the way it manifests itself, especially when under duress, is a manic rush to control their external environment to the nth degree.
And in these times, rattling around in their wingnut belfries, is the biggest fear of all. And that is becoming a white minority in their own country. So we see what we see. Folks out of control and lurching for one life preserver or another to cause others to behave the way they want them too. With the fantasy that if they can just do that, the fear will leave them

The Modern Moderate Politician In America

If moderate is determined by someone who wants both a party affiliation AND a process open to compromise, then they are for sure extinct in the American pol wild, for the foreseeable future, imo.. As we are in a period of struggle with a GOP that is dying, at least as it has been, and when that happens the natural response is for them to grasp for a little more and more purity to make it all better. Which is exactly the wrong thing to do. And that goes double for a party that exists for no other reason than to oppose change, and maintain the status quo.
There is very little the conservatives are for these days, beyond permanent war and maximizing profit for the few. They are defined by what they are against, which is everything liberal and progressive, and the urge is toward being better and more of what your purpose is for existing in the first place.
And in a two party system, one side or the other gets to pick the rules of engagement to the lowest denominator, and those are the rules the other side must accept in order to win. At least to the necessary degree.
I think democrats are in pretty good shape over all. Not perfect, with still surges of GOP light left over from the country’s and its voters, 30 year experiment with the hard right. And taking to the populist bent is wide open for them to make hay with. The biggest mistake they could make would be doing the same over reach as the republicans, and instead, focusing like a laser on what works to achieve their policy goals. Which are things like near universal health care coverage, without going all or nothing for a single payer system, for now. As well as other end result progress for the 99% whose lot they are charge with improving.
We have a super smart, if imperfect president, who is a good learner, and understands the current politics as well as anyone – as well as a pretty stable rank and file voter base, along with the reps they picked to represent them.
There is nothing wrong with the more pure in ideology to voice their wants, but only if it is done within the dem tent. If we don’t end up in ashes due to global thermonukular warfare, I like the odds better than I did. Thanks to the GOP porcupine, flopping over so every one can see the soft underbelly of what they are really about.

Why I Support Abortion Rights

Before Roe was decided, there was a clear moral case, that overpowered the learned moralities of a deeply religious country. It was the morality of girls getting “in trouble” and they and sometimes their parents doing desperate things to fix that trouble. In a country still up to it eyeballs in Victorian era mores over sex and marriage.
It was the morality of the cold bite of reality, from reading too many accounts in the local paper of all sorts of half assed often dangerous efforts to abort fetuses from the unmarried pregnant female. I can remember reading accounts as a teenager, of death from botched abortion attempts, or back alley bootleg abortionists, ending in young girl bleeding out as a result.
So Roe was decided, even if by legal scholars claims of poorly decided, by legal norms of constitutional law. It didn’t matter, as the bulk of the citizens quietly and loudly demanded relief to make abortions legal. And many of them pretty religious, but also with a keen sense for social problems that are self inflicted.
There were those in the minority, a distinct minority who would not under any circumstances relent in their objections to legal abortions. They are still around today, and most all are evangelical Christians, or politicians seeking electoral favor with these people.
I doubt any moral argument would change the minds of these absolutist moralists, and they will continue to undermine abortion rights. And even though it’s been 4 decades, a majority of the public can recall, or learn second hand, of the lack of morality involved with forcing young women into taking actions that too often killed of mangled their bodies and minds. This is all I need to know to support abortion rights, that and the fact I don’t have a uterus, and if I did, it wouldn’t belong to the state.

What the Republican Party Owes America

The wingnuts owe us a lot of things, first among them, is an apology for having fucked up our country so badly. But my sense is they have become untethered from the realities of maintaining the minimum threshold of responsiveness to the electorate, that is spinning out of control some more with each new day. The crackup is near, and granted the public gives the white man party a lot more rope than the party of those “others”, there is still a limit to that leeway.
So I just try to remind myself of the axiom, no pain , no gain, and we are just going to have to suffer the results of the GOP crackup, the contrast of which couldn’t have been clearer than with Obama’s SOTU address last night. The people have a clear choice, and there is not a lot more to be done about it until they make that choice, other than what dems are currently doing.
I say let the cash and crazy fly its freek flag high, and call it a public service message from wingnut hell, and if the citizens of this country want an insane corporate run existence, well, that is just how it will be. Or, they can see what is happening, and become willing to support the only remedy of putting the shredder to the concept of money as guaranteed free speech, to make the constitutional change to put that whacked out theory to rest, and beyond the reach of wingnut judges.

The potential GOP candidates that could
have come without spoilage, are sitting this one out. Not wanting to be
tarnished with the ugly to come, directed at Barack Obama and in
general. In addition to, I suspect at this stage, a recognition of
unspoken high respect for his political skills.

It is a setting of the table for a leap of political realignment I
predicted yesterday, that was begun in 2006, and briefly stalled in
2010. That portends to extend past the current economic straights, with a
strong ideological undertow, created by the GOP
itself. And the failure of its 30 year conservative movement. What we
are seeing is the last bright burning of hyper dogma from the party, a
dying convulsion leading to brief re animation. Brought on by pride and
entitlement longstanding and run amuck.

There may well be some more last gasp convulsions before the worm
turns, but it must turn, because the current carcass of a movement has
nothing to offer but pure negative politicking on whatever the target of
the day is.

But soon there will be no place else to hide, and the gooper
braintrust will have to act to salvage something to create another
avenue to power. And it cannot include the tea party manifesto of
destruction and hatred. And must include the fact that the American Pie
must be shared by all.

So long as something drastic and bad does not happen to the economy
or something else, we are on the Newtsters last chance rocket ship to
irrelevant Hell. The GOP won’t vanish into the ethers, but it must reconstitute, and beyond the usual jingoistic bullshit.