PittsburghThoughts

Found this video on my newest favorite blog: politits.blogspot.com Once upon a time ...

Do you have your magic underwear on?

Did you cry like a bitch when you were being tortured?

You think this is all pretty funny don't you?

... awww, forget it.

People say that you resemble Gomer Pyle both

physically and politically, in light of that, 

how's Goober and Aunt Bea?

Do you ever feel like punching someone?

How can you be such a dick?

Do you really believe that your hot wife, Cindy,

17 years your junior, actually married you out of love?

Have you ever actually seen a black man face to face before this race?

Shouldn't you be bowing down to Mecca about now?

 ... awww, forget it.

I'm the same age as you but look a lot older,

is there a painting of you somewhere that's aging

while the devil waits for your soul?

You've touted your weight loss, exercise,

and diet as an example of how you've taken

control of your health and suggest the

American people do the same rather than

support any form of government health care.

Do you think now that you've started gaining it back

due to the stress of the campaign that you

should modify your position, do ya fatty?

You've told countless lies about how heroic you

were during the 9-11 attack, about how qualified

you are to be president, never hesitating  to heap

praise on yourself, why do you emulate

George W. Bush when he's so unpopular?

Since you staked out a pro-war position, a pro-torture position,

a pro-preemption position, couldn't just one of your boys sign

up for the military just so you don't look like such an elitist, hypocritical asshole?

Do you have your compact with you?

Is what Lenny Bruce said about a black man's dick

true, that it's like a baby arm with an apple in it's hand?

Aren't you knee deep in corporate campaign money

and aren't you beholding to those same corporate interests

whose policies you claim to oppose on behalf of the American people?

Same question.

?

?

? 

I don't take no corporate money!!! Don't you follow the news or what? I'm going to punch someone right in the fucking head ... FUCK YOU JOHN KERRY!!! FUCK EVERYONE!!!

I'm the president RIGHT NOW! I declare myself president for LIFE and BEYONDDDDDD (issues a  Howard Dean-like scream) DDDDDD!

Their will be a brief pause while the candidates

drag John Edwards in the back room and

pound the shit out of him.

Now, that's what I call an exciting debate!

Good Morning Blogarooni,

Have to get my chest punctured for a biopsy today. I'll be leaving in a min. I just couldn't go without telling you how wonderful you are and how much I'll miss each and every one of you. Meanwhile here's a splendiferous blog to wile away your lonely hours, follow the links if you dare.  Gene

Google Image Result for http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1349/586313261_80cd50b6f0_o.jpg

Paddick: I'll target knives on day one

 ...Met figures show only one in eight stop and searches is made for knives and one in 60 for guns. The majority are of drivers suspected of carrying drugs or stolen property. Mr Paddick made his pledge to mark the last 100 days of the mayoral campaign...

Knives? They're worrying about knives? Hell, we haven't used knifes to kill one another since West Side Story. Those were the good old days huh? LET'S RUMBLE!   Gene

I don't know why but this cracked me up,

Is that a light at the end of the tunnel? 

Yesterday, marked the last remaining year of the Bush Presidency, whoopee. Meanwhile, not one Republican candidate  invokes his name, his legacy or the war. Come to think of it, they seem oblivious to anything that would benefit anyone other than themselves politically. Instead, they still think that becoming Reaganesque is a winning approach. Emulating a *shitty, witty, itty bitty President with zero regard for the working man, or his own humble roots suits them well.

Reagan was the Cut and Run King, for anyone that's forgotten, such as Mit, McCain, or the Huckster. In the Lebanon Marine's barrack bombing, under their "Rule of Engagement" at the time, the Marines were sitting ducks while their sentries stood helpless without ammo clips in their rifles 1983 Beirut barracks bombing - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

...The 1983 Beirut barracks bombing was a major incident on October 23, 1983, during the Lebanese Civil War. Two truck bombs struck separate buildings in Beirut housing U.S. and French members of the Multinational Force in Lebanon, killing hundreds of servicemen, the majority being U.S. Marines...

 ...On February 7, 1984 [14 weeks later] President Reagan ordered the Marines to begin withdrawal from Lebanon. This was completed on February 26; the rest of the MNF was withdrawn by April...

In fairness, I don't think anyone wants to replicate Reagan's military legacy, except when it comes to the false assertions that he single-handedly defeated the "Evil Empire" by pleading with Gorbachov to, "Tear down this wall!" But, the men who would be king, do, paradoxically, admire his contempt for government and, not-so-paradoxically, for unions and the working stiffs that keep this country running, however marginally.

Although the libertarian, Cato Institute Supply-Side Tax Cuts and the Truth about the Reagan Economic Record may disagree, Reagan's domestic coup da grace came incrementally, after announcing that he, "Wouldn't balance the budget (he should have stopper there) on the backs of working people," he then went on to fashion a system to tax waitresses' tips and take away every tax deduction that the middle-class had, minus the interest on home loans, double the FICA tax, fire ALL the air traffic controllers while the AFL-CIO fiddled and, ultimately, granted 2.7 million illegal immigrants amnesty. Reagan's own attorney General Edwin Meese wrote in the New York Times An Amnesty by Any Other Name ... - New York Times in 2006:

 [Reagan's} 1986 act did not solve our illegal immigration problem. From the start, there was widespread document fraud by applicants. Unsurprisingly, the number of people applying for amnesty far exceeded projections. And there proved to be a failure of political will in enforcing new laws against employers.

After a six-month slowdown that followed passage of the legislation, illegal immigration returned to normal levels and continued unabated. Ultimately, some 2.7 million people were granted amnesty, and many who were not, stayed anyway, forming the nucleus of today's unauthorized population.

So here we are, 20 years later, having much the same debate and being offered much the same deal in exchange for promises largely dependent on the will of future Congresses and presidents.

Thom Hartmann gives his interpretation of the Reagan legacy that's being touted by today's aspiring republican candidates far and wide, from Roll Back the Reagan Tax Cuts - CommonDreams.org:

...[Reagan] was swept into the White House on a wave of public concern of the Iranians taking US hostages. Reagan promptly cut income taxes on the very rich from 70% down to 27%. Corporate tax rates were also cut so severely that they went from representing over 33% of total federal tax receipts in 1951 to less than 9% in 1983 (they’re still in that neighborhood, the lowest in the industrialized world).

The result was devastating. Our government was suddenly so badly awash in red ink that Reagan doubled the tax paid only by people earning less than $40,000/year (FICA), and then began borrowing from the huge surplus this new tax was accumulating in the Social Security Trust Fund. Even with that, Reagan had to borrow more money in his 8 years than the sum total of all presidents from George Washington to Jimmy Carter combined.

In addition to badly throwing the nation into debt, Reagan’s tax cut blew out the ceiling on the accumulation of wealth, leading to a new Gilded Age and the rise of a generation of super-wealthy that hadn’t been seen since the Robber Baron era of the 1890s or the Roaring 20s.

And, most tragically, Reagan’s tax cuts caused America to stop investing in infrastructure. As a nation, we’ve been coasting since the early 1980s, living on borrowed money while we burn through (in some cases literally) the hospitals, roads, bridges, steam tunnels, and other infrastructure we built in the Golden Age of the Middle Class between the 1940s and the 1980s...

Unfortunately, Barrack Obama, during an attack of temporary insanity, also invoked the Reagan legacy:

...Obama told the Reno Gazette-Journal editorial board Monday that "Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it," Obama said.

"I think it's fair to say that the Republicans were the party of ideas for a pretty long chunk of time there over the last 10 to 15 years in the sense that they were challenging conventional wisdom," Obama told the newspaper.

Edwards criticism of Obama rings true:

"Ronald Reagan, the man who busted unions, the man who did everything in his power to destroy the organized labor movement, the man who created a tax structure that favored the richest Americans against middle class and working families, ... we know that Ronald Reagan is not an example of change for a presidential candidate running in the Democratic Party," Edwards said.

Reagan also "was destructive to the environment by removing a lot of the regulation that existed," Edwards added in a later telephone interview with The Associated Press. "I would never use Ronald Reagan as an example of change."

But, while Hillary lambastes Obama:

 "That's not the way I remember the last ten to fifteen years." She said she didn't consider it a better idea to privatize Social Security, eliminate the minimum wage, undercut health benefits, shut down the government or drive the country into debt. "I think we know what needs to be done in America. And I think we're ready to do it. I'm ready to lead on day one."

Has she also renounced her husband's abandonment of a national health care plan in favor of devoting his time to NAFTA and GATT? Didn't that put the final nail in the coffin of her future constituents?

Anyway... Happy, One Year to GO!  Gene

P.S. Coincidentally, Paul Krugman, writing in the New York Times also on the 21st, excoriated Obama's Reagan remark:

The Reagan economy was a one-hit wonder. Yes, there was a boom in the mid-1980s, as the economy recovered from a severe recession. But while the rich got much richer, there was little sustained economic improvement for most Americans. By the late 1980s, middle-class incomes were barely higher than they had been a decade before — and the poverty rate had actually risen.

* Shitty added ex post fato because I just couldn't resist.