Skip the Bearded Lady, Go Straight to the Big Top

Bearded Lady

My friend, and I mean that, I value your opinion but I think you’re wrong to toss your vote aside to the Fit of Pique party.

You wrote:

I think last night’s election was not an endorsement for Obama but a message to republicans that people are tired of the rhetoric with nothing to back it up. Fiscally conservative? Not a chance. Socially conservative? That is not what the country cares about anymore.

Where you see none I see a mandate from a solid majority of voters of half or more of the states in the union for a return to more liberal policies and a demand for tangible results. These voters gave us a majority in the electoral college that George Bush never enjoyed. People on both sides of the public divide want a strong economy, full employment, safety, security, jobs, quality education, health care, and many other necessary basic services. The argument is how to get it done.

We can well afford a return to and strengthening of the New Deal policies that led us to all of the above conditions and successfully maintained them until the private profiteers, the opportunists, the financial buccaneers and the Chicago School with their trickle down voodoo convinced the weak minded, spineless and venal in Washington to give away the public treasury.

Tea Party: “Is There a Difference Between Cinco de Mayo and Chinese New Year”?

Political Advertising

Fight Citizens United by Filtering Out False Political Advertising

The mid term elections of 2010 have been memorable for sheer goofiness as well as for the corporate funded blanket of ugly, false and misleading political advertising that has been lowered over the public airwaves. With the addition of a mountainous heap of money provided by greedy plutocrats, election cycles have become national holidays from reason and sanity that fall between their mates, Halloween and Thanksgiving.

I have little trouble tuning out most of this detestable crud, knowing as I do that it’s filled with half truths, distortions and bold faced lies. In this sense the supreme court’s licensing of corporate political advertising in campaign ads is little different from the every day advertising for goods and services that absorb a large percentage of air time on nearly every channel.

I’m not a believer, I don’t buy disposable mop heads that promise to revolutionize my life, or small sheets of fabric to place in the dryer to protect myself from static cling. The hundreds of millions that corporate America is spending on this election is wasted on me and on anyone else who doesn’t believe that signing up for a “free” credit report will improve your credit or that tax protection and relief ads which promise to negotiate with the IRS will actually do anything but empty your pockets more efficiently.

Reply to a “Traditional Conservative”

This is from a comment thread to Bob Cesca’s post at Huff Post titled “Despite America’s Temper Tantrum, It’s Still a Center-Left Nation”

Fair TV a self proclaimed “traditional conservative” launched an attack on Democrats and Liberals.
FAIRTV Commented:

Ah, the once proud Democratic party. Are there no democrats left who will stand up to the Idiot Left with their frontal assault on American Freedoms?
You Coastal Elite…..watch what the American People can do when they find their freedoms under attack by the Fringe Left.
If this is a center left country, why are the Lefties afraid to even use the term “Liberal” any more instead choosing the more “acceptable” “Progressives?”
Democrats today are held hostage by Thug Union Bosses, Wacko Environmentalists, Pro-Abortionists, the Radical Gay Lobby, Anti-gun zealots, Anti-religious bigots, and dim-witted Hollywood types. It’s a shame to see a once proud Democrat party reduced to a National Joke.

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TraceyES Comment in reply to FairTV:Er…can you enumerate your freedoms which are currently under assault by Democrats? Go ahead, make a list for us. Waiting…waiting…

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FAIRTV Responded to TraceyES:The right to life
The right to bear arms
The right to live in a country with secure borders
The right to live in a country with laws that are enforced
The right to First Amendment speech, in spite of the language police
The right to believe in God and tell others about that faith
The right to hold conservative, traditional views without being labelled a “racist.”

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Bob Higgins Responded to FairTV:

Throw Out The Hyenas of the Ruling Class

Is there anyone out there who still harbors the delusion that George Bush or most of his administration possesses the slightest shred of human integrity or the tiniest morsel of respect for the truth, for law, for the people of this country or any other?

Sorry, the question was rhetorical and asked out of personal frustration with the evil festering stew of lies, theft, brutality and domestic and international piracy that this administration has created in the place of what was once the USA.

No, I’m not naive enough to believe that we were ever a perfect country, free of guilt from participation in many and various Machiavellian schemes and plots over the last two centuries, the influence of the power lusts of private wealth have always had far too much influence in our public affairs to allow us to avoid responsibility for the results of our contributions to the general level of human misery. We have committed serious crimes against people in places as varied as Vietnam and Chile, and as far apart in space and time as Nicaragua and Iran.

In the generally business driven efforts to support the interests of entities such as United Fruit, Chiquita Banana, Anaconda, various oil giants, mining companies, and financial institutions we have gone to bat for tin horn dictators in Iran, Cuba, Chile, Cambodia and in other places to numerous to name here. Even the Mafia found support in the efforts to prop up the fascist pig Batista against communist pig Castro.

Much of our record has not been pretty and, in general, has usually favored and supported wealth and property over humanity and justice.

Revelations last week of more administration lies in the widening “Waterboardgate” scandal came as no surprise to most people and, although many expressed shock and dismay in public, the expressions of astonishment seemed to be presented for dramatic effect rather than as spontaneous displays of true emotion. When it comes to the current administration I don’t believe that there are many rose colored glasses left among the body politic, experience having taught us to assume the worst.

Even the families of the long suffering military who have borne the brunt of the aspirations to Empire of America’s transparently criminal ruling class over the last seven years are now beginning to break ranks with the “commander” who has squandered the lives of their loved ones and treated them with such contempt.

Pinochet y Bush, Class Warfare in Chile y Ohio

With the possible exception of Barry Goldwater for whom I have have always had a somewhat grudging admiration and a few others, perhaps John McCain before he developed a taste for the flavor of George Bush’s ass and decided that performing oral sex on Jerry Falwell, indeed the entire religious right was a natural rite of passage on the road to earning the Presidency, Republicanism has always been abhorrent to me.

My animus toward the GOP probably began during my early residence in the womb of a Mother who was a Democrat, a long time member of the UAW and the daughter of hard scrabble Sicilian Democrats from Connecticut as well as exposure to Willie Higgins my paternal grandfather who was a printer, a pressman and a lifelong Democrat. (except for the part about FDR sending his son to fight a war in Europe. Willie loved Harry Truman, but hated FDR, there may be a lesson about war or public relations or whose ox is being gored in there somewhere.)

Anyway, I came by my liberal passions early and honestly and before the end of elementary school had begun to feel a strong disdain for Hamilton and all he represented and a deep affinity for Jefferson and what I saw as the enlightened, egalitarian ideals of a more liberal political philosophy.

With this background it should be quite understandable that the October election was celebrated around my house as “the night of the living Democrats” and great sighs of relief were breathed over the weighing of the Republican anchor on the Ship of State which contains our mutual American asses.

However, it seems that my smug satisfaction with the coming Democratic majority was somewhat immoderate and premature because those Republican bastards are lame ducking the hell out of the country before the Democrats take office.