Category Archives: Politics

Brad Paisley, Accidental Racist on Purpose 7

by • Arts and Entertainment, Politics • Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Hey Brad Paisley, your song sucks and I can’t believe LLCoolJ sang with you and you are lucky you have one black friend left.

I want you to know something, if you are still wearing that shirt with a confederate flag on it, you aren’t a racist by accident, and to make the claim you don’t know what that shirt means to many Americans, Black or otherwise, because you either aren’t paying attention or your just plain lying. Oh and as a side note,  good for the Starbucks employee for calling you out.

I am utterly disappointed with this weird attitude of some of you southern boys. The Confederate flag is a symbol of separating us as a nation, splitting America in two in order to maintain Slavery as an institution and really spitting on everything that America is supposed to stand for, equality, fairness and justice. When you say you can’t walk a mile in the shoes of a fellow human being it simply indicates your too lazy to bother. Cause see, here is the thing Brad, you have so much to learn.

First off I have completed a reading list for you to learn what that flag means to those of us who do not associate ourselves with that flag.

  • Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
  • The Bondwoman’s  Narrative Harriet Craft, edited by Henry Louis Gates Jr.
  • Harriet Jacobs, A Life
  • The Autobiography of Malcolm X
  • Life Upon These Shores, Henry Louis Gates Jr.
  • Eye’s on the Prize, JuanWilliams
  • In Search of Hannah Crafts, Critical Essays on the Bondwoman’s Narrative
  • Ghosts of Mississippi, The Murder of Medgar Evers, The Trials of Byron De La Beckwith, and The Haunting of the New South

Please also read about James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, those were the three voter registration volunteers who were murdered by Klan members in Mississippi. Did you ever see Mississippi Burning? Did you think it was just a movie? Read about Jim Crow laws and tell me that states rights is really all that symbol represents. It isn’t of course, it represents a sinister terrible part of our history, the terrible awful part where white people got away with murdering black people in the south.. just because they wanted to!

You brought it up dude, now it is time to woman up and learn why maybe you shouldn’t be so butthurt that people think your stupid TShirt with the Confederate Flag on it is racist, guess what, it is racist. Now go read something. Because this is what your song really about, it is about ignorance, ignorance of our history, ignorance of slavery and the civil war and ignorance about how others might perceive this type of shirt. You wouldn’t walk around with a TShirt that had a swastika on it would you? Well the Confederate flag is just as vile. But I don’t like that you simply don’t understand our history, that is a real shame. You are certainly someone who ought to know better.

Kermit Gosnell, Eleventh Dimensional Chess, Michelle Rhee, Rand Paul and Other Bullshit that Pissed Me Off This Week 5

by • Blogging, News, Politics, Women • Tags: , , , , , , ,

Sigh, the right wing media is having a major melt down about Kermit Gosnell, complaining on and on ad-infinitum that the Main Stream Media is not covering the Gosnell story. Of course this is absolute BS, since I first starting hearing about Gosnell in 2011. The question must be asked, where was the right wing media in 2011 when it came to Kermit Gosnell, serial abuser of women in need? Oh right, it didn’t suit their purpose back then to talk about this at all, in fact it was a non-story to them. Why? Let’s review the work that was done in 2011 about Gosnell and his arrest in January of 2011:

http://www.myfoxphilly.com/story/17533017/doctor-allegedly-killed-babies-with-scissors

http://www.cnn.com/2011/CRIME/03/02/pennsylvania.abortion.doctor/index.html

http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/Abortion-Doctor-Charged-With-Murder-114205094.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/23/us/23doctor.html?_r=0

http://www.newsworks.org/index.php/the-feed/item/11662-21tmmayor

http://www.delawareonline.com/article/20110128/NEWS01/101280337/AG-Beau-Biden-launches-probe-into-abortion-doctor-s-work-in-Delaware?nclick_check=1

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/23/kermit-gosnell-abortion-c_n_812702.html

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/01/19/national/main7261741.shtml

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1354889/Kermit-Gosnell-House-horrors-abortionist-1-8m-year.html

http://rhrealitycheck.org/tag/dr-kermit-gosnell/

There were just so many reports at the time of his arrest all about his clinic of horror. What we know is, that facility was not inspected by the state of Pennsylvania for 17 years. Of course the excuse wingers are using that the place wasn’t inspected in 17 damn years was because of a pro-choice policy, which is utter bullshit.  The Business Insider article does say that it was Governor Tom Ridge, Republican who ordered the Dept of Health to stop inspecting abortion clinics, and that isn’t because of  a pro-choice policy that is a direct result of conservatives not believing that the health of women is important. Let’s be clear, it seems Dr. Gosnell would have used hangers to give women abortions if he could have gotten away with it, the state of Pennsylvania was complicit. It’s disgusting but it has nothing to do with being pro-choice, it has everything to do with not believing women health is important. And now a bunch of men are enraged because they think the story isn’t being covered… more utter bullshit, and they don’t care one bit about the health of women, they care 100% about using this case to politicize the health of women. It certainly isn’t shocking.

Then we get to the 11th Dimensional Chess Meme, smh, really? The  I just hate the meme, it’s lame. Everyone who is using this term as though it has meaning, stop it, you sound stupid when you type it out day after day after day. Sheesh!

Michelle Rhee’s reign of error in the DC schools is finally coming under some intense scrutiny, in light of the big testing scandal in Georgia. See the test scores of those kids in DC took a sudden rise, and it just seemed highly unusual for this to happen.  Cheating on standardized tests is at the core of this scandal and Rhee selling her so-called methods to other school systems is on the periphery.  There is plenty of evidence that Rhee’s policies encouraged teachers to cheat. Here is some evidence from a Frontline Investigation:

The DC-CAS scores at Noyes, where 81% of classrooms were flagged for high erasures, are themselves circumstantial evidence that supports Cothorne’s allegation. Below are the Noyes DC-CAS scores over five years; 2011 represents the year that security was tightened.

  2007 2008 2009 2010 2011
Reading 44.14% 61.53 84.21 61.36 32.40
Math 34.24% 57.69 62.79 53.64 28.17

 
That represents a drop of nearly 50 points in reading between 2009 and 2011, and a drop of roughly 34 points in math. Note also that in 2011 Noyes students were scoring below their pre-Rhee level.

In all, data are available for 16 schools with erasure rates of at least 50%. DC-CAS reading scores rose in only two schools after security was tightened. Math scores rose in just 4 schools and declined in 12.

Rhee is the epitome of an educated grifter. It pisses me off that people seem to believe that improving scores always equals firing teachers. It isn’t that easy people, and for the most part teachers are very dedicated to helping children learn. I’m sick of people like Rhee who present easy solutions to improving education for the underprivileged, Guess what it isn’t easy. There are no quick solutions, we have to have community based solutions that include a change in how we view education. Where all children are not hungry when they begin class, where families have access to help, want to better education children, well the community must come together, and that has little to do with test scores. Melissa Harris Perry has the right idea, but of course she is attacked for it. But I know one thing for sure, Rhee took advantage of the DC system and helped no child learn.

Oh Rand Paul, sure thing black people need to know just how great Republicans are beginning with Lincoln, because they would never know what he did or anything really, unless a white person tells them.  What a great way to recruit people to your party, condescend to them repeatedly!

Yes it makes me mad that people are attacking Melissa Harris Perry for saying the raising children is a community responsibility, it is, how is that so wrong? Oh conservatives on the one hand you always insist how great thigns were in the past, when you would get in trouble at home after getting in trouble with a neighbor for being a pinhead, but if a liberal suggests that is important to raising children suddenly it is communism, socialism, social engineering and all wrong. Idiots.

There are many more things that piss me off on an on-going basis, but we can’t go over them here, this would be a never ending blog. Have a good Sunday my tens of readers!

The Object of the Game is to Win 10

by • Politics

You read that right.

The object of the game is to win.

Don’t get me wrong, in an election, that’s not the end, it’s the end of the beginning.

Winning an election means we get to implement policies. Losing (even “losing pure”) means we get to sit on the sidelines and watch the other guys implement theirs. And if we liked their policies more, why are we on our side?

If you don’t understand that, maybe politics isn’t for you. Maybe another hobby would suit you better. Stamp collecting? Model railroading? Birdwatching? Really – if you don’t get this, leave it to those of us that do.

There is no such thing as “making a statement” by coming in second in electoral politics. That’s called losing, and we’re far too used to it, because our side, the Dems if you will, have viewed principled losses as somehow ennobling.

They’re not. They hurt us, and they hurt America. Internalize that now. Then prepare to act on it, because November is important.

We have to do whatever we can to undo the disaster fostered in part by Democrats sitting on their hands in 2010 to “teach Obama a lesson” of whatever sort.

Never, ever, do that again.

Down-ballot elections are even more important, both Congressional and state legislative races make huge differences in people’s lives, and giving things over to the Republicans out of some sort of pique is not just foolish, it’s destructive – to you, me, our families, and this society. Ask the good folks in Wisconsin, Ohio, or Michigan about what happens when Republicans turn out and Democrats stay home. They’ll have stories, I suspect.

November matters.

And the object of the game is to win.

Fact Checking Factcheck.org 3

by • Health, Politics, Presidential Politics • Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Factcheck has released yet another ridiculous truth-o-meter on the President and how he is selling the newly Constitutional PPACA. I think their points are worth refuting.

Fact Check States in their summary: Obama reiterated his “if you like your plan, you can keep your plan” refrain, despite the fact that at least a few million workers won’t keep their employer-sponsored plans, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Really? You are suggesting that below average plans which leave subscribers underinsured, is definitely a product sentient beings want for their families. Three cheers for substandard insurance! PPACA is in part a regulation that mandates what a basic health plan must cover. It’s already that way for federal employees. There are two levels of health insurance, the standard, which has somewhat higher co-pays and high-options which cost more and cover more services. Previous to the law standards vary wildly state by state. Governments are supposed to regulate services that can affect the general wellbeing of the citizenry. I realize Republicans have made the claim over and over again that government is only to wage war and make it so businesses can rip off whomever they choose to rip off. American citizens deserve standardized insurance coverage that basic minimum requirements, and if an insurance company for some odd reason does not comply they will go out of business, does anyone see that happening? Nope. It isn’t as simple as Fact Check states, and it certainly isn’t a negative for the President for people to have standard and not substandard health services coverage. They have tried to twist it into a negative.

One more point, employers switch health plan providers every time they get a better deal. I mean you can’t be serious on that critique; currently no one can stop your employer from taking his business elsewhere. I am not sure why that fact works against the President and brings what he said into doubt.

Fact check states: The president also exaggerated the benefits of the law, such as the number of young adults who were able to join their parents’ plans.

Coverage for Young Adults:
Factcheck cited the Los Angeles Times claiming it refutes the claim that 6.6 million young adults have insurance because of ACA. Unfortunately for factcheck, the LA Times and the Commonwealth Fund, from the outset they actually misstate ACA, the passage in the times says this:

Not all of the estimated 6.6 million young adults who joined or stayed on their parents’ plans would have otherwise been uninsured, according to officials at the Commonwealth Fund, which is a leading source of healthcare research. At least some probably moved to their parents’ plans from other health insurance plans because the family plans were less costly or more comprehensive.

Take special note of the part I bolded, both not only is factcheck, because this is the Republican talking point of their argument and is a misstatement of the legislation
This is important: Young adults have the right to stay in a parent’s plan—or to get back into that plan—if they meet the following conditions:

1. Their parent has coverage through an employer or buys family coverage in the individual market.
2. Their parent’s health plan provides “dependent coverage”—that is, it covers children, spouses, or other family members.
In the past, some plans required children and young adults to be “dependents” for tax purposes before they could qualify for coverage on their parents’ plans. Under the new law, this is no longer the case. Nor does it matter whether or not the young adult is a student, lives with the parent, or receives financial support from the parent.
3. Insurance companies are only required to provide access to insurance for young adult children if the child does not have access to insurance through their employer.
But then factcheck states:

The White House told us that the president’s statement is correct because all 6.6 million benefited from the law, but some more than others. True.

What?

Factcheck claims the President has overstated the number of people affected by the preventive care coverage regulation.

Obama: [Insurance companies] are required to provide free preventive care like checkups and mammograms, a provision that’s already helped 54 million Americans with private insurance.

Fact Check’s complaint is: Obama would have been on safer ground if he had said the provision potentially helped 54 million.

This is a distinction without a difference. It has more than a potential to impact those 54 million people, it is a regulation, it is required by law that insurers implement these reforms. It is hard to tell what fact is distorted here, it directly affects those 54 million people why the word game? Is it to appear more balanced to Republicans, so factcheck has apparently decided to go full Orwellian Newspeak to twist their critique to appear legitimate, even when it isn’t.

Finally, factcheck goes all in and makes the claim that because the vast majority of those tax rebates are going to employers, people aren’t really getting a rebate. But it does mean the cost of their insurance will go down, and their premiums will reflect that fact. Not every savings will be in the form of a direct rebate for each and every person. But he isn’t exaggerating either, because rebate checks are going out. Costs will begin to stabilize across the country and that is positive news.

So factcheck, could you get anymore dramatic using the term overreach to describe the Presidents attempts to explain this law to people? Overreach is such an overused Republican word, they use it all the time, wasn’t Jim DeMint just claiming Overreach here and threatening nullification once again as their ultimate solution. I wonder how many times Sheldon Adelson is going to use your half-assed work to attack ACA and the President. I guess as many times as his money can purchase.

Crossposted @ DAGBlog and LittleGreenFootballs

To the “working people” in America: 2

by • Politics

I can not, even for a moment, understand why you’d even consider voting for Romney in November.

OK, maybe you’re a racist.  It happens, and we do know the Republicans are far better at catering to racists than are the Democrats.  It wasn’t always that way, to be sure, though since the Strom Thurmond “Dixiecrat” days, that’s how it is, and in presidential politics, it goes back to Nixon’s “Southern Strategy”, Reagan opening his campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi, and Lee Atwater’s openly racist Willie Horton appeals on behalf of Bush the Elder, also, notably, the father of the single worst president in US history.  I can see why it appeals to you then, repellent as the ideology may be to most people.

Or maybe you’re an anti-gay bigot.  We’re fighting, then, because I have gay family members and I do take that sort of thing personally.  Again, they’re far more inclined to pander to that particular prejudice, so I understand.  Go forth and hate, secure in the knowledge that you’re a dying breed, and you’ll soon be irrelevant.

Maybe you’re mad at women and don’t want them to have health care because to you that says “abortion” and you just know that’s bad.  Think about this: Can any woman you ask (and you’d better, if this is your reason) honestly claim that to be a casual decision?  It’s likely the very last, worst option, and for all that, one that can’t be precluded just because you don’t like it.  You’re not going to have the kid, you don’t get to make the call.  And what is it with hating women’s health care anyway?  Didn’t you have a mother?  Do you have a wife, a sister, a daughter?  Won’t their lives be drastically better if their concerns are seen to?

Or you don’t like that nasty “Obamacare” thing.  How dare they try to give health care to all Americans, no matter who?  Try this once: Substitute a Canadian area code for yours, call the number, and ask them if they’d like to give up national health and pay our exorbitant American rates, just to be denied coverage by a private insurer when they need it.  (When they stop laughing, I’m sure they’ll have a bit of advice for you on that one.)

Maybe somehow, you’ve bought into the Grover Norquistian anti-tax nonsense.  Ask yourself this, then: If we’re in debt (and we are) then we have to pay it off, don’t we?  If you’re in personal debt, do you think decreasing your income is a worthwhile option?  Would any corporate CEO ever survive claiming that because times were hard, they had to reduce their revenues?  If those make sense to you, go right ahead.  Understand this, though, as you do.  Government spending on things like roads, bridges, education, and the like is not waste.  It is an investment, in the future for all of us, including the businesses you patronize and work for.  They benefit by it, they know it, some of them just hope you don’t realize it.  And the money made, and then spent, by those working on these things generates further ecnonomic activity, which helps all of us.  Economists call that a “multiplier” and it’s real.

Or you hate unions.  Lord knows, they’re evil – looking out for the concerns of working people just like you, bleeding and dying to get you weekends and overtime.  Maybe they’re not getting paid too much, maybe you’re not being paid enough.  Want help with that?  Romney’d just as soon outsource your job to China and laugh at you as you are marched out the front door.  That’s what he and his other vulture capitalists do.  They get richer out of throwing you out of work so some guy in China or Indonesia can do your job for a dollar a day.

If, after all this, you’re still thinking of voting for Romney, just do this instead.  Glue feathers all over yourself, get a beak and glue it to your face, and vote for Colonel Sanders.  It makes just as much sense.

Filibuster Reform: The Silent Veto 1

by • Politics • Tags: , , , , , ,

Oh the filibuster, I hear Harry Reid was grousing about it yet again, and really, really threatening to reform the filibuster in January 2013, assuming of course he remains the Senate Majority Leader. It isn’t guaranteed Reid will be leader of the  Senate next year anyway, Republicans probably have a good chance of taking some more seats, how many is up in the air of course. But I find Reid to be the most disingenuous prick in the Senate.

We could have used this reform in 2009. Imagine if filibuster reform had been in place. Maybe there would be a public insurance option, a larger infrastructure package, more money for Pell grants, strengthened regulatory agencies, oil companies would have had their subsidies eliminated, Bush tax cuts would have expired, Gitmo might be closed, throngs of openings for federal judges could be filled quickly,  the list goes on and on and on, and yet it is only now Harry Reid is frustrated enough to say he might just do something about this filibuster abuse in January of 2013. Except he won’t, all the available evidence points in the direction of preserving the filibuster.

The filibuster is effectively a veto of any legislation that could be passed by a majority in both houses. If a lose coalition of folks decided to stop certain kinds of legislation or appointments, they do, with gusto.  The Senate has resisted democratizing their rules  for a century. Harry Reid has been saying something needs to be done about the filibuster rule since 2010.

Even in 2011 Harry Reid threatened to change the rules, but he didn’t have the heart to give up his own silent veto, because you never know when you will need such things. I don’t really take his threat seriously this time. I think it is too much power for individuals to give up.

Sorry Harry, I’ll believe it when I actually see it, unlike your raving masses who are praising you over your sudden anger and threats to reform the filibuster. But I’ll tell you what, when we could have used that particular reform you failed to deliver. Until it is reformed there will be no real progress for America because like the One Ring, power is too much for people, they can’t seem to give it up once they have it, Senators are just Gollum in Armani.

Thank you, Mr. President. 2

by • Life, Politics • Tags: , ,

President Obama took a giant step forward for Americans of every description when he affirmed his support for marriage equality.

As someone with gay family members, I definitely appreciate that.  They’re now equal in his eyes, though sadly, not yet in the eyes of the law.

That will change.

Yes, our system sometimes moves too slowly.  Now is one of those times, though moving it is, and in the right direction.

I’m not worried, as some say they are, about a possible political cost.  Anyone who won’t vote for President Obama because of this would in all probability not have voted for him anyway.

I am worried about the few on the left who are commenting that it wasn’t an assertive enough affirmation.

Really?

That’s like getting something you’ve always wanted and complaining about the choice of wrapping paper.  Bad form doesn’t even come close to describing it.

Undoing DOMA is still working its way through the courts, and once it does, along with the overturning of California’s Prop 8, the dam will burst.  Equal protection – the proper grounds on which to attack these discriminatory laws and state amendments – will win out.

It’s the right thing to do.  And it will be done.

The 10 Rules for Everyone About John Derbyshire and Conservatives 3

by • Blogging, Humor, Politics • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

John Derbyshire fills his kids heads full of racist crap, I am pretty sure he does that right after they place those white hoods upon their heads and go out for a good old fashioned cross-burning. If you want to read his BS piece of crap piece it is at a place called Taki Magazine, something I’ve never heard of but Dave Weigel says it is a magazine of one of the former founders of the American Conservative, let’s call him “not Pat Buchanan”. Not that Pat himself doesn’t have problems with race, but this one isn’t his.

Let’s review some facts about Derbyshire, in February 2001 he wrote a piece that should have had him banned from anyone publishing any of his work for the rest of his life, in fact he should have been relegated to serving food to Klan meetings. This particular column  gave us real insight into Derbyshire. That column was all about his hatred for a young Chelsey Clinton and how it would be okay to exterminate her and her parents.  And of course he does this all under the guise of humor, I guess humor for conservatives is all about killing a young girl cause you don’t like the politics of her parents. He is a real piece of work, and then yesterday he went a step further.

I am pretty sure he thinks he is an ironic, ancient hipster, who seems to believe he is teaching us all something, and he is mad that the Trayvon Martin murder has once again shone a light on institutional racism in America.

America of course is not a perfect place, and John Derbyshire is trying to make it even less perfect. And he isn’t ironic or funny, which is why I’ve come up with my own 10 Rules for my kids, before the leave the house when they come across either John Derbyshire or other conservatives.

1. Among your fellow citizens are roughly 30 million or so who identify as conservative, and whom I shall refer to as idiots. The cumbersome term “Caucasian” seems to be in decline, thank goodness so instead we will use the term Klan Cracker. I think that says it all to  normal people.

2. American Caucasianscome from all over Europe but some of the worst among us were hatched under rocks and we know them today as conservatives, you will recognize them as those who can’t get along with others, who don’t’ share and who believe in their own enormous IQ’s. They are unlike their white counterparts because they’ve built their own reality and they stay in it, Bill Maher calls it, The Bubble. I call it hell.

3.  They appear to be just like every other white person until they open their pie-holes. Once they do you will instantly know the difference, a.) they think it is funny to threaten the children of people they don’t like b.) They portray themselves as victims even though they own the world.

4. The default principle in everyday personal encounters is, that as a fellow citizen, with the same rights and obligations as yourself, any individual conservative is entitled to the same courtesies you would extend to a non-conservative citizen. That is basic good manners and good citizenship. In some unusual circumstances, however—e.g., paragraph (10h) below—this default principle should be overridden by considerations of personal safety. These guys love concealed weapons so it is best to avoid them at all cost. It could save your life.

5. As with any population of such a size, there is great variation among conservatives in every human trait (except, obviously, the trait of identifying oneself as conservative). They come fat, thin, tall, short, dumb, smart, introverted, extroverted, honest, crooked, athletic, sedentary, fastidious, sloppy, amiable, and obnoxious. There are conservative geniuses but there are more conservative morons. There are conservative saints but there are many more conservative psychopaths (i.e. George Zimmerman, Timothy McVeigh). In a population of thirty or more million, you will find almost any human type. Only at the far, far extremes of certain traits are there absences. There are, for example, no conservative with common sense, they only have anger and believe they are winners.

6. As you go through life, however, you will experience an ever larger number of encounters with conservative Americans. They seriously bring their conservatism with them everywhere, then they will call you names and once people tell them to STFU, they will claim the mantle of victimization and cry like babies. Assuming your encounters are random—for example, not restricted only to conservatives who are so self assured their worldview never changes—the Law of Large Numbers will inevitably kick in. You will observe that the means—the averages—of many traits are very different for conservative and regular Americans, as has been confirmed by methodical inquiries in the human sciences. Don’t bother arguing with them, they are far to stupid to convince with facts, remember they’ve created their own world in the face of facts.

7. Of most importance to your personal safety are the very different means for antisocial behavior, which you will see reflected in, for instance they all carry concealed weapons, steer clear of them, always. They might get mad and shoot you for no apparent reason, i.e. see George Zimmerman.

8.  These differences are magnified by the hostility most conservatives feel toward everyone who doesn’t believe as they do. Thus, while conservative-on-conservative violence is uncommon but does happen, see David Frum’s expulsion from American Enterprise Institute.

9. A large cohort of conservatives—in my experience, around 90% —is ferociously hostile to everyone else and will go to great lengths to inconvenience or harm us. Remember they carry concealed weapons.

10. Avoid concentrations of conservatives not known to you personally, they simply cannot be trusted and they will threaten your life.

And with that I allow my kids out into the world, to consort with everyone but a conservative, in general they have low IQ’s, reject facts and hate women and minorities of all kinds. Even though you are white don’t get yourself in with their group, they require white hoods and cross burnings and that can only lead to trouble with the FBI.

Breitbart Blogging Troll Attacks Emerald City Comicon Guest Wil Wheaton 10

by • Blogging, Humor, Life, Politics • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

What is it with those bloggers at BigJournalismLies? Do they never ever leave their politics at home and have some damn fun? The answer to that question people, is they never fucking do not ever.  Let’s take the example of Adam Baldwin, the actor from Firefly and Chuck etc, he came to Emerald City ComiCon this past weekend. Well guess what he also writes for BigLies. I was going to go over and chat with him and tell him how much we loved Chuck and his character, but then some stuff went down and he tried to turn ComiCon into Breitbart world.

So here we were at ComiCon, talking about the Trek series, BSG, Firefly, etc and so on. No one talks about anything other than that, one discussion I was in while we were waiting to meet George Takei was; who is less trust worthy Romulans or Vulcans? Obviously the answer is Romulans, but that was an actual point of discussion. LOL’s!!!

This year was unbelievable because we were subjected to the long reach of Breitbart  world. Delivered by his angry band of blogging minions started an ideological battle  at Emerald City ComiCon.

But it started out great. I got to meet Edward James Olmos and that was amazing and cool as hell. I also got to meet and shake hands with George Takei! Oh man, yes that was so cool, and of course the man who shows up to every Emerald City Comicon Wil Wheaton. If you don’t know who Wil Wheaton is, you probably never watched NextGen, Stand By Me. We were excited to see Wil Wheaton again.

It all began with this little youtube promo.  Watch it and then continue reading.

That is funny, right?

Well guess who didn’t think it was funny.  Adam Baldwin took offense and made the claim to his twitter army that Wheaton and Lawson were mocking the bible. I don’t see it, but whatever. Insert Breitbart trained outrage machine here —–> It churns in perpetual motion like a twisted victim chip that never leaves its collective shoulder, picking fights and then blaming the victim of their ire.   I see what you’re doing Adam Baldwin.  Every aspect of our lives must come down to picking ideological fights, then brushing it off by saying all publicity is good publicity and then threatening a defamation lawsuit even though you started the fight. You learned so well from your former boss, may he Rest in Peace.

I’d already known Baldwin wrote for BigLies prior the event. I’d looked him up on twitter and that day he was having a twitter war with Podhoretz over his (Baldwin’s) opposition to vaccinations. I shut his page down immediately, thinking I just didn’t really want to ruin his acting for me. You know everyone has a right to their own beliefs etc and so on. I’ll forget about it and just remember that I love the movies and television shows he’s been in, he’s funny and he definitely has enormous talent.

The personal swipes at another ComiCon guest, seemingly came out of nowhere. But rest assured whenever some famous person tweets, be they a blogger, actor or a politician,  their followers often times jump in to either agree with the person they follow or to attack the target of the tweeters ire.  So what I imagine happened is, suddenly Wheaton began to get idiot right-wing threats. Sometimes extremist followers on twitter take things way too far.  All of this was really unnecessary, it was ComiCon, not a political fundraiser or a rally, it simply wasn’t about politics this weekend. At some point as a society we have to begin to condemn those who would rather keep us rigidly,  ideologically divided like George Bush demanded when he said; “You’re either with us or against us.” It will ruin our lives if we allow it.  At the very least leave your extremism and anger at home when you come to any of the Cons. We are not stupid and we aren’t pawns in your ongoing ideological battle to conquer the world.

CrossPosted @DAGblog

Politics, the Kennedy Court and Health Care 2

by • Politics • Tags: , , , , , , , ,

If I were a member of the Supreme Court I’d be a bit embarrassed at how easy it is to predict Supreme Court rulings knowing only a few elementary political facts.
I expect a 5-4 ruling and i expect it to break down along political lines. It shows me this, the Supreme Court is only there to support certain ideology, making this less about the Constitution and more about what it is to hold power for more than 30 years.  This, whether the members of the court care or not this is the problem. They’ve become, based on Bush v Gore merely an arbiter that always errs on the side of promoting the political ideology of one side or another. Imagine if  Brown v. Board of Education, Bolling v. Sharpe, Cooper v. Aaron, Gomillion v. Lightfoot, Griffin v. County School Board, Green v. School Board of New Kent County, Lucy v. Adams, Loving v. Virginia had been left for this court to decide, shit, we be where South Africa was in the 1980′s in terms of civil rights. We’d be the largest segregated nation  on earth!

Well let’s get past the rant, let’s talk about Anthony Kennedy.

I’ve heard all the popular analysis about Kennedy, he is the swing vote, etc and so on. Well yesterday in a little noted exchange he seemed to be telling the government lawyer the route he sh0uld take to defend the Constitutionality of the law.

In an exchange with Paul Clement, (he is representing those 25 states) this went down:

Kennedy asked Clement this: Is the government’s argument this–and maybe I won’t state it accurately. It is true that the noninsured young adult is, in fact, an actuarial reality insofar as our allocation of health services, insofar as the way health insurance companies figure risks. That person who is sitting at home in his or her living room doing nothing is an actuarial reality that can and must be measured for health service purposes; is that their argument?

And just a short while later:

MR. CLEMENT: And with respect to the health insurance market that’s designed to have payment in the health care market, everybody is not in the market. And that’s the premise of the statute, and that’s the problem Congress is trying to solve.

And if it tried to solve it through incentives, we wouldn’t be here; but, it’s trying to solve it in a way that nobody has ever tried to solve an economic problem before, which is saying, you know, it would be so much more efficient if you were just in this market–

JUSTICE KENNEDY: But they are in the market in the sense that they are creating a risk that the market must account for. 

MR. CLEMENT: Well, Justice Kennedy, I don’t think that’s right, certainly in any way that distinguishes this from any other context.

What does this mean? It almost seems like Justice Kennedy is signalling the defense the government should be making, (and why aren’t they anyway??? WTF, seriously).

And a little later this:

MR. CARVIN: It is clear that the failure to buy health insurance doesn’t affect anyone. Defaulting on your payments to your health care provider does. Congress chose, for whatever reason, not to regulate the harmful activity of defaulting on your health care provider. They used the 20 percent or whoever among the uninsured as a leverage to regulate the 100 percent of the uninsured.

JUSTICE KENNEDY: I agree–I agree that that’s what’s happening here.

MR. CARVIN: Okay.

JUSTICE KENNEDY: And the government tells us that’s because the insurance market is unique. And in the next case, it’ll say the next market is unique. But I think it is true that if most questions in life are matters of degree, in the insurance and health care world, both markets–stipulate two markets–the young person who is uninsured is uniquely proximately very close to affecting the rates of insurance and the costs of providing medical care in a way that is not true in other industries.

That’s my concern in the case.

I fully expect this to be a 5:4 decision based on the politics of the court. I have no faith that what-so-ever in the non-partisanship of the court. Sorry Bush V Gore cured me of believing in the non-partisanship of the court. And I know that 75% of the country is with me on that, this is something that the Court itself should be ashamed of and it is telling that they are not.

Oh well, we tried. Get ready for your health insurance costs to skyrocket.

CrossPosted @DAGBlog