They try to get the most revenue from Americans who have the least money.
And they continue to take less revenue from Americans who have the most money.
It’s like robbers hitting a soup kitchen instead of a bank, then wondering why their moneybag isn’t full.
“Republicans” are all eedjits.
Mr. Blunt and Cranky
That’s pretty much what Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar are saying, as they dig their hole deeper and deeper via their friends in the media. They have publically stated that trans people are males with criminal records (sex offenses, of course), which just shows that Duggarland is a magical place where one can have no idea what a transgendered person is but still think they are worse than their own son Josh Duggar, who has admitted he’s a sex offender, pedophile, and incest freak. But hey, li’l Joshie didn’t know no better, and Christ has forgiven him, so stop being all mean and stuff, OK? Plus he didn’t really do anything wrong, (even though he did), because he was just a teenytiny child himself at the time (even though he was 15)…you get the picture.
It turns out that Josh Duggar committed even more sex crimes than had been previously reported, and had told his parents even more often than had been previously reported, and had done things far more disgusting than had previously reported, to more girls than had previously been reported. In short, he’s a sexual predator and child molester of the first water, and needs to be locked up posthaste and the key flushed down the commode. But the Duggars don’t want him buggered, so they kept his crimes a secret. And since he didn’t go to jail, why, he’s not a criminal, right? Unlike those ickyickyicky LGBT people (even though being LGBT is not a crime).
Since the Duggars don’t understand Gay or Transgendered persons, but do understand Josh, one could fairly assume that Jim Bob and Michelle are themselves straight white Christian child molesters who also didn’t want to be buggered Duggars and so helped cover up Joshie’s sex crimes and their own complicity in their commission.
In fact, none of this was brought to light until the statute of limitations had run out, and the truth could come to light with no chance of these three disgusting perverts getting chucked into the general population of a prison, to there enjoy the “treatment” often afforded to such swine.
Here are facts of the matter: Josh Duggar molested his own sisters and a babysitter (maybe other girls, too). His parents covered up his crime, making the three of them criminals. Criminals of the lowest and most most vile sort. Criminals that are hated even by other criminals. How DARE the Duggars Who Are Scared of Being Buggered accuse innocent LGBT Americans of being sex offenders, when they themselves are just that?
Probably because Jim Bob, Michelle, Josh, and their Pervert Posse know full well what they are, and successfully managed to avoid detection via distraction. By pointing their filthy fingers at others for long enough, they got away with the perfect crime.
This writer, having been molested himself as a youth, hopes that all three of them are somehow punished for their unspeakable, incestuous, depraved, and inhuman actions. And that soon.
Mr. Blunt and Cranky
We knew you could.
It was less than a month ago, you’ll remember, when bats***-crazy Teacessionists claimed Obama was a-gonna invade Texas because the military was gonna practice, well, military stuff in the state. (Use “The Google” and search “Jade Helm” for details.) The Governor and many other Texas Teabaggers (in government and out) called (as they often do) for secession, armed resistance, and all the usual loony Lone Star bellicosity we’ve come to expect from those needle-d***ed, pea-brained dips***s.
Never mind that such military exercises bring a load of cash to the state and local environs, never mind that those same politicos were screaming for more Federal soldiers to be stationed in Texas to combat illegal immigrants not so long ago: NoNoNo, the eeeevil Federals and that dirty Obaminator-In-Chief were just itching to take over Texas, yupyupyup. And them thar proud Texans were gonna fight tooth, fang and claw to keep them Federal types away. Yupyupyup.
Then came a natural disaster.
And then, as always, came the usual demands (from those same TeaTexBaggers, of course) that the recently-reviled Federals come in and save the poor, helpless, suffering state of Texas, pleasepleaseplease. Christ on a Stetson, really? No, seriously, really? What happened to the proud, self-reliant, “we don’t need no stinkin’ Obama” attitude of just a few days prior?
The same a**holes that recently claimed that FEMA was setting up death camps are now begging FEMA to give them the essentials of life. The same crazies who deployed the National Guard to fight the apparently evil U.S. Army are now begging that very same U.S. Army to come on into Texas and help them. Anybody else see the blatant self-contradictions at work here?
This writer knows a goodly number of Texans and is aware that many (and perhaps most) people in that state are neither Teabaggers nor secessionists. Indeed, the average citizen of any state is not going to be agreement with the political hacks that run said states. Lord knows, this writer is hardly in agreement with Kasich’s Korrupt Kronies, for example. So please, don’t go lobbing nonsense attacks towards your humble bloggespondent or start some silly-a**ed #NotAllTexans Twitterfest.
But let’s DO encourage all of the good, sensible, hard-working people in Texas to assert their rights and run the “Republican” jackalopes out of office at the first opportunity, replacing them with representatives that reflect the interests of the majority of the state’s residents. Then maybe the local, state and national governments can work as a team again, as the Constitution says they are supposed to. And we can stop treating Texas politicians like the jokes most of them are.
Until that happens, Obama will have to just keep on feeding the teabagging, secessionist, deluded, idiotic Texas mouths that bite him.
Mr. Blunt and Cranky
Their response? “Pinch MORE pennies”. As witness the recent deadly Amtrak derailment, caused by “republican” budget cuts. Said budget cuts have slowed down improvements that could have prevented the accident:
One key safety feature was missing from the stretch of tracks where an Amtrak passenger train going more than 100 mph derailed and killed seven people.
Investigators say that if positive train control had been installed on that stretch, the technology could have automatically slowed the train down and perhaps saved lives.
Another GOP budget-cutting spree resulted in engineers being forced to work more and sleep less.
Accident investigators have been unwilling to speculate on whether operator error or mechanical problems led to Tuesday’s deadly Amtrak derailment. But for months, members of the labor union representing locomotive engineers have complained that recent reductions in rest and downtime could lead to tragedy. “You need to be able to have some kind of chance to get off the equipment, turn your mind off for a while,” said Fritz Edler, a veteran engineer who wrote a scathing letter last December to Amtrak managers on behalf the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen.
The letter accused Amtrak of forcing “dangerous changes” in the scheduling of engineers that have had the effect of reducing rest time in between trips to Washington, D.C. and New York City.
“Forcing shorter breaks, day after day, between runs increases fatigue related risk and the potential for loss of focus,” the letter warned.
But do the Elephants care? Nope. Within a few hours of the deaths that they helped cause, they passed even bigger budget cuts. Yes. They really did. Boehner and Co. are so blase’ about killing people, they stole even MORE taxpayer money to give to their fat-cat buddies, before their victims’ bodies had yet been given a decent burial.
Gentle Reader, we all know that stuff costs money. Trains, tracks, engineers, safety equipment, all of these things COST MONEY. Congress steals money from Amtrak just to hand it to a load of their billionaire cronies, regardless of whether or not the people whose taxes they stole live or die. Those budget cuts aren’t just numbers on a spreadsheet: they are actions that have consequences. Consequences such as dead people.
“Republicans” Do. Not. Care. Not about anything but themeselves and the bastards who have bought them. Greedy, murderous motherf***ing Teapublicans.
Get on out, and vote them out. Before they kill you or yours with budget cuts, like they did those commuters on Amtrak.
Mr. Blunt and Cranky
Over and over again, we get these wake-up calls. Over and over again, America listens for a little while, and then goes back to its usual state of willful ignorance. Rinse and repeat. STUPID.
It’s not like we haven’t seen this before: people are oppressed for so long and in so many ways, they can’t take it any more and lash out in blind rage. Baltimore today, Ferguson yesterday, and running back through history: Watts, Little Rock, the French Revolution, the American Revolution, all the way back to ancient Rome and its predecessors. An insular ruling class oppresses the masses, and eventually the masses revolt.
And there are always those who TELL the ruling class what is going on, pleading with them, exhorting them to change the arc of history, to learn from history, to not repeat the mistakes of history. So it was, and so it is. For example, here are the words of Baltimore Orioles COO John Angelos:
That said, my greater source of personal concern, outrage, and sympathy beyond this particular case is focused neither upon one night’s property damage nor upon the acts, but is focused rather upon the past four-decade period during which an American political elite have shipped middle-class and working-class jobs away from Baltimore and cities and towns around the US to third-world dictatorships, like China and others; plunged tens of millions of good, hardworking Americans into economic devastation, and then followed that action around the nation by diminishing every American’s civil-rights protections in order to control an unfairly impoverished population living under an ever-declining standard of living and suffering at the butt end of an ever-more militarized and aggressive surveillance state.
Pretty clear, isn’t he? America can (and should) listen to him, wake up and take action. But no, America will probably just roll over, smack the s*** out of the snooze button on the alarm, and go back to sleep. Eventually, the wake-up call will be so loud, it can’t be ignored any longer.
By then, it’ll be too late. America will finally wake up, only to find out that it died in its sleep.
Mr. Blunt and Cranky
When it comes to Church/State matters, you pretty much have to pick one or the other. That’s because the Fathers of our Country explicitly said that religion would have no role in our government. None. Zip. Nada. Teapublicans think that their particular variety of Fundagelical Christian religion is what should run the country.
Example Number A: The Founders wrote in the Constitution: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Pretty unambiguous, innit? On the other hand, Teavangelical Michelle Bachmann says that our secular government is going to destroy the world, and “Christians” like her need to revolt and take over the nation:
Former Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-MN) predicted in a recent interview that President Barack Obama’s handling of the Middle East was a sign of the End Times and that Jesus Christ would soon return to Earth.
“If we actually turn our back on Israel as we have seen Barack Obama do today, if that happens then I think we will see a scale and a level of push back in the United States, negative consequences,” Bachmann told Understanding the Times radio host Jan Markell on Sunday. “I don’t know what they are, but I believe that the Bible is true. And believe what the Bible says is that our nation and the people of our nation will reap a whirlwind, and we could see economic disasters, natural disasters.”
“The United States does not want to be in that position and unfortunately the people put into office Barack Obama,” she opined. “Not only once, but twice. And the people have to rise up against his actions and demand that their leaders take steps accordingly.”
Example Letter 2: We have the words of John Adams: “As the government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion…The United States is not a Christian nation any more than it is a Jewish or a Mohammedan nation.” Or you can pick those of the Texas Teapubbie who refuses to speak to non-Teavangelicals:
State Rep. Molly White (R-Belton) has proposed legislation that would allow businesses to refuse to serve customers on religious grounds. The first-year Republican lawmaker has also proposed legislation seeking to make the state’s ban on same-sex marriage immune from court rulings.
“Marriage is a Holy union of one man and one woman created and ordained by God. There is no other definition. As a Christian, I am guided by God’s Word,” she explained in a statement.
Thirdly: you can listen to the words of Thomas Jefferson:
“No man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burdened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer, on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities”. Or you can listen to Teapublican Presidential candidate Marco Rubio try to explain why it’s OK to discriminate based on religion.
And let’s not even start on the Teabagging school nurse who threw a sick kid out of the clinic for not being religious. Yes. Screamed at the child, refused to treat the child, abused the child, all because the Nurse claimed it was her Christian right to act thusly. (Yes, the pun on “Christian Right” was deliberate.)
Gentle Reader, we all must follow the law. Even if we don’t like it, we gotta obey it. We can’t even say “end the debate over church and state”, because there isn’t a debate to be had. The Constitution says what it says, and the intent of the law is clear, because the men who wrote it said so, clearly and repeatedly.
Church and State MUST remain separate. The minute they aren’t, America will cease to be America.
Mr. Blunt and Cranky
Seriously, what else can explain their actions of the past 35 years, since the Reaganistas took over a formerly rational political party? Consider these few examples of many:
Number A: Teapublicans in Congress are openly sabotaging negotiations between the USA and a hostile foreign power, even though the Constitution says that foreign policy is in the Executive Branch’s portfolio. So Boehner’s invitation to Bibi to “address” the Congress is more than just another of his drunkard’s hissy-fits: it violates the Constitution. Not that he is any stranger to extra-constitutional actions, of course. Look at his actions as they relate to women’s rights, minority rights, voting rights, and so on: Boehner and the rest of his party are actively breaking the law, based on an illegal premise, for an illegal purpose.
Letter 2: Teapubbies are a load of “Christian” evangelicals who want to trash the Establishment Clause and set up a Theocracy. They claim that this is a Christian nation, even though the law pretty clearly says otherwise:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.[1]
Thirdly: Teapubbies are frequently Secessionist scumballs. Such as the seditious “Republic of Texas”, the Southern National Congress, and the League of the South, to name but a very few.
All of these groups and people are Right-Wing Teabaggers, Libertarians and Teapublicans. None of them are Liberals. And all of them obviously hate America and its Constitution. By their actions we know them.
Likewise we know that people who vote for Teapublicans also support sedition, legislative overreach, and religious totalitarianism.
What’s that you say, dear “Republican” voter? You claim that you support the Constitution?
Bull-f***ing-s***. When you vote for a person or party that treats the law of the land like a**wipe, you support that treatment, as surely as if it were your own toilet into which the soiled Constitution got dropped and flushed away.
By our votes people know us. If you are voting for Teapubbies… *flush*
Mr. Blunt and Cranky
Finally, the root cause is revealed. Plenty of talk has been talked on the topic, by experts, data wonks, and politicians. But nobody was able to say why the 1% started f***ing the rest of us to an even greater extent than hitherto, from the 80’s through the present day. Not until a few months ago, that is:
There are many gauges of the depth and breadth of economic inequality, and they often measure what middle-income working people have today against what they had prior to 1980 – that time when homes were affordable, along with doctor visits and college educations. Yet few of the astonishing charts and metrics that have captured this widening gulf explain how it all came about. So when economist William Lazonick pointed a finger at a very specific aspect of corporate behavior, people took note.
Lazonick’s 4,900-word piece, titled Profits Without Prosperity, focused on the 449 companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500 index that were publicly listed from 2003 to 2012. Lazonick found that from the end of World War II until the late 1970s, corporations generally took a “retain-and-reinvest” approach to profits. That is, they kept their earnings and reinvested them – first and foremost in pay raises and job benefits for the employees who helped make the firms more competitive, but also in business expansion, research and new technologies.
But starting in the early 1980s, after the Securities and Exchange Commission removed limits on companies’ power to buy back their stock, these large, publicly traded companies began spending a portion of their net income on stock buybacks. The trend was exacerbated in the 1990s, when the compensation packages of corporate chief executives were linked directly to the stock value, and has accelerated in recent years – even though it’s been little noticed and rarely discussed as a prime driver of economic inequality.
THIS IS HUGE, Gentle Reader. Huge. It proves what everyone except Teapubbies and all the other “small government” and supply-side eedjits have known for decades: the Reagan Revolution was a huge mistake, a f***-up for the ages, even worse than when the Senate handed Rome to Caligula. The nation’s woeful retreat from its former stability to the shambles of the present day is, once and for all: The. Fault. Of. Reagan. Era. Republicans.
And the longer America keep electing these criminally idiotic, venal, fact-challenged, big-mouthed-but-walnut-brained f***wits, the worse it’s gonna get. We need to vote each and every “Republican” who is currently IN office OUT of said office. And that soon.
Maybe someday, when Repubs go back to the pre-Reagan days of ideological and political sanity; then, and ONLY then, can we allow them back into power. But frankly, friends, we can’t AFFORD these Teapublican nitwits any longer. They have cost us dearly, far too dearly, and done far too much damage to be trusted now.
Now you know who to blame. Time to do something about it.
Mr. Blunt and Cranky
Jessa Duggardaughter, one of the many Teavangelicals from the scripturally-challenged “Quiverfull” wing of Christianity, displayed her spectacular level of Biblical ignorance in a recent Facebook post.Here is a wee bit of it:
“God isn’t slacking to fulfill His promised Judgement (sic) on sin — it’s coming,” Duggar warned. “The only reason you’re are alive right now is because He is merciful and has kept your heart beating for another day.” She warned that God could strike anyone down at any time and render his final “judgement” – but she’s not the least bit worried. “This should be concerning to you,” Duggar said. “I know it was for me! When I saw myself in light of God’s standard, and I knew that I fell short. But I found hope in the Gospel — the ‘good news’ of Jesus Christ! I would still be lost today were it not for His grace!”
Wow. Just, like Wow. Jessa thinks she is guaranteed a ticket to Heaven, and the rest of us are on the road to Hell. In fact, she is sure of it.
She started her post by quoting Matthew 7:1 but then proceeded to completely disregard it, as do so many of her ilk. Not all that unusual, many Teavangelists frequently treat the teachings of the Christ they claim to worship with this sort of disrespect. It might seem odd that a Christian would give Christ a raspberry, but it’s pretty common.
Here’s the key: some people (like the Duggars) think that Jesus Christ is a magical being that guarantees them a ticket to Heaven no matter how badly they treat others, so long as they are “born again”. Others (like this writer) think that Rebbe Yeshuah bar Yosef was sent here by God to remind us of what we needed to do and be, in order to be worthy of such a destination.
You might be tempted to blow by this little bit of dogmatic disagreement, but please hang in there: it is the basis of a schism that dates back to about 300 A.D. or so; are we to worship or to follow? Did Jesus come down only to be crucified and thus shower the faithful with His magic blood, or should we listen to what He said before He was executed? Worshipping is much easier: just grovel a bit and your work is done. Perhaps that is why Jessa looks so gleeful as she contemplates our eternal damnation: 
Following actually requires effort, spiritual and otherwise. Here are a few of the actual words spoken by Jesus: think about how difficult they actually can be to do, day in and day out:
Matthew 7:“Do not judge, or you too will be judged.For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”
Matthew 6:”Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full.” “And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full.But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you”
Matthew 22:36-40 is the really big one: “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” Jesus replied:‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.'”
(One should note that the answer was not “Accept me as your personal savior and you will go to heaven, no matter what else you do”. I think if He had MEANT that, He would have SAID that. But He didn’t. Not once. Not ever.)
None of these, nor the many other teachings of Jesus, are presented as optional selections from a Heavenly buffet line. Christians are supposed to do them all. Small wonder the Lord’s prayer reads as it does: it is nigh on impossible to live your life to such standards.
And that may well be why Teavangelicals created their own most important commandment (to be born again), instead of the one Christ laid down. Many people want an easy life, and the lazier they are, the easier they want their lives to be. And loving everybody 24/7/365 is about as difficult as a task can get for most of us. Easier for the Duggarites and their sort to hold themselves up as uniquely Heavenbound, with no effort or self-improvement required on their own part. Magic Jesus Blood does all the work for them, amirite?
See you in Hell, Jessa. Unlike you and yours, most of us won’t be surprised should we wind up there.
Mr. Blunt and Cranky
bluntandcranky 