Cranky’s First Law: Whenever a Politician accuses someone else of immorality, they reveal their own Iack of morality.

The whole Teabagger Meltdown over Caitlyn Jenner is just the most recent example of hypocritical moralizers with their own secretly amoral lives: for instance, the many-times-married, closeted gay foghorn Rush Limbaugh lambasted her for, well, being a her. Mike Huckabee responded to the Vanity Fair photo of Ms. Jenner by extolling the joys of showering with underaged girls. And so on. And on. AND on.

Every time a politico excoriates an opponent for conduct unbecoming, we come to find out that they have a related skeleton in their own closet. Like “pro-lifer” Scott DesJarlais, who pressured his own wife and mistress to get abortions. Or David Vitter, who hates all sex offenders except himself? Or the crew of Congressional Sluts (Hastert, Hyde, Gingrich, et. al.) who prosecuted Bubba in Blowjobgate?

Sometimes, a fiscal hawk can indeed be a good money manager. And some defense critics actually have served in combat. But never will you see a preachy poltico or pundit rant and rail about dah gay, or women’s healthcare, or anything related to sexual morality who doesn’t have his or her own little secret sex life. Usually one that they are pretending to hate.

Put another way,Orin Kerr recently said these few pithy words:

“If I understand the history correctly, in the late 1990s, the President was impeached for lying about a sexual affair by a House of Representatives led by a man who was also then hiding a sexual affair, who was supposed to be replaced by another Congressman who stepped down when forced to reveal that he too was having a sexual affair, which led to the election of a new Speaker of the House who now has been indicted for lying about payments covering up his sexual contact with a boy.”

Cranky’s First Law has been proven. NEVER trust a politico, pundit, or plutocrat who claims to hate ANY sort of sex or gender-related activity. Sure as eggs is eggs, they are down with some serious private (and mayhap illegal) naughtiness of their own.

Mr. Blunt and Cranky

“Libertarian” = “Whiny-Assed Hypocrite”

Three examples today of how Libertarians and their wannabees amongst the Teabagging and “Republican” communities behave in real life when things don’t go their way:

Number A:

This unemployed Libertarian is crying because the safety net he voted against isn’t there when he needs it. Yes, he hated that big government and its handouts when he was employed, but now that the shoe is on the other foot, he wants Congress to “have a freaking heart”. Sorry about your luck, Chuck: next time you vote, maybe you’ll be the one to have a freaking heart.

Letter 2:

Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson has been an advocate for deregulating horizontal drilling and fracking everywhere in the United States. Until it affected him and other rich Libertarians, that is:

Instead, the suit claims, the water company began building a 160-foot water tank, calling it “this monstrosity” that will “create a constant and unbearable nuisance to those that live next to it.” The tank will be constantly lighted, make noise and “create an attractive nesting spot for invasive species of bird and other animals,” the suit says.
And then it adds that the water company will sell water to drillers for hydraulic fracturing, “leading to traffic with heavy trucks” on nearby Farm Road 407, and “creating a noise nuisance and traffic hazards.”

Yep, deregulation for everybody but himself. Typical Libertarian hypocrisy.

Thirdly: We have the Libertarian’s fave “currency”, Bitcoin. This barely-regulated “money” appeals to the “ideals” of Libertarians, to the extent that the party now accepts them as campaign contributions. But now that the exchanges are collapsing due to the lack of regulation, investors of all political stripes are calling for, well, regulation.

When it comes down to it, Libertarians want all the benefits of the governments they pretend to despise: a safety net, clean air and water, and safety from criminals, to name but a few. They just don’t want to PAY for it, or to be bound themselves by “burdensome” regulations and laws. Hypocrites, in other words.

Screw all of those lying, smirking, two-faced, Libertarian sons of bitches. They should reap what they have sown, and learn the hard way that government is not always the problem (as their Saint Ronnie of Alzheimer claimed): sometimes, government can be a good thing. Let ’em deal with its absence and see how they like it.

Mr. Blunt and Cranky

R.I.P. Rush: former rock band’s song is used in a Walmart commercial.

You all remember Rush, right? They used to be a rock band. But it’s time to order the flowers and start tuning your bagpipes, because that band as you knew it has died.

Geddy and Alex, you see, are endorsing Walmart by letting them use the song “Working Man” in a TV commercial. Walmart, one of the worst employers on Planet Earth, has Rush’s blessing to use its song as a way to help whitewash their appalling record of abusing workers, stealing from honest taxpayers, and paying its own working men and women so little, many of them are on public assistance.

To compound the idiocy, the band has recently claimed to have renounced their collective worship of Libertarian anti-goddess Ayn Rand. But now they show their true colors by jumping in between the sheets with the real-life Galts of the 21st century, the billionaire Walton family of Walmart infamy. These boyos are not on your side, America.

The former rock band Rush has been revealed as a load of profiteering, smirking, exploiting, greedy, manipulative, hypocritical Teabaggers. From this cranky writer to Alex Lifeson, Geddy Lee, and Neal Peart: your once-proud band is dead, having become nothing more than a propaganda tool for the 1%. The “Working Man” Lee and Lifeson wrote about is being further ground under the heels of the most regressive employers of the modern age while you play chorus to their Dickensian practices, and if there were any justice in this world, he would spit in your sneering, self-absorbed faces.

Rush is dead. The “musicians” of Rush live on, but their band is no more. Let’s all line up to relieve ourselves on Rush’s grave.

Mr. Blunt and Cranky

Libertarians think Fiction is Reality.

300,000 people in West Virginia can’t use their tap water for anything but flushing their crap down the dumper because an unregulated toxic chemical facility just upstream from Charleston’s water supply sprang a leak: it’s so bad, people in 6 counties can’t bathe, wash their clothes, cook, clean, and such. Sensible people asked for some regulations, but the Libertarians blocked them, because the “free market” would magically make the tank farm’s operator do everything necessary to make the place safe and squeaky-clean. Of course, that turned out not to be the case.

Last year, a town in Texas suffered a devastating and deadly explosion because a barely-regulated fertilizer plant blew up. This being Texas, only a few sensible people argued for regulations, and the Libertarians blocked them too, because the “free market” is a peachy and perfect way to ensure safety and cleanliness in industry. In fact, the libertarians are STILL blocking new regulations even after that blast, so that town (or another) could blow up again at any moment.

Time after time, this silly-arsed idea that businesses are somehow innately good and will always do the right thing when left to their own devices has been proven false. And yet its adherents still insist that it is true, that we just need to get rid of even more government and then it’ll work, honest, really, pinky-swear. That’s like a compulsive gambler telling you that if he just had more money to bet, he’d be on Easy Street.

This ideology does not work in real life. Smart people who live in the real world and have read Adam Smith know that a regulated free market is what works best. But because a czarist Russian exile had an understandably huge hate-on for Commies and wrote a few novels, somehow a lot of otherwise sane and intelligent individuals decided that a whole philosophy should be based on those novels; and indeed, a new economic theory be created out of the whole cloth and immediately declared valid, based largely on those novels. Fiction, to libertarians, is reality.

And that, friends, pretty well sums up Libertarianism: it is a theory, based on fiction, that has no basis in reality. People have been trying for decades to make it real, to make it work, to take it from marionette status and turn into a real boy. All that has been realized from their efforts is that Libertarians have grown a very large set of donkey ears as their Ayn Rand-based Pleasure Island has gone morally, intellectually, and financially bankrupt.

Libertarianism has failed. It is dead. Stop trying to make the corpse move; bury it and try something based in the real world next time.

Mr. Blunt and Cranky

On Edit – more than one cranky reader has pointed out that the band Rush is no longer espousing libertarianism in their more recent lyrics. Apologies to Rush, and anyone else offended by the reference, which I have removed. Thanks to those who pointed out the error.