Baltimore is Another Wake-Up Call. America, stop Hitting the Snooze Button.

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

Hypocritical Hillary Haters Are Hating, as Always

A Clinton candidacy always brings the lying rat bassets out in droves, and her 2016 bid is no exception. The Teapubbies have carefully timed the Scandalism Machine to try to sink her Presidential bid. Like they did to Bubba in 1992 and 1994. And when Hillary ran for Senate. And when she was confirmed as Secretary of State. It’s all about scandalscandalscandal, every single time. Never mind that all the millions of dollars the Right Wingnuts spent digging for dirt on the Clintons ever turned up was oral sex and cigar kink. (And that was on Bill, not Hillary.)

Knowing that Secretary Clinton would run for Prexy (like everybody else did, DUH), the “Republicans” have spent loads of taxpayer dollars on “investigations” that have turned up even less than they did in the 90’s. Undeterred, they are gleefully wasting our hard-earned on these witch hunts, shining bright lights on nothing and substituting innuendo for information. And getting lots of money and assistance for their smear campaigns from rich motherf***ers in and out of the media, foreign and domestic.

In the interest of Truth, Justice, and the Amercan Way, let’s turn those spotlights around for a wee minute and shine it upon HRC’s manifold accusers, and see what we find, shall we? Oh, we shall; yes, yes we shall.

Number A: The big Clinton Email Server “Scandal”. You know, the one where Hillary had a legal server that she used legally, and disclosed everything that was legally required? Yep. Not for nothing was “scandal” enclosed by scarequotes.
Turns out that the Teabilly who is leading the charge against Mrs. Clinton is doing the same damned thing. Yes, Trey Gowdy has his OWN private email server, not that you hear much about it. This writer had to go down five pages in a Google search to find it, underneath all the regurgitated Repub talking points that pass for “news” these days.

Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC), who heads the House’s Select Committee on Benghazi, is leading the charge in calling for investigations of Clinton’s email.

Yet it’s important to note that Gowdy maintains his own domain treygowdy.com. For example, one campaign contact email he used was info@treygowdy.com. While it’s not unusual to maintain such a thing particularly for campaign work, it’s not clear that Gowdy utilizes this email solely for political campaign work and not congressional tasks.
AlterNet asked Gowdy’s office through both a telephone inquiry followed up by an email communication to his press secretary about how he segregates work he conducts through his personal domain vs congressional work. We also inquired about where his personal email server is stored and how it is secured. We also attempted to contact Gowdy campaign manager George Ramsey, but he did not return our phone calls. 

Letter 2: How about that new blockbuster book about Clintonian “Corruption”, Clinton Cash? Wow, sounds like some pretty damning stuff, if you listen to the breathless panting of the “reporters” who are “covering” the story. Ermmm…well…no… Turns out Mr. Schweizer is a paid Republican operative, who was paid lots of money to write a bulls*** hit piece:

As Crooks and Liars pointed out, Schweizer’s Government Accountability Initiative, a 501(c)(3), is funded by three conservative powerhouse donors.
First up would be the infamous Koch brothers, who contribute to most of GAI’s funding through the Franklin Center, a “free market” organization dedicated to “democratizing journalism.” Also in play is another the Koch-run Donors’ Trust, a political “slush fund,” according to the blog.
Of the total $2.2 million received in 2012, $2 million came from the Franklin Center, the Koch-funded “watchdog” organization. Perhaps coincidentally, the Franklin Center also received a $2 million contribution in 2012 from Donors’ Capital, the sister organization to Donors’ Trust.
Next is the Mercer Family Foundation, headed up by the eponymous hedge fund magnate Robert Mercer. As Crooks and Liars noted, Mercer’s main targets are usually congressmen trying to roll back the power of Wall Street. Mother Jones reported that Mercer is currently the top bankroller for Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R-TX) presidential campaign.

Finally: Everybody remember when Hillary called out the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy (VRWC) and was roundly mocked for having done so? Well, gosh darn it and golly-gee-shucks, it existed then and has continued into the present day. Click the links for details.

Score from just the aforementioned wee minute of looking at the accusatory Teabaggers, Plutocrats and Pundits:
Hillary:3
Hillary Haters:0

This writer doesn’t much care for Hillary, any more than he he did for Bill. If he has to vote for her, he’ll hold his nose while so doing. But these Nixonian Ratf***ers need to be put in a cage with the rest of their rodent brethren to gnaw on each other, so that the political process can at least be slightly less infested with such vermin.

It sure would be nice to decide our 2016 votes based on facts, instead of lies spread by a load of paid “Republican” liars.

Mr. Blunt and Cranky

Economist Proves: Reagan’s Deregulation caused Today’s Income Inequality.

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

Teapublicans, Communists, and Terrorists have a LOT in common:

Number A: They don’t care who they kill, so long as they get what they want. Teapublicans are responsible for deaths of women and children due to starvation, lack of medical care, or indistrial poisoning; Communists kill dissidents by the trainload; and Terrorists kill innocent people aplenty via cowardly acts of violence. So for all three of these groups, murder is one of their tools of choice.

Letter 2: They are blinded by their senseless “faith” and cannot see the real world and the facts on which it is built. Teapublicans cling to the fiction of Supply-Side economics even as it destroys the nation; Communists insist that Marxism-Leninism is the inevitable destiny of the world, even after almost every Marxist government has long-since collapsed; and Terrorists insist that their God/Sacred Cause wants them to kill us all and let Him/It sort us all out, when there is not a shred of evidence that their Deity (or Cause) does, in fact, exist. So for all three groups, living in a dream world is a defining characteristic, as is rejection of reality.

Thirdly: They keep on doing the same dumbass things over and over again, even though said dumbassery never, EVER works. Teapubbies keep on stealing our tax money and giving it to the 1%, even though the benefits never trickle down. Communists keep on oppressing their people, even though it never results in an egalitarian society. And Terrorists keep on murdering innocent people, even though all it does is unite the rest of the world against the terrorists. So for all three groups, they fit the old definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again, hoping for a different result.

So what ARE the differences between “Republicans”, Communists and Terrorists? Not much, really, unless you count wardrobe choices:



(Admit it: you thought the last one would be somebody in desert robes, didn’t you? Nope, it’s Timothy McVeigh, a home-grown terrorist.)

Mr. Blunt and Cranky

Republicans: Cop-Killing Political Necrophiliacs.

How quickly we forget, amongst the current din of Liberal-bashing: ’twas only a few years ago that G. Gordon Liddy (he of Watergate and Steely Dan infamy) said, and we quote him verbatim:

Now if the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms comes to disarm you and they are bearing arms, resist them with arms. Go for a head shot; they’re going to be wearing bulletproof vests. … They’ve got a big target on there, ATF. Don’t shoot at that, because they’ve got a vest on underneath that. Head shots, head shots…. Kill the sons of bitches.

That is a right-wing thought leader and convicted felon saying things that far exceed anything that, say, Obama, DiBlasio or LeBron have said about cops. That is not someone asking for Justice: it is a mainstream “Republican” advocating the wholesale execution of law enforcement personnel. A Nixon Repub salivating over the possible bodies of dead police. And he is not alone:

How about Teapublican Craven Cliven Bundy acolyte Jerad Miller, who actually ambushed and murdered two innocent cops in Las Vegas?
Or Larry McQuilliams, who shot up a Texas courthouse and was, yes, a Republican, Teabagger-on-steroids, right-winger?

Do you hear about the manifold anti-cop words and deeds of Teapublicans like these today, Gentle Reader? No, you don’t. You hear a pack of lies and selective omissions about liberals and people of color, who supposedly hate cops, that is what you hear. And it is ALL you hear.

Never mind that DiBlasio already gave the NYPD $400,000,000.00 in EXTRA funding, in less than a year. Nearly half a billion ADDITIONAL DOLLARS to the NYPD from the mayor the NYPD union blames for the killings of two officers. Screw the soundbites, that is supporting the cops. But do the Raging Righties in their Tightie Whities acknowlowledge this? Of course not.

It’s one thing to call for Justice, as people in the Center and the Left have been doing. That is constitutionally-protected free speech and is not violent. Indeed, it is aimed at the same ends pushed by honest cops and prosecutors: a fair, just, and orderly society. One in which the police are our public servants and we their supporters.

But when Right-Wing Jackalopes like Fox News talking heads and other Repubs (like Police Union Chiefs in St. Louis, Cleveland, and New York) blame people of color, liberals and non-Wingnut politicians for the killings of cops, it is not aimed at justice. Not at all. It is “Republicans” trying to use the dead bodies of Americans for political advantage.

Like Bush did after he crawled out of his hole after 9/11 and many occasions therafter, it is what Repubs do these days. A sort of political necrophila, in which the dead are merely tools to be used for partisan advantage. Ghoulish, revolting, disrespectful behavior that SHOULD be beyond the pale. But, alas, in these sorry times, nothing is too extreme, too disgusting, too taboo for a “Republican” to say or do in the pursuit of his or her own power and wealth.

Those two dead cops deserve better. So do Brown, Gardner and other murdered police and civilians. They are, all of them, deserving of justice; not having their corpses used for the profit and pleasure of Right-Wing Necrophiliacs.

Mr. Blunt and Cranky

Teapublicans force hospitals to close and cause infants to die, because they hate Obama.

Deny it all you want, but that is what’s happening. In Red states that have refused to take free Federal money for Medicaid expansion, hospitals are closing and babies are dying. Each and every state that is refusing Medicaid Expansion is run by Teabagging “Republicans” who hates them some Obama. Click the links if you don’t believe it. So it’s clear: these slimy creeps are willing to see you and your kids die, so just so they can go “nanny-nanny-boo-boo” to the President of the United States.

You have to wonder why an allegedly “pro-life” party would deliberately ensure the deaths of thousands of people, including infants. One also wonders why a party that loves state-level governance is passing on billions of dollars in free money. The reason is plain and simple: they hate our President and anything that has his name anywhere near it.

Today as this is being written, hospitals are preparing to close. People whose lives could have been saved are dying. And it is for petty political payback, by a bunch of vindictive “Republicans” who are willing to see innocent blood shed in order to inflict harm on our President. That’s a lot of blood on the paws of those scumbag Red politicians.

And if you vote “Republican”, Gentle Reader, there is blood on your hands, too. If you don’t love dead babies, then don’t vote for Repubs. If you don’t like dead senior citizens, don’t vote for Repubs.

If you DO vote for a GOP candidate, you express your support for deliberately causing the death of thousands of your fellow citizens. By your choice we will know you.

Mr. Blunt and Cranky

How the Budget Ceiling is SUPPOSED to work, and why it doesn’t.

Here is how the process actually works:
Step One: Congress decides how much money to spend and passes bills so the rest of the government can spend it.
Step Two: since Congress rarely considers whether or not we can afford all of the spending they authorize, there is usually a budget deficit, which increases the national debt.
Step Three: the Congress allows the treasury to borrow more money to cover the spending that Congress ordered. That is called “raising the debt ceiling”.

Pretty simple, and you may have noticed something: the word “President” appeared nowhere in the process. That is because the Executive cannot and does not allocate the vast majority of Federal funding. The Prexy has damn-all to do with the funding levels established by Congress. All he can do is execute the funding (which is why it is called the “Executive Branch”).

So why does Congress ask the Prexy for “concessions” or “reforms”, whenever the debt ceiling need lifting? The answer, Gentle Reader, is this: Congress is too scared to admit that they are responsible for our massive budget and the resulting red ink, so they play “pin the blame on Obama”. If the taxpaying public knew that Congress was to blame, they might vote their legislators out of office.

And the one thing no Senator or Congresscritter can bear is the idea of having to actually work for a living. So they pretend that it is the eeeeevil Obaminator who is responsible for the deficit. And the “News” media plays chorus to the Teapublican lies.

Remember this when you next cast your ballot. Congress owns the budget, the deficit and the debt. It’s time for those lazy, cowardly millionaires on Capitol Hill to nut up and accept responsibility for their actions, and to stop lying to us about who is to blame for the consequences of said actions.

Mr. Blunt and Cranky

Wingnuts called for Obama’s lynching. Now they claim to be oppressed victims.

Honestly, what a bunch of needle-dicked wussy mama’s boys  those “conservative” Teapublicans are. First they put up an image of our President with a noose around his neck, suggesting that he be assassinated and the date thereof be declared a national holiday. They took the picture down to try to cover their smelly asses, but they still got those stinky asses chewed. Then their Facebook page got hit by the Goat Hack, and they are now whining on their new facebook page about the Liberals who hacked the old one.

These pathetic little cowardly bits of pond scum need to nut up or shut up. They violated federal law by advocating the assassination of a sitting President. That is not “free speech”, that is seditious and anti-American criminal behavior. Being called on it does not make them victims, it makes them criminals.

This is something that has been popping up a lot lately – and by “popping up a lot” I mean to say, “picture a five-acre whack-a-mole game on Meth”. Right-Wingnut “Republicans” and other Teabaggers are saying a lot of racist, sexist, un-American trash that in some cases crosses the line into illegal speech, and then playing the Victim Card when their behavior is pointed out to them. So let’s hava a quick refresher on basic definitions:

“Victim” means “someone who has had a crime committed against them”. A “criminal” is “someone who commits a crime”. These racist, inbred, spelling-challenged, America-hating, mama-threw-away-the-baby-and-raised-the-afterbirth f***wits at “America-The Next Generation” fit the second category, not the first. They are aggressors, not victims.

Keep this in mind  when you are dealing with anyone, criminal or not, who: bullies;  acts in an intimidating manner; uses hate speech; or who is acting just barely within the law (people like Phil Robertson, Sarah Palin, and the like). They are not victims. They are the offenders, not the offended.

And whenever someone who is the offending party claims to be the injured party, we all need to call “bulls***” at every opportunity. Teach these cowardly little s***s the difference between a real victim and some gutless little weasel with a great big mouth and a teeny-tiny little pair. Let them know  which category they fall into, and that we know where they belong.

Mr. Blunt and Cranky

“Victory”? Somebody buy Ted Cruz a friggin’ dictionary .

Ted Cruz thinks that defeat is victory; or at least, he thinks that being ahead during a contest means more than who actually wins or loses at the end of a contest: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/10/16/cruz-it-was-a-remarkable-victory-until-senate-republicans-caved-on-the-shutdown/ From the article:

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) on Wednesday blasted members of his own party after he said that they wasted a “remarkable victory” by making a deal with Democrats to re-open the government and avert a default on U.S. debt by raising the nation’s credit limit

Of course, Teapublicans did not win a victory at the end of the recent shutdown/default debacle. At the end, they were forced to “surrender”, in the words of Speaker Boehner. Most of us see a surrender as a, well, defeat. But not Teddy Boi Cruz. In his world:

• Cleveland won a remarkable victory last week, because they led at the half. (Of course, Detroit won the game later)
• Rome won a remarkable victory over Rebbe Yeshua bar Joseph when they crucified him. (Of course, the Christians  are still around, and the Roman empire is long gone).
• England won a remarkable victory over the rebellious American colonies…you get the idea.

Clearly, Teddy Boi hasn’t a clue about the English language. Buy the fool a dictionary, someone, PLEASE.

Mr. Blunt and Cranky

On this day in 1793, Marie Antoinette was beheaded. Fortunately for Teapublicans, America has no Guillotines.

The only punishment these latter-day Antoinettes are likely to suffer is the loss of their cushy DC jobs.  Like the French aristocracy of their day, Teapublicans are thumbing their noses at the populace, stealing our money, allowing children to starve and sick people to die, all the while laughing merrily at our struggles as they lead their gilded lives. The parallels to this writer’s ancestral homeland are obvious.

Congressional “Republicans” would have us believe that taking away the paychecks of millions of Americans and refusing to pay what is due to millions of others, crashing the economy and wrecking the government; all of these, the Teabaggers tell us,  are the “will of the people”.  Anyone possessed of even a moiety of their marbles would know that the will of the people would never be the theft of our money and the destruction of our way of life. But the Baggers, sad to say, haven’t so much as a shard of one of their marbles, and so they repeat the mistakes of Marie and Co.

Gentle Reader, when you next go to the polls, please use your votes to cut away Tea Party contingent from Congress. Unlike Marie Antoinette, they won’t die: indeed, a (metaphorical) electoral guillotine just might help our country to stay alive.

Mr. Blunt and Cranky