Know what I hate? Well, I’m going to tell you. It’s when people intrude upon your deepest personal life, and then when you object, they accuse you of denying their right to – I don’t know – have everything exactly their way, I guess. That’s how I see the hyper-religious crowd who have been complaining about the mandate in the Affordable Care Act requiring employer-provided health insurance to cover contraception. Obama carved out an exception that should satisfy anyone – one that goes way beyond any necessary relief from what’s required, in my view. And still they are crowing about it, comparing it to religious persecution, even Nazi-ism in the more extreme cases.
The latest round has been in state legislatures from Georgia to New Hampshire, where the crackpot tea-party majority has proposed a “conscience” exception so broad it practically guarantees legal challenge. (These are the freaks who insisted, bizarrely, that all legislation be rooted in the Magna Carta, even though few of them have ever read the document in its entirety. Next, they’ll demand all proposed laws draw on neolithic cave paintings.) Then there are the fetal “personhood” statute and vaginal ultrasound bill in Virginia, scaled back in the face of massive protests by women in that divided state. This … from the party that was all about jobs, jobs, jobs during the 2010 election. See what happens when you trust them?
It should surprise no one that Republicans used the economy as a trojan horse to conceal their deeply unpopular, highly regressive right-wing social agenda. It was, after all, GOP-driven policies (aided, of course, by watery Democrats) that blew a massive hole in the federal budget back in 2001, expanding it in subsequent years with undeclared wars and unwarranted tax cuts for the wealthiest people in the country. Those tax cuts were supposed to have expired by now, but as every politician knows, that ain’t gonna’ happen … because no one has the spine to allow it. Meanwhile, we all pay the price. My city in upstate New York is starved for funds largely because the Feds are starving the States, and the States are passing the cuts along to municipalities. That and inaction on health and retirement reform (not privatization, but the kind that would work) is resulting in massive tax hikes at the local level – close to 20% for the coming fiscal year. This just to spare the Romneys of the world a return to the favorable income tax rates of the 1990s, when they gained plenty enough wealth, thank you very much.
The Republicans have nothing to offer on the economy. And unless we push them, neither will the Democrats.
luv u,
jp
What am I talking about? What indeed. I’ll tell you, friend(s), we’ve been squatting in this abandoned hammer mill for more than ten years. You know what squatting that long does to your quadriceps? Seriously, we’ve been occupying the Cheney Hammer Mill before the Occupy movement ever put on its first pair of short pants. Not for any principle, you understand, other than that of having a roof over our heads. A penniless band, Big Green was in those days. Ah, but no more. Fortune has smiled upon us, once again.
Then there’s the billionaire problem. It seems that every major candidate has his sugar daddy. For Gingrich it was Adelson, the reactionary casino magnate. For Romney, it’s himself (of course). And for Santorum, it’s Foster Friess, last name pronounced “freeze”. That’s right: the person behind Rick Santorum, presidential candidate, is Mr. “Freeze”. Time to pick up the bat phone, commissioner. This time, Mr. “Freeze” has a plan that just might work. After all, Santorum was nobody, absolutely nobody before the right-wing, hyper Christian billionaire started sluicing money in Super-PAC support of his flagging campaign. Then, hey-presto! Front runner status, with no campaign headquarters, bare-bones staff, and little organization. Just like many of the previous front-runners. Sense a pattern?
Yeah, I know – I should expect this sort of thing, living in an abandoned hammer mill. Remnants from the forge room, repurposed for bedding materials. Such are the times we live in. Big Green, like many indie bands, lives pretty close to the margin, my friends. We don’t have the resources for all of those extras bands like The Decemberists and Black Flag can afford. God, no… we just make do with what we’ve got. In these hard times, our fans expect this much at least: that we should be every bit as miserable as they are. And friends, we don’t disappoint.
Of course, we all know how this story ends. What became of Saddam Hussein’s nuclear weapons ambitions about which “there can be no doubt”? It was just as defector Hussein Kemal described it in the mid 1990s, in interviews that were well circulated before the Iraq war: Iraq had never gotten beyond the theoretical stage in weapons development, and what technology they had relating to uranium enrichment was broken up and buried after the Gulf War. And their missile technologies? We all know about the aluminum tube hoax. Then there were the deadly drones – basically model planes bound together with duct tape. This is why the current claims about Iran shouldn’t be taken too seriously.
Whoa, hey… didn’t know anyone was reading this here blog. I was just practicing in my spare time. What am I practicing? Thought you might ask. Just in case I find myself running for president in sixty or seventy years, I thought I might need a little background on how to warm up a crowd at a retirement center. Now I know just how to do it, sort of. Anywho… we’ve all got to keep ourselves occupied, what with Big Green up on blocks like a 1976 Chevy Monza that needs a ring job. We’ve been blowing oil for about 5,000 miles now, folks. Time for a tune up. [METAPHOR OVER.]
Mind you, I’m not a total agnostic on this. There is a difference between the parties. I wish it were a bigger difference, but there’s no point in denying that it’s there. Obama hasn’t done anywhere near what he would need to do to restart this economy and get it going in a more sustainable direction. I don’t know that he’s particularly inclined towards making any bold steps forward on that front – he’s Captain Cautious in that respect. I have a lot of problems with his policies pretty much across the board, but there’s no doubt in my mind that Romney, Gingrich, and Santorum represent a boatload more trouble for all of us than another four years of Obama would.
Right, you guessed it. I was being ironic just then. Some people do that for a living. Me? I’m ironic in my spare time. Actually, it’s not merely a matter of personal whim. We’ve just taken on a marketing consultant recommended by our somewhat lackluster label, Loathsome Prick Records. I would tell you her name, but she told me her name must never be spoken. In any case, she – I will call her “Noname” … which rhymes with Edamame in my tiny mind – is going to help us “position” Big Green in the international indie music marketplace. That’s something our label tells us we need to do, like, RIGHT NOW.
Gingrich’s grandiosity is wasted on these polite debates, though, and he knows it. That’s why he’s complaining so bitterly. When he gets a good shot in – “puts Juan Williams in his place”, as some in South Carolina have described it – and the crowd starts to cheer, you can see him begin to inflate like the Michelin Man. It is a wondrous sight to behold. This business of tamping down the audience’s enthusiasm is just, well… deflating for a veteran bomb-thrower like Gingrich. Perhaps this will give the GOP’s favored candidate, Romney, the boost he needs to edge out his corpulent rival. Damned liberal media! Newt told us it was all their fault!! Ah, the favored narrative… always a winner.
Yes, my friends. More power issues here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill. That long extension cord I had Marvin (my personal robot assistant) run from the pizza place across the street? Well, someone discovered it, unplugged it, etc. Last time I order a pizza from those cheapskates! And when we found an alternative power source (i.e. the antique store on the other side of the alley… their back door latch is a little unreliable), what happens but Mitch Macaphee, our mad science advisor, decides to crank up the old Orgone Generating Device in the basement where Trevor James Constable left it years ago, and… and… well, I hate when that shit happens.