Conservatives are Cowards. Liberals are Brave. Which Do YOU Want Working for You?

At least, that’s this writer’s take on it. If you look at what the Left and Right stand for, it seems pretty clear. If you listen to how they speak, it seems even more so. And when you look at how they behave, it seems irrefutable.

“Conservatives” are afraid of women, so they pass laws disempowering them.
“Conservatives” are afraid of LGBTQ people, so they pass laws disempowering them.
“Conservatives” are afraid of People of Color, so they pass laws disempowering them.
“Conservatives” are afraid of poor folk, so they pass laws disempowering them.
“Conservatives” are afraid of non-Christians, so they pass laws disempowering THEM.

And it doesn’t stop there.

“Conservatives” are afraid of free speech, so they pass laws taking away our free speech.
“Conservatives” are afraid of sex, so they pass LOTS of laws restricting it.
“Conservatives” are afraid of losing elections, so they rig elections and take away non-rich-white males’ voting rights.
“Conservatives” are afraid of their own government, so they buy themselves more guns than any person could ever use.
“Conservatives” are afraid of Ebola, so they want to force medical workers into solitary confinement just because they are scared.

On and on, and it never stops. “Republicans” are a bunch of wimps who, when it comes down to Fight or Flight, chose Flight 100% of the time. Big-talking wussies like Chris Christie and John McCain, who run and hide, cowering in the shadows if  ever they are called on their braggadocio.

Liberals behave, of course, in the exact opposite manner. They confront problems and deal with them. They are “Fighters”, not “Flighters”.

Next Tuesday, you have a choice: give control of the most powerful nation in the world to a load of scaredy-cat, bullying little wankers (Repubs), or a bunch of flawed but courageous Liberals (Democrats). It’s kind of a big deal, Gentle Reader. A pretty big and very consequential choice.

Choose the candidates with guts. Vote out the Wussie NeoConservative Caucus.

Mr. Blunt and Cranky

Foreigners are buying American elections, thanks to the Supreme Court.

Remember Citizens United? It was a Supreme Court ruling that allowed billionaires and corporations to buy elections. It also created a secret world in which politicos can be bribed with no way for us to bust them for being corrupt.

Oh, and remember how Obama warned that Citizen’s United could open the door to foreign money buying US elections, and the Chief Justice called the Prexy a liar? Well, golly gee whiz, it turns out that President Obama was right. As the linked article says:

In a first of its kind case, federal prosecutors say a Mexican businessman funneled more than $500,000 into U.S. political races through Super PACs and various shell companies. The alleged financial scheme is the first known instance of a foreign national exploiting the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision to influence U.S. elections.

It turns out that although Citizens United did not change the legality of foreign contributions in the U.S., it enabled the type of illegal schemes now being alleged by federal prosecutors.

“Before Citizens United, in order for a foreign national to try and do this, they’d have to set up a pretty complex system of shell corporations,” said Brett Kappel, a campaign finance expert at the law firm Arent Fox. “And even then, there were dollar limits in place. After Citizens United, there are no limits on independent expenditures.”

Got it? Either the Supreme Court intended for this to happen, or they were so shortsighted and pig-ignorant as to ignore the possibility. No matter which, the result is as predicted: foreign nationals are buying American elections and politicians. And this is only one that we caught. Who knows how many other cases there are, buried in the labyrinthian snakepit of American political “financing”?

Thanks to Presidents Reagan, Bush and Bush for stacking the Supreme Court with Raging Righties in Tightie Whities; because of the hyper-partisan Wingnuts on the Court; the integrity and independence of American government has been gravely damaged. Until Citizens United is repealed, none of us can ever know which of our politicians is actually in the service of a foreign national or even an unfriendly government.

Remember this, Gentle Reader: it is because of “Conservative” “Republicans” that our elections are being bought.And they ARE being bought. This could (and likely will) lead to a foreign takeover of our government if we don’t put a stop to it.

Mr. Blunt and Cranky

A Week of Harsh Truths, Day Three: There is NO Liberal Media to Not Believe In

No matter how many bumper stickers you may have seen, America does not have a “liberal media”. Nor does it have a “conservative media”. What we have, gentle readers, is a commercial media. Since the Reagan era, our media has been based on profitability, not ideology.

You can argue the last point, perhaps: there is a possible chicken/egg scenario (did profitability drive the conservative domination of media, or did the conservative dominance drive profit?). But you can’t prove a liberal bias, because the facts prove otherwise.

You also cannot dismiss the influence of profit on “news” since the Reaganistas did away with the Fairness Doctrine. The “infotainment” industry demands high ratings so as to make money from advertisers. For the past few decades, putting a ” conservative” slant in things has been the most reliable way to get ratings, which is why there has been no “liberal bias”. None. Zero. Zip. Zilch. Nada.

Mr. B & C

The NRA and “Republicans”, Talking Out Their A**es Again

At yesterday’s hearings on Gun Control, the ever-unhinged NRA mouthpiece Wayne LaPierre repeated one of the standard “Republican” lines: that we do not need new laws until President Obama enforces the existing ones. Sounds reasonable until you remember that:

Number A: the biggest impediment to the enforcement of existing laws is the Teapublicans’ persistent defunding of the government agencies who are charged with said enforcement. These Right-Wing fools expect our public safety resources to do more and more, while simultaneously refusing to pay them for so doing. Repubs must think money magically appears when needed, perhaps delivered by perky little fairies riding unicorns.

Letter 2: it is not Obama’s job to enforce each and every law on the books. No one person can do that. It takes thousands of people at all levels of government to do so. And they, too, have had their authority undermined, staffs reduced and budgets slashed by the “conservative” “Republicans”, to the point that they can barely do anything to enforce any laws at all.

Tell you what, Waynie old buddy old pal: give the cops the money and resources they need to enforce existing laws before you trot out that line of B.S. again.

Mr. B & C

Climate Change Denial: Bad for Business

There remain some fringe lunatics who deny that global climate change exists, some of whom occupy positions of power and authority within our governmental, industrial, and financial institutions. However, they are slowly losing influence behind the scenes as a key fact emerges: it makes good business sense to accept the reality of our changing climate.

This writer first got wind of this trend a few years ago, when shopping for real estate in a warmer climate – coastal real estate, someplace with palm trees and such (hey, he’s getting older, so warm and sunny works for sore and creaky/Blunt and Cranky). When looking into insurance for many locations, he was informed that the rates would be very high, and in some cases coverage could not be purchased at any price. Why?

Because the profit-motivated actuaries and accounting whizbangs who assess risk for insurance companies have determined that sea levels are rising; and any coastal properties that aren’t going to be submerged in the next 20 – 60 years will have to deal with increasingly frequent  and severe weather events. They can’t make money insuring properties that are pretty much guaranteed to become fish habitat in the near future.

This is far from an isolated situation: insurance against crop damage, flood damage, tornado damage, etc., all are getting pricier and/or harder to obtain. Commodity markets are adjusting, supply-chains are having links added and removed, manufacturers are making changes, homebuilders and remodelers are changing  materials: all to deal with the world that the right-wing loons pretend isn’t real.

If you want to know what risks are worth planning for, you don’t ask someone with fluffy-bunny ideas, or someone who “lives in the world but is not of it”: they will refuse to see the danger, because they think that some sort of divine intervention or positive visualization will magically fix the problem. This in spite of the fact that we haven’t seen such miraculous works on a global scale in at least several thousand years.

No, you ask some flinty-hearted, inhumane, profit-loving, Dickensian creature what he’s doing with his money.  He’ll be making the conservative, prudent choice, based on hard data and facts. For example, the World Bank says “Holy cow, peeps, this s***’s getting expensive”: http://climatechange.worldbank.org/

The smart money says global climate change is real. And if you’re not smart, you’re stupid. This humble blogger will be consulting climate models before purchasing the next chateau de Blunt and Cranky, thank you very much.

Mr. B & C

Hey, American Family Association: Let’s Blame You Instead

As noted yesterday, the incredibly misnamed “American Family Association” has decided to blame all sorts of “liberal” organizations for the recent horrific events in Aurora, Colorado: said organizations including Mr. Blunt and Cranky’s ancestral church, which in fact is decidedly NOT liberal (one of its nicknames is “God’s Frozen People”, which should give you a fair idea of how ossified an organization it is).

Let’s put the shoe on the other foot for a moment. This writer could make the case that the erosion of personal responsibility could just as easily be blamed on groups like the AFA (who blamed “liberals”) and individuals like Russell Pearce (who blamed the theatre audience for not stopping the shooting).

In each case, they shift responsibility away from the actual perpetrator and place it on others.  By so doing, they take the shooter off the hook to some extent: “the shooter was encouraged by (liberals or fake Christians or fill-in-the-blank) to take this action”. 

Firstly, these loudmouths have no idea what was going on the shooter’s mind, so they have no business saying such crap (unless there is case-specific, documented evidence to support what they are saying). Secondly, it creates an environment in which personal responsibility is diminished, because offenses committed by criminals become the fault of said loudmouths’ political and cultural “enemies”.

When everything becomes a tool for partisan advantage (even the acts of criminals and the grief of their victims), we find ourselves in a world that tells would-be mass murderers that they will not bear the blame alone. We tacitly assure these scumbuckets that others will have at least part of the responsibility foisted upon them, whether deservedly or not; all in the service of political gamesmanship.

So, we have shifted the blame from the criminal (and liberals and audience members) to the AFA and Russell Pearce. How’s that shoe feel, now that it is on your foot, gentlemen? Does it fit? Is it comfy? Do you like “wearing” the responsibility for mass murder? No, you say? Imagine that.

Your curmudgeonly neighborhood blogger most humbly suggests that we all shut the f***ing f*** up about how factor x or y is responsible for the actions of criminals (unless there is actual data to support such a claim), and instead let criminals know that they, and they alone, will take all of the blame and bear all of the punishment imposed for their crimes.

Mr. B & C

Schrödinger’s Court

In college, Mr. Blunt and Cranky studied many wondrous topics suitable for inspiring beer-fueled bull sessions. Among them was the thought experiment known as Schrödinger’s Cat: oversimplified, it postulates that if a cat is in a box and cannot be seen therein, it may be alive or dead (or both). The only way to find out for sure is to open the box. While the box is closed, one may project whatever one likes on its surface, and no one can prove the projector to be wrong.

To an allegory addict like this writer, the most obvious parallel is the judicial branch of the United States Government: is it every bit as partisan as the other two branches, or is it still at least somewhat fair and impartial? Put another way, are the courts dead or alive? Alive, if they function impartially, dead if they have strayed from the vision laid out in the Constitution.

There are those who say that the box has been long since opened and the modern court already found to be dead: they point to Bush vs. Gore and Citizens United as “proof” that the court majority is a load of right-wing Repub ideologues, set on the destruction on everything post-1852. There also those  (some on the left, some on the right) who argue that no box opening has occurred,  and we cannot know for sure; but man, they do not like what is likely inside.

Mr. Blunt and Cranky thinks the lid is still down on the box. He further thinks that when it is opened (AKA when the Obamacare decision is announced), we will find the “cats” of Schrödinger’s Court  either on life support, or turned to Zombies – Schrödinger’s idea that one can be both alive and dead sounds rather like today’s zombie chic.

Zombies make for entertaining graphic novels, but they would not make good jurists. Here’s hoping the courts are merely comatose, rather than undead.

And here’s regretting that we have been reduced to hoping for something so pathetic as a barely-alive judiciary.

Mr. B & C

Where Are the Real Conservatives to be found?

There are many people advocating for a “Return to traditional America”, or something of such. Lots of people have their own Wayback Machine-induced vision of what that America used to be: for that matter, Mr. Blunt and Cranky has fond memories of his youth, and the superiority of what seemed a simpler time to that of the present day. And all things considered, he wouldn’t mind a few changes that would help restore some of the virtues of the past, without repeating some of the mistakes of the past.  (Oh, and FYI – one cannot ‘Restore Our Future’, since the future hasn’t happened yet. Duh.)

This writer would never want the segregation of his childhood to be reintroduced, for instance. Nor does he wish to see a repeat performance of the violence and carnage of the 60’s.  Revolutions can accomplish change, but lots of people get hurt or killed in the rush to achieve sudden, drastic change.  Far better to take our time, strive for consensus, and work together to change when it is really needed. That is a good working definition of conservatism: the desire to keep what is good, and carefully prune away only what is not working.

Of course, you might never know it, given the largely successful hijacking of the label, especially since the late 70’s. The “Conservative Revolutionaries” have, by dint of media ownership and strict message discipline managed to get a large number of Americans to believe that forcibly removing  most legal and societal actions ( in spite of the fact that the majority of the country approved of these things) of the past 150 years somehow equals being  “Conservative”.  Wholesale destruction of good and bad alike, the deaths of thousands and dispossession of millions in the service of the radical dreams of a crazed minority: that’s supposed to be “conservative” these days. A masterpiece of NewSpeak: Orwell would have to applaud it.

Not that the extreme Left is any more conservative than the Right, but at least the Lefties rarely claim conservatism as one of their characteristics. However, the extreme Left wants some severe additions and subtractions from the status quo that would hurt a lot of people in the creation.

No, if you want true Conservatism, you head to the Center.  The Center isn’t much on revolutionary anything, really: we are more of an evolutionary lot. The Right are a load of bomb-throwing, hairy-eyed revolutionaries. The Left want a pacifistic, kind and fluffy sort of revolution. But revolution is what both wings want, and devil take the wishes of the majority.

Much talk is made by wingnuts of how one needs to “break eggs in order to build an omelet”. The American people should all remember that we could well be the eggs that get broken. And then we’d be consumed  en masse, that being the fate of eggs and omelets.

Mr. Blunt and Cranky