Bits & Pieces #7

A New Level of Stupidity

When the Republicans were running a few months back, all they did was scream about Obama not doing anything about unemployment. Now when asked about his reaction to proposed Republican budget cuts that will cost hundreds of thousand of jobs, House Leader Boehner says “so be it.”  So let me get this straight. The Republicans are against unemployment when Democrats are in office but for it when they are? Does that seem a little weird to you? Oh well, I guess weird is the driving factor if you’re a Tea Party member or a politician who’s scared of them.

Boehner claims that Obama has added two hundred thousand jobs to the Federal payroll since he got in office. According to people who can actually add and subtract that is about three times the actual figure but that’s normal for Boehner.  But isn’t all that hiring a good thing in a time when private business isn’t hiring? If the Feds hadn’t hired these people they would be out of work and collecting unemployment. They would be achieving that most horrifying of Republican nightmares, getting something for nothing. Does Boehner think that would be better? Can he actually be that dumb? Where does that level of stupidity come from?

A New Level of Low

Debbie Schlussel: A name that will live in infamy.

Is it possible that there is a more despicable bimbo currently alive in America than Debbie Schlussel? A young reporter, Lara Logan, is attacked while doing the job that Schlussel is too lazy or too cowardly to do, even though she calls what she does by the same name, and this demented trash says she had it coming. Women like Lara Logan and Christiane Amanpour are the shinning lights of the reportorial trade. They don’t sit in studios and babble aimlessly like talking heads, they are out there on the firing line, getting us the news as it’s happening so those of us who can’t be there, can see for ourselves, what is actually going on.

I saw an interview that Jon Stewart did with Logan some time back, where she spoke of looking down at the body of a dead American soldier, and how that was an experience, which would make most of us opponents of any but the most righteous war. I saw a dedicated, intelligent woman who understood goals and morality, something that is as foreign to the likes of the degenerate Schlussel, as moon rocks or a sense of right and wrong.

Proving My Point About Boehner

With everyone looking to fix the crumbling national infrastructure, and at the same time add to the employment rolls, the Republicans have somehow managed to, once again, subvert the solution to both problems.

Three Republican governors, Rick Scott of Florida, John Kasich of Ohio and Scott Walker of Wisconsin are all turning down Federal dollars to install high speed rail in their states. Did I miss something or did these three states, all of which are in the crapper budget wise, somehow manage to attain full employment when no one was looking?

V.P. Joe Biden recently announced that the federal government planned to spend $53 billion over the next six years to install high-speed rail in certain key areas of the country. These installations would be the pilot projects for a planned system that would eventually bring this, much needed, infrastructure improvement, to 80% of the American people within the next 25 years. High-speed rail is not a pipe dream. It has been a proven economic driver and direct employment creator all over the world. Unfortunately the Republicans don’t see anything that happens West of the Rockies or East of the Allegheny’s, so anything that happens in a place as remote as say, Spain or India is all but incomprehensible and well past their ability to absorb.

This is brilliantly illustrated in Florida, a state with over 12% unemployment, whose governor. Rick Scott, can’t seem to understand that building high-speed rail, will create immediate employment, just as the reality of high-speed rail will create new business opportunities, in a state that desperately needs both. Unfortunately neither Scott nor his two moronic fellow governors seem to understand that employment and new business means more taxes, taxes, which help to reduce debt.

What Foreign Policy?

There was a time when I figured that we could have no worse foreign policy than that of the Bush administration. Maybe I was wrong. Our recent vote in the UN against sanctions on Israel, for allowing the continued construction of settlements in the West Bank, was idiotic and harmful to our interests all over the Middle East.

There is no way we should be backing the right wing, orthodox, religious fanatics who are forcing their own nation to the brink of war over these illegal settlements.  Everyone except these religious buffoons understands that the settlements have to go, to implement a mid-east peace policy. We don’t expect religious fanatics to accept logical arguments. If they did they wouldn’t be religious fanatics. So why do we support them? The only way these nut cases are going to leave the settlements is to be forced out. The only way that’s going to happen, given the political situation in Israel, is to give the Israeli government no choice.

Historically, the Jews who made Israel their home after WWII were, for the most part, foreigners. Forced out of other countries, they came to what was then called Palestine and fought bravely to create a nation of their own. Now, an orthodox religious faction wants to deny the people who occupied that land when they arrived, the same thing they fought to get, a land of their own.

The United States has been Israel’s friend, from the moment that great country came into existence. We should continue to be their friend, but friends tell friends the truth, and the truth is, that there will never be peace in the Middle East, until abominations like the West Bank settlements, are abandoned by the Israelis. It was our government’s duty to make that fact clear to the Israeli government and it failed miserably by its vote in the UN.

Our Addiction to oil:

The biggest obstacle to getting America off the oil tit is that too many of our citizens, fearful of any kind of change, just refuse to consider that possibility. I constantly hear from whacked-out right wing friends, who get themselves into a frenzy, when someone even attempts to come up with a solution to the problem.

I sent out a short documentary a couple of weeks ago about some guy in Japan who had developed a way to recycle plastic back into oil. It looked like a pretty good idea… if it really worked. It prompted a hysterical response from a number of old schoolmates of the far right persuasion, demanding proof of validity, calling the poor inventor a con man, and demonstrating once again, the far right’s inability to grasp a simple concept like, if you don’t try, you will never succeed. It’s called research and development guys, that part of our budget you want to sacrifice, so that the richest 1% of the country don’t have to pay 3% higher taxes.

Don’t get me wrong guys. I mean why should we force some poor millionaire to cut the fuel expenditure on his yacht from sixty to fifty four thousand bucks a year just to help fund the salaries of the three teachers being fired at your kid’s school or black top over the washed out dirt road that currently leads to your double-wide.

Back to Rendition:

It seems the entire US military has gotten it balls in an uproar over PFC Bradley Manning, the kid who is accused of turning over computer files to WikiLeaks. Did he do it? What were his motives? Is he really a traitor? None of this is currently germane. The only thing that is really important now is that, being a member of the military, he would be better off dead. Which (hah, hah) is why, Warrant Officer Denise Barnes, the brig commander, has ordered that he be made to sleep naked and stand naked, in the corridor in front of his cell every morning. The question is, does Denise, in the best tradition of Abu Grabe, come by, at the dawn of each new day, to check him out.

Until convicted, this kid is still an American soldier, and there are many who think that what he did was, in the finest whistle-blowing tradition, in the best interests of full disclosure and therefore, of the country. I don’t know about that, but I had hoped that we were through with this kind of degenerate crap when we kicked Bush & Cheney out of office. It seems the kid is also sleep deprived and harassed in a number of other ways that are enumerated in Charlie Savages’ 3/4/11 story in the NY Times.

The kind of treatment this kid is receiving is similar to that accorded terrorist prisoners that we want to interrogate. Since there is no motivation for interrogation, the resulting conclusion is that, like any bunch of bullies, the military is going to “get even” with this kid and even before the mock trial he receives, make sure that he gets his “just punishment.”

A sterling example of the American way. Rumsfeld Lives!