Trifecta 11/2/2010

Wow. What a week.

Republicans prevail as expected, Nancy Pelosi flips all over the place and that scumbag Olberman gets the boot. Not bad. But, there are serious caveats to watch for and lessons to be taken from Tuesday’s historic victory.

First, let’s think about the Republican win and what it means for the next two years. There were certainly hopes that Lord Falderal would get the message and finally work with the R’s to try and get something productive through the legislature. Productive meaning, passing bills and laws that don’t bankrupt the Nation, or upset our Capitalist model.

Well, after Falderal’s speech and the Republican reaction to it, it’s clear that just ain’t going to happen. Why? For one thing, as should have been expected, Falderal did not feel one ounce of chastening for the lambasting his party received. Unlike Clinton when faced with the same dilemma in ’94, Falderal did not show any grace or leadership, and just flat out admit the message was received and he would play ball. He did say he is ultimately responsible. Big friggin’ deal. What does he think we are Kindergarteners? He gets zero points for making that assertion. Of course, Falderal is correct, he will indeed be judged in 2012.

So where does that leave things?

The only sad possibility now is that Congress basically does nothing for the next two years and the R’s focus on taking back the White House and aiming for a super-majority in the House and the Senate. The reality is, that will be the only way to break gridlock. I know it sucks and I would rather see people play well together in the sandbox and actually accomplish something. But, the poisoning in the well goes too deep and the whole thing needs to be dug out and replaced.

My prediction is Boehner will put up the Healthcare Bill for repeal as fast as possible. Falderal will veto and then the Republican Party will have the ammunition needed to take the White House and turn more blue seats red. The argument will be that the only way for repeal to go through and any action taken on future bills will be to take even more D positions. If things stay the same with the economy or only look slightly better that will be an easy sell.

Also, Nancy Pelosi has been cackling away about running for Minority Leadership. Could the R’s be given a bigger gift? In my opinion, she is one of the main reasons Tuesday went so well for the R’s. If she stays on…well…2012 is in the bag.

Probably the most important thing to come out of the election for the R’s is the addition of some great candidates for 2012. There is really good talent out there now and the R’s no longer have to worry about Palin, who really is an albatross that will have to be dealt with at some point. Even better is that the lineup going into 2016 is looking pretty great as well. Pawlenty, Rubio, and a slew of other possibilities will give voters some serious talent to ponder. The tired old guard will of course put their names into the ring, but now there will actually be some very serious young, diverse and brilliant contenders to take out Falderal.

The Tea Party Movement had an amazing showing on Tuesday although the lesson there is to pick some better candidates next time because the loss of Delaware, Utah and Alaska was completely avoidable. The GOP, Democrats and the country as a whole better start taking the Tea Party seriously. I am not a tea partier but I have spent the year defending them and I am gleeful they showed those smug fuck Democrats what they could do. I lost what respect I had for the D’s this year as I watched them demonize their fellow countrymen as incoherent racists. It was a truly disgusting display and showed the true colors of the party of hypocrisy. The downtrodden and hurting are apparently only legitimate if they belong to the D’s. Foul, just plain foul.

Finally, watching the fall of Olberman has got to be one of the most fabulous feelings ever. Unfortunately, it only amounts to a pissing match between the d-bag and his boss and lacks real substance, but what the hell; I’ll take what I can get. The truth is I enjoy watching that kind of demise as it showcases another hypocrisy, that of Liberals constantly hounding Fox about being political whilst defending the mainstream media as bastions of legitimacy and fact-finding. Uh huh.

I hope I never feel the need to say this again, but this year the Democrats really disgusted me on so many levels; something which has never happened to this extent before and what I have to say to the Democrats is this:

Fuck y’all. You just got schooled.

Anger, Ego & Healthcare Reform

I have waited to comment on the atrocity that is Healthcare Reform as I found myself so angry as to risk an unintelligible tirade, the literary version of firing a bullet at some idiot Congressman’s field office. I have found putting a little distance between myself, and Lord Falderal’s signing off on the largest publicly funded ego trip since Roosevelt and the New Deal, to be very therapeutic.

What has ensued in the last week since this abortion of legislation was vacuumed out of the womb of Congress is both deeply troubling as well as encouraging.  By encouraging I mean the outrage shown by the overwhelmingly large majority of voters against Healthcare Reform lends well to potentially “throwing the bums out” in the midterms this November.

The troubling part is two fold. First, the thing is law. Law, which will never be administrated correctly because the numbers just do not work. Basically, we have yet another useless and hopelessly flawed piece of legislation that will make welfare look like Microsoft in comparison.

The second more troubling issue is the insidious reversion to violence that has occurred in some factions of the Tea Party. This kind of behavior is not a good thing for Conservatives as a whole. This is the kind of crap that makes the less educated Liberals dive onto the “right wing nut job” bandwagon, screwing it up for those of us who stick to and abide by the more basic facets of the Conservative Republican platform.

Republicans now have a very tenuous line to walk heading up to the mid terms and need to flesh out any extremism in order to attract back into the fold, the Independents that were (hopefully) temporarily dazzled by Lord Falderal’s incredible pile of hyperbole and empty rhetoric. That particular brand of voter is not going to take well to the threats and violent actions of a few angry people who just can’t take it anymore.

That said. What the hell did Lord Falderal and his pack of zombies expect when they passed this piece of crap? Of course people were going to go crazy. No one wanted the flippin’ thing to begin with. The whole “mad as hell and we aren’t going to take it anymore” response is alive and well here in the good ol’ US of A. All the signs were there. Rallies, protests, the fact that only 17% of the whole country wanted Healthcare Reform in first place, should have given someone a clue. And, honestly I have to say if faced with some of these people (Congress) in person, I am not so sure I could keep from popping them in the nose!

Anger is a valid human emotion. The extremism we have seen in the last two weeks is inexcusable for sure. However, the origin of it is pretty easy to understand. For people who love this country and pay attention to what is going on, getting angry is their only resort to being heard. This legislation has cancelled our Representative Republic status and that in turn has pissed of a whole bunch of folk. The jackasses we elected into office are not doing their jobs and the common man has no real way to express himself or herself, except to vote or resort to more extreme tactics.

The recent activity with militias should come as no surprise. It is the oldest form of rebellion in our Nation’s history.  Forming militias is basically built into the DNA of the US. That doesn’t make arming ourselves against our own government a good solution to the country’s problems. The thing about human beings is we still resort to the primordial slime when our backs are up against the wall. We still have war; we still kill and maim each other like some kind of highly functioning Serengeti predator.

What needs to happen is for Conservatives to tone down the violent rebellion rhetoric and have an honest to goodness uprising by coming together and voting this Congress and eventually this President into oblivion. That is the right kind of rebellion. Let’s face it, as Conservatives we have the ammunition needed to do it we just have to stay focused.

Lord Falderal has indeed broached Socialism with the Healthcare Reform Bill.

One of my favorite sayings that I use all the time is “sometimes things just are what they are”. And, this is what it is. I am so fucking tired of listening to Liberals defending Falderal’s actions by saying that Fire, Police, Education and Infrastructure Services are Socialist by their very nature. That is just blatantly wrong.

Fire, Police, Education, Infrastructure creation and maintenance are NOT Socialist programs. There is no redistribution of wealth, they do not create goods, not everyone uses them in their lifetime and we have all agreed as a Republic to pay for them. Some would say that we shouldn’t be forced to pay for things we don’t use. That may be true but we made the decision as one to do it. Yeah, taxes suck, but for these types of services it just makes sense. Unlike Healthcare Reform, we were somewhat well represented when the decision to turn those services over to the Government were made. This is wickedly different than what the Healthcare Reform Bill shoves down our throats.

With Healthcare there IS a redistribution of wealth in that person A’s insurance premiums will be used to offset person B’s health insurance. We are forced under penalty of fine, to pay for everyone else’s healthcare situation. The key here is that EVERYONE is mandated to have health insurance. The means of production, exchange, and distribution of goods and services are all owned by the community with Healthcare Reform. That is Socialism.

And so here we are stuck with a useless law that will never gain any traction, beset on us by an equally useless President whose enormous ego prevented him from working on the issues the public cared about most just so he could experiment with a Socialist agenda and make some kind of show for those who stayed loyal to him. Now more than ever, this President’s power needs to be usurped not by violence, but by a carefully crafted and orchestrated rebellion at the voting booths.

Health Summit: Fail. Huge.

I hate meetings.

In business I resisted having meetings until they became absolutely necessary and even then, I employed a meeting Czar whose job was to keep everyone including myself on point, wasting as little time as possible.  To me, meetings were always a colossal waste of resources and allowed for much too much tomfoolery with myself being the biggest provocateur. Any time spent in our conference room was time spent away from accomplishing tasks. I always felt the most efficient dissemination of important information was by memo, e-mail, and phone.

I am an immediate kind of guy; problem arises, solve it right now, end of story, and end of problem. Of course that may seem over simplistic and obviously if your business does anything other than put lemonade into plastic cups at the entrance to your driveway, then meetings here and there are required. But, they should be limited to strategy meetings held sparingly. My opinion, of course.

In two years as a government official, I believe I must have wasted at least one or two lifetimes in meetings listening to blow hard wannabes, party hacks and people with basically no lives, mentally masturbating the most ridiculous notions and topics known to mankind. Does anyone really have to go to a public meeting and waste two to three hours of their time listening to a bunch of taxpayer paid lawyers and professional gadflies tell them how their 36” curb cut fits into the fiscal plan of the town, state and country, and how it will effect the wetlands 10 miles downstream from their 900 square foot house? And, then having the earth shattering curb cut the purpose of which was to accommodate your 100-year-old uncle Jebediah’s wheelchair, denied and sent through some board of appeals process the end of which will most likely coincide nicely with Uncle J’s death? Ridiculous.

Summit is a fancy word for meeting. A fancier way of saying; let’s waste some really big time and money. Lord Falderal’s summit meeting met that goal in spades.

This train wreck was billed weeks in advance as a “gesture” on Falderal’s part to bring together Republicans and Democrats to reach a more common ground on the failed Healthcare Reform bills. It was in direct response to Scott Brown’s victory and warning shot that shattered the bow of the Democratic supermajority. Falderal insisted there could be a bipartisan solution to the Healthcare Reform debacle if they just got into a room and hashed it all out. It also gave him the opportunity to save a little face in living up to earlier promises to televise open meetings for all to see. No more closed door meetings.

Nice idea. Big fail though, since as usual the extremely slow learning person posing as President was once again mired in his own world of egotism and arrogance to listen to what the Republicans were saying.

It was no secret Republicans were looking to Falderal to scrap all previous Healthcare Reform bills and start all over again, a prudent idea to say the least. Falderal’s response was to present a watered down version of the original Senate version. Huge mistake.

Falderal missed a gigantic opportunity to show some actual leadership and admit he the House, and Senate may have been wrong, and get to work on a plan that works for everyone. That would have gone very far in garnering Falderal some much needed credibility.

Instead Falderal used the opportunity to scold and whip Republicans for putting him in this position. If he really didn’t want to hear what Republicans had to say, why have a summit at all? He basically talked down, disparaged, and cajoled every Republican in the room, most of whom had their facts straight while Falderal did not.

Check this clip out: (yes, it is a Fox clip but it was the only place I could find it)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ad-fqqjFhI

Chief News Analyst at NPR Daniel Shorr is a fav of mine. I don’t care what side he leans to, after 60 years of reporting and too many awards to mention, I have large respect for him. However, for once I find myself disagreeing with part of his assessment of the summit. He believes like most, the summit was just for show. But, Shorr also said he thought Falderal bought himself a few weeks of credibility by showing he could keep command of such a summit. I think the complete opposite. Falderal showed no leadership whatsoever. He acted like a spoiled brat and made absolutely no attempt to even hide the fact he had no intention of listening to the Republican’s side of the story in the first place.

Falderal has said he is glad to have the American people see exactly what his plan entails and exactly how the Republicans feel about it and that the summit made that possible. His strategy was clear, he wanted to appear the good guy looking to help everyone out while the R’s are the bad guy and would prefer everyone who is uninsured to perish and decrease the world’s population (I love Dickens references). However, I think this strategy will prove to have backfired in the upcoming elections.

Here is how Congressman Rogers of Michigan explains the crux of the Healthcare Reform debate. This is not from the summit but a lot of the same content came through at the summit.

http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=G44NCvNDLfc

This summit did nothing to help the situation except give Falderal a platform on which to publicly state he will shove Healthcare Reform down all our throats through Reconciliation. It was a PR stunt intended to show he has strength over the Republicans and will exercise it by not allowing the R’s to filibuster. As I said, he is a VERY slow learner.

What Falderal did was ensure two things; his allies will get booted from office in November and there will be billions and billions wasted trying to facilitate his Healthcare Reform only to have it scrapped when the new Congress is seated next year. It’s not like the writing isn’t on the wall. Americans are ready to throw "the bums out" and they are going to. Polls from every respectable polling organization show a large percentage of Americans are ready to clean the House, Senate and White House.

I guess we can just add this to the growing list of epic fails for this President. Glad he is working so hard on the economy.

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Healthcare; Keep it Simple Stupid

I have had very few discussions on Health Care Reform with my friends and family, which is really weird considering it is such a hot button issue right now. Normally, I would spend hours upon hours arguing with my liberal and conservative brethren about an issue this big.

The reason I haven’t gotten into it is the perceived complexity of the issue. It’s fucking confusing.

As always the government has done what government will do; make something so big and lugubrious that it wears down the public into their basic theologies and they end up supporting whatever plan is being touted by denizens of their particular political persuasion. In other words, the complexity of the issue breeds sycophantic behavior.

I fall victim to this as well. It becomes simple to me; the Democrats are wrong and the Republicans are right because I don’t want to grapple with something beyond my simplistic way of thinking.

I think on a macro level when it comes to the Government of the United States and truthfully, I believe that is all I have to do as a citizen of this country. The details are there for others to work out. In this case, the morons we have elected into office.

My main point here is that the Health Care Reform issue is a very simple one. It is a matter of staying true to the ideals of this country. We are a capitalistic society. Our whole foundation operates on supply and demand principles. It is all of our jobs to straighten out health care.

As a people we need to make the health care industry accountable and responsible for their business. All aspects of health care is commercial and that is what we do here in this country; commerce. Doctors, insurance companies, hospitals, all healthcare providers are in business to make money and there is nothing wrong with that.

What is wrong is the manner in which they do it. I hate business regulation, but this is the one industry where I believe in heavily regulating what is allowed to stand as general practice. You want health care reform? Fine. The answer is to make these scumbag insurance companies, hospitals, doctors, material providers, pharmaceutical companies, et al, more accountable to us their customers.

The health care industry will react. We as the general public wrongly believe these businesses to be in total control. That is simply not true. We are in control, unless Lord Falderal and his cadre of misfits turn health care over to the Government. Then we are completely screwed. There are no longer any chances for us to do what we do; exist as a democratic capitalist republic.

What Lord Falderal is doing is using the easiest possible route to dangerously play around with changing our basic foundation from one of capitalism to socialism. If you think I am being radical and part of that scary arm of the right, you need to take a breath, brush all the fat, happy, and stupid faces of our President and legislature out of your mind and really think about. Think about it not as a Democrat or Republican, but as an American.

The minutiae of this issue are huge. There are so many things to detract from the larger picture. The emotional factor alone drives many to distraction. You hear about XYZ with a child who needs an operation, but there is no money and on and on and on. Yes, these are sad situations, but that is life and our forefathers have developed a system we have all chosen to live by. This will sound harsh but it is appropriate, if you are frustrated with our system in this country…leave.

Strip this issue down to the basics and the answer becomes very clear.

This is not about our well-being as citizens. This is about a lethargic, do nothing, tax and spend government only interested in securing their places in the annals of history as some sort of harbingers of radical change. Well, this is radical change we do not need and it could be our downfall.

There is a Special Place in Hell for Harry Reid

I have this really weird recurring dream. I am on a large sport fishing vessel somewhere in the Thimble Islands where I grew up. Mounted in the rear cockpit is the world’s largest skeet launcher. Loaded in the machine are not your usual clay pigeons but Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi. I am positioned at the stern with a rocket launcher that is armed with Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck.

As I yell pull to the operator of the skeet machine who happens to be Abe Lincoln, Reid is catapulted through the air ass over tea kettle; glasses tossed into Long Island Sound and his plastered hair coming out of place and obscenely bouncing about. As I take aim and pull the trigger Limbaugh is rocketed at the target hitting Reid square in the abdomen, both men turning into a fine pink mist as somewhere a demonic minion opens up the gates of Hell and welcomes whatever it is that passes for their souls. Likewise goes the second shot as Beck hits Pelosi dead center and sends them to their new eternal home.

Usually I wake up from this dream doubting my sanity and feeling somewhat guilty for my subconscious’s apparent disrespect for life no matter how evil it may be. But, then I almost always end up reading a headline that goes something like this: REID LIKENS REPUBLICAN DETRACTORS FROM HEALTH CARE PLAN TO LAWMAKERS WHO BALKED AT ABOLISHING SLAVERY.

As stupid as my dream may seem to you and me, even more supremely stupid is this moron. Reid certainly has a long long laundry list of despicable deeds, but this one really takes the proverbial cake.

Are Congress people and Senators absolved from learning anything about US history? The way I read it, it was the Republicans that were the bastions of abolishment. I am pretty sure that is the way most people read it as well. To suggest otherwise just shows that not only does Reid need to be hit up side the head with a nice thick history book, he also should crack it open and read it. That is, if he can read.

Limousine liberals have this unique and quite amazing way of taking anyone’s accomplishments and assimilating them as their own. This is a phenomenon that seems to take place every time Democrats get a majority in the Houses. I remember hearing a State legislator once say that Abraham Lincoln really wasn’t a Republican at all (technically he wasn’t, he was a Whig) but was a Democrat and therefore it was Democrats who were really responsible for the Emancipation Proclamation because there was no way Republicans could possibly be for freeing slaves. Oh, really?

Were I a Democrat, (God forbid) I would be pretty pissed off at Reid too. I personally would like to see every racist residing in the same annals of Hell reserved for the likes of Reid and Pelosi, and I kind of assume that is how most reasonable people would feel. I think it is really interesting that Reid’s rhetoric congers up images of slavery whilst an African American holds the highest US office. Likewise, gaffe-meister Biden’s use of the hanging metaphor while introducing Lord Falderal (my new name for Barry is Lord Falderal) at the jobs conference last week. These are really disgusting and blatant attempts to get attention. Is there anyone who really wants to hear this shit, black, white, Democrat or Republican?

I have an idea Reid, you jackass, how about sticking to the issues for once. Your health care plan sucks. Try listening to the opposition and working something out. Twisting around history helps no one at all.