Revolution? Yes We Can!

This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their Constitutional right of amending it or their revolutionary right to dismember it or overthrow it.

--Abraham Lincoln

Not a huge fan of using quotes usually. I think it’s kind of hacky. If you are going to write something and can’t illustrate the point effectively yourself; don’t write at all! (Some of you just said…well then stop typing!)

Once in a while however, a good quote can really knock your thinking from one of myopic indoctrination to one of clarity.

Americans have become so influenced by the deluge of information and misinformation thrown down at us like so much offal over the last 150 years, that we have lost sight of who we are and how this country is supposed to work. The bulk of Americans no longer see themselves as We the People, but as Us the Powerless.

Think about it hard. The last time you got screwed by Bank of America, or the DMV or Wal-Mart, etc; what did you do? You probably screamed like hell up to a certain level of management and then gave up regardless of how truly pissed you were; chalking up whatever egregious indignation you suffered to the inability to fight such a behemoth of an organization. Of course, it’s true that for one individual it is virtually impossible to “fight City Hall” as it were.

But with a coalition, Americans can “fight City Hall”, or Bank of America, or Wal-Mart or whomever. That’s how our country was built. We are not powerless unless we make ourselves powerless and that is exactly what we have done.

This is why when I hear someone scoff at the idea of revolution my blood boils over.

Talk of revolution usually elicits two responses:

1. Abject revulsion; as the word Revolution to most liberals has become synonymous to drunken, inbred ramblings of racist redneck hicks propagated by a love of hell raising and hatred for authority in general. Liberals believe that anyone who even thinks of revolution to be clearly devoid of any semblance of intellect whatsoever. Revolutionists are in effect, dangerous ignorant extremists to most Liberals.
2. To conservatives and moderates, the idea seems fantastic, but impossible to achieve given the size and ingrained infrastructure of our current Government. The prospect just seems so damn daunting.

To the first group, my response would be: you are the truly ignorant amongst us.

Are you implying that Patrick Henry, Samuel Adams, George Washington, Ben Franklin et al, were extremist dolts? Is it because you have become so fat and happy given the liberties these revolutionists fought for that you couldn’t possibly fathom any other mode of operation? Are we now to be a country that merely opines rather than takes action towards the betterment of their own people’s destinies? Or, shall we allow the Government to do that for us?

Liberals are not patriots. Oh, not by a long shot. They have no problem taking and taking and bitching about how little they receive for doing nothing and how stupid everyone else is. They offer solutions in which they have no intention of helping to achieve. Their raison d’être is perpetuating cradle to grave government reliance.

These are the same people who have labeled the Tea Party folks an ignorant mob of predominantly white-faced miscreants looking to shore up their 2nd Amendment rights. Clear and utter bullshit. Tea Partiers are not the problem, they are doing what they can to showcase a growing viewpoint: American Government as we know it does not work!

To Conservatives and Moderates: I would beg look back to the beginning when Britain’s Goliath-like grip was broken by a rag tag, ill equipped group of patriots who were short on resources but long on belief in the power of regular people and the desire for a good quality of life unencumbered by Government. This should be the very inspiration we need to begin a real change, not the crap Lord Falderal sold the nation last year. The first American Revolution was a seemingly impossible undertaking: fighting the formidable British Empire. But they did it and so can we. Any nay saying on the subject is bilge.

The difference between now and Revolutionary times is there were real leaders then. Now, we have nothing but trained rhetoric specialists and lawyers with aspirations and personal agendas. Any idiot with a team of newly minted college English majors sporting laptops and a teleprompter can get into office regardless of their experience in real life.

There was also a more pure distribution of information; no Internet, or biased media poisoning the minds of voters into thinking things are not what they really are and that the citizenry are in essence controlled by the Government and not vice versa. Sure, there were fewer people to get the word out to, but at least the voting public could be confident that information looked something like the Truth.

Today, the well has been poisoned. I know very intelligent people who take the word of CNN, MSNBC and even FOX as gospel and vote accordingly. Mindless. There is no initiative to seek the real truth since it is just easier to take the word of whoever the flavor of the week media correspondent is and go with that.

Seldom will you find me agreeing with Sarah Palin, but she is right on point with the media. Amazing things can be done through editing and camera angles as well as selective choices of dialog to use in any media package be it audio or video. They have the power to make an idiot look like a genius and a genius look like an idiot. Ask John Stewart, that’s how he makes a living. We have become a sound bite society and we use these clever edits to choose our so-called leaders.

We have let this system run on autopilot for way too long and are paying the piper for it now. The United States Government and Capitalism as a whole is a rudderless ship careening towards the reefs of destruction. The near miss of Lord Falderal’s hapless healthcare reform is the perfect example. Despite an overwhelming amount of people who were against it, it would have passed both Houses because our leaders have no clue what their constituents really want. And, for those of you who see some sort of conspiracy by the right wing that claim Falderal is tinkering with Socialism; here’s a clue, he is and it is no conspiracy.

This collective legislative scum could care less about the people they represent. They care only about their own careers and their places in history.

Thankfully the people of Massachusetts spoke, sending a shot across the bow of rank and file legislators all over the Nation. Now the House healthcare plans will have to be scrapped and retooled. The message is clear; the people are angry and will not be pushed around any longer.

Massachusetts was indeed a game changer, and it should be used as an example of what can be accomplished when people get together, express how they are feeling and turn those feelings into action. If the aforementioned topics in addition to the Massachusetts election don’t get you fired up, how about this: the Supreme Court's latest ruling on Campaign Finance? It not only lets the foxes into the henhouse, it also filets and breads the chickens.

It’s time to find real leaders regardless of what party they come from; strong leaders that can speak directly to the people at their own levels. We haven’t had a real leader since Teddy Roosevelt was President. In short, we need a real revolution. Not the kind where we forcefully take over the government, but the kind with a long-term strategy devised to dump this President and the entire legislature. We the people must take over the government and get back to where we came from.

It is also important to realize that revolution is not about throwing out the party in control and replacing it with the other party. It’s about rethinking the whole structure. It’s about replacing the morons who are running things from the Executive Branch down. They no longer represent real people; they represent party hacks and special interest groups. If Massachusetts didn’t illustrate that point, I don’t know what else would.

Can we do it in the next three years? Yes, we can; only this time for real.

The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.
--Thomas Jefferson

Talk About No Clue, Obama & Small Business

With the painfully obvious need to try and shine up his image, Lord Falderal takes a trip up to Nashua, NH and tells small business how he is going to save them from the disastrous situation he has created by proposing a new and improved disastrous situation. As usual, the proposed solutions have nothing at all to do with what small business is actually concerned with and include a whole new set of flawed equations.

What Falderal told small business owners is that he will lobby Congress to free up $30 billion to loan out to banks sporting assets under $10 billion dollars with the proviso through a slew of incentives, the money be funneled to small business owners in the form of easily obtained low interest commercial notes. Kind of like what Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac did for homeowners before they tanked.

Yippee.

That would be great except for two things:

1.      Small business does not currently give a rat’s ass about favorable interest rates, or financing in general. According to the National Federation of Independent Business it ranks a lowly second to last in favor of more immediate needs, you know, like staying in business in the first place! Something this faltering economy of Falderal’s is not making easy. Going into further debt at any interest rate is not something responsible business owners, the cornerstone of American business, are interested in. But, of course, Falderal or any other Democrat for that matter, couldn’t possibly relate to that notion.

2.     
 The second and more telling problem (since we know Falderal can’t understand basic business models) is where the $30 billion is to come from. Falderal intends on using money paid back from Wall Street bankers who took TARP funds. Remember, a lot of those guys were forced to take the dough against their wishes. Current estimates say that TARP will have ended up costing taxpayers close to $115 billion when the chips finally fall. I say double that since those are government estimates and they use the “new Falderal math” in their calculations.

Let’s think about this for a minute.

Taxpayers give $700 billion in TARP money to what essentially are the bad guys. The program fails miserably but we regain an estimated $585 million, a loss of $115 million. (Man, even my financial guy did better than that last year!) Then we take $30 billion of that repaid money bringing our immediate loss to $145 million and loan it out to some more scum bag banks in the hope that they will do the right thing. Unlikely. For the most part Falderal is taking a failed program and reinvigorating it although on a smaller scale, with the same tax dollars, your tax dollars. Does this make sense?

Meanwhile, to ensure Wall Street actually does pay us back, Falderal would like to institute a Financial Crisis Responsibility Fee (FCRF). Isn’t this fun all these acronyms? Falderal is really good at them. This is a fee, or basically a fine imposed on all the institutions that took TARP, including those who didn’t want to in the first place.

Here’s the $30 billion dollar question.

Just who or whom, does Falderal think is going to pick up the tab on those FCRF fees? Us, that’s who, because in a capitalist society, when costs increase to the merchant they also increase to the consumer, or at least that is what I learned in business school. And, that just ain’t good for anybody!

Make no bones about it, those FCRF fees (the ones we are going to pay for) are not intended to help cover the costs of TARP, they are a slush fund for the Falderal Administration’s gigantic new spending spree.

The Federal Government is about to become the largest in the history of the United States. The White House states there will be 2.15 million workers in the Federal Government by the time Falderal’s budget passes.

We are completely screwed.

Until Lord Falderal takes a basic course in math and civics (to learn what the word Capitalism means), he would do well to stay away from taking meetings with actual business people and consider carting his Teleprompter to garden club outings. Or, maybe just keep touring the country campaigning with that same recycled bullshit he used for the State of the Union and give up attempting to be an actual President. He is a much more convincing campaigner and that might work a lot better for us.

Bipartisanship? Bit Late Falderal, Ain't It?

Hmm.

Lord Falderal takes a meeting with the Republicans and begs for more cooperation and bipartisanship immediately after the worst State of the Union address in recent history, and immediately following an ass whipping of the extreme sort in the bluest state in the Country.

Normally, I would be all for this attempt at solidarity between the Legislative and Executive branch and would keep my big fat mouth shut. However, since it speaks so clearly to what I have been pointing out since Falderal took office, specifically his inexperience, I must opine openly.

Bipartisanship would have been fantastic immediately following inauguration day. But, despite his howling on high about being open to everybody’s opinion on what direction the country should head in, Falderal developed amnesia of the worst sort and any semblance of bipartisanship went the way of the Bush Administration; out to pasture, probably on some ranch in Texas, on January 21, 2009.

That was a shining example of Falderal’s inexperience.

Apparently, at Harvard, during the 48 hours he spent in the Senate, and all his time spent at ACORN, Falderal didn’t learn that despite having a majority in both houses, it does one well to play nicely with others. Because you never know when something like, oh I don’t know, the death of a senior senator may occur right when your popularity goes into the toilet and the country ain’t so hot on your goods any longer.

Learning the kind of lesson Falderal is learning now is valuable stuff to say the least. The thing is most politicians learn it long before running for President. On the job training when you are the President is never good for the country, especially when the lesson is so basic; play well with others in an effort to do your best for the American people. It’s called a team effort Lord Falderal.

Seeking out bipartisanship now borders on the ludicrous. That is; as long as the Republicans aren’t stupid enough to cave into this ill-advised ploy to regain any relevance he possibly can. Had the Republicans been smart, which would have been a serious leap of faith, they would have insisted in yesterdays little get together, that Falderal lop off the dangly bits of Pelosi and Reid (wonder who’s are bigger) and demand that any legislation, health care or otherwise, include more than just one line from the Republican side of the aisle from here on out.

That is what they would have done had they been smart.

Predictably, they weren’t. Yesterday’s meeting was a complete waste of time, which was billed in the press as “a step in the right direction”. If you believe that I have a bridge…blah blah blah.

All Falderal and the R’s did was widen the chasm between them which is great for Republican elections this Fall (not a bad thing). But, it still doesn’t bode well for the American people in the interim.

As fun as it is to treat politics as a game, like yours truly, the consequences of what I and every other yahoo out there loves to comment about are dire in the real world. These two parties of arrogant, entitled and clueless criminals have no intention of helping out anyone on the ground. That’s the real tragedy.

Sure there are all sorts of fun things to point out about yesterdays summit of the sailors of the Ship of Fools: Falderal finally kowtows and what do his brethren think of such contrition, Republicans get a chance to school Falderal, all sorts of contentious questions and answers to be strung out to the n’th degree and so on and so forth.

But herein lie the problem. In a meeting in which both parties accused the other of providing only dangerous rhetoric and no solutions, we are left with just another rhetoric session! We now have rhetoric meetings regarding rhetoric!! I wonder what it cost us to cart all these idiots to that meeting?

So, where are the American people left? In the same downward spiral as before the State of the Union speech. Falderal merely hit rewind and summoned up the ghosts of his 2008 campaign and then faked a moment of contrition.

Falderal actually said that he would rather be a good one term President than a mediocre two term President. I want to know for whom he would like to be a good one term President. I am pretty sure it is not for us, but for him.

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