The Undeserving Poor–That’s Right, You and Me

Orrin Hatch is late for the tea party...

Last weekend, we hit the 235th birthday of our country. July the 2nd. Not July the 4th. July the 2nd was when the Congress voted to accept the Declaration of Independence from Great Britain. July the 4th was when they skipped town because the darn thing was being printed in the Philadelphia newspapers. And man, if you thought the British were coming when Paul Revere made his famous ride, as Sarah Palin recently revealed to us, to warn the British that the British were coming, boy, you could imagine the British were coming NOW.

In any case, after 235 years of this noble experiment in the belief that “all men are created equal” (except slaves which were only 60% equal), we have finally accepted the proposition that some people are more equal than others. It all depends on how much money you have. After all, corporations have been considered persons since the end of the 19th century. And now, the Roberts court has decided that corporations should not have any limit on what they will contribute to election campaigns because that would limit their free speech. Therefore, it stands to reason that corporations ought to have more rights than ordinary mortals. After all, they pay more taxes, don’t they?

And that’s the beautiful truth of these United States in the 21st century. “You GET what you PAY for.” Stirring words! My coffee dissolves sugar just thinking about them! Not only corporations, but rich individuals as well. Not only can they incorporate themselves to avail themselves of the enormous benefit of buying senators, congressmen, supreme court justices, and, dare I say, Presidents? But because they pay so much more in taxes than you or I, they deserve better attention from the government.

Let us ignore the fact that most of the biggest corporations are multi-national and hide their profits off-shore so that they have no obligation to pay federal taxes. Or that CEOs usually pay less in taxes than their secretaries because so much of their pay is actually capital gains. You get what you pay for! And believe me, someone who makes tens of millions of dollars a year can pay for a whole lot more than you or I can.

Which makes us, like Alfred Doolittle, part of the Undeserving Poor. As Orrin Hatch said, like Doolittle, we don’t do our share. And yet, we expect things like being paid the Social Security benefits–THAT WE PAID FOR. We expect the Medicare and Medicaid that our tax dollars have paid into. So, now that President Obama is preparing to throw these under the bus (and we shall see how far in the next few weeks) to get the Republicans to agree to raise the debt ceiling–which they won’t unless he throws it far enough AND without any tax increase to the deserving rich.

We have no one to blame but ourselves because we just haven’t done our fair share. Simple economics.

Long live the best democracy money can buy. Now excuse me, I have to follow that White Rabbit to the Tea Party.

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It was all Boehner could do to stop Mike Pence from holding his breath til he turned blue…

No, that's not a basketball team uniform...

Our country is in a world of hurt. Seriously. In one party, we have a bunch of two-year-olds who demand everything and won’t be satisfied without sugar on top. And on the other hand, we have a chief executive who has the backbone of a sponge. SpongeBarack. He sucks in all this abuse, giggles annoyingly, and then declares it a great accomplishment for the American people. OK, Barry doesn’t giggle annoyingly, but it would be better if he did.

Now I understand narcissism. I was an actor once. And that’s possibly the one profession which is more narcissistic than politics, but it’s a close race between actors, politicians and strippers. Politicians see every deal as an accomplishment–even turds that have been spray-painted gold. And this budget deal is a turd so moist the paint can’t even stick. Yet President Obama goes and describes it as some kind of rosey-hued vision of democracy because “Americans of different beliefs came together,” to avoid a government shutdown–when the tyrannical threat of a shutdown should never have existed in the first place! Then he went to the Lincoln Memorial to celebrate the fact that it was still open, but don’t worry, your tax dollars will help pay for those tax cuts for the upper 1% we caved on back in 2010. My, how long ago was THAT? Oh, by the way, we’ll have to cut out some government jobs–like 100,000! (But the stock market is doing great, isn’t recovery grand?)

And immediately after the deal was struck–we get assholes like Mike Pence intoning that the deal was probably not good enough. Not good enough? According to one Republican, they got 79% of what they wanted. What does Mike Pence want? 100% capitulation, an apology for not surrendering sooner, war reparations and Obama, Reid and Pelosi committing seppuku on the steps of the Capital?

As a wise ‘possum once said, “We have met the enemy and it is us.” God save the United States of America–’cause nobody else is trying.
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The awful tragedy in Japan is continuing–hundreds of thousands of people have been homeless for a month now and agriculture in the area–particularly rice farming–is non-existent. Many people kept their money at home rather than the banks, and now are penniless. So a reminder, please give generously for Japan relief in this time of need

Text REDCROSS to 90999 to donate $10 from your phone
Text MED to 80888 from any mobile phone to give $10.
Text ‘JAPAN’ or ‘QUAKE’ to 80888 to make a $10 donation or visit SalvationArmyUSA.org.
Also Save the Children
Japan-earthquake-tsunami-relief @ Global Giving
Doctors Without Borders
Americares
Shelter Box
Peace Winds
Operation USA
World Vision

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Boehner and the Boehnheads

John Boehner turns blue in the face trying to corral the tea party caucus.

Knock, knock. Who's there? Orange. Orange who? Orange you glad I didn't say: Argo ... yourself?

Once again, we have one situation that we can’t do a cartoon about, or at least one that we can’t get a funny take on. I’m referring, of course, to those idiots down in Florida who “tried and convicted” a Qu’ran and then burned it at the stake. Ahhh, we’ve come a long way since the Middle Ages. Since this didn’t get enough press and outrage from the Muslims around the world, our pal Hamid Karzai made sure everyone knew about it by rending his garments, pouring ashes on his head and demanding justice for the desecrators. Knowing full well that there is no law they can be charged with and that the US of A was certainly not going to extradite anyone to face “justice” someplace else for something that happened within our own sovereign borders. And of course, another bunch of idiots from the peaceful religion of Islam, having heard what happened via our good pal in Afghanistan, in order to put the lie to Terry Jones’ and company’s “indictment” of the book, have run around rioting and murdering people. There’s nothing I could draw that could outdo the collective idiocy occasioned by this idiotic asshole down in Florida, so I’m not even going to try.

I’m going to turn to our other good friend, John Boehner. The Republican party, as you know, has nominal control of the House of Representatives, making our national Boehner Speaker of the House. This means that John has the unenviable task of trying to make sure that bills actually get passed by said august body. The problem for John is that the Republican caucus is actually two caucuses: the official Republican one and the Tea Partiers. This means he has almost as big a problem as the Democrats had getting anything done with the Blue Dog caucus in their party voting against anything that wasn’t conservative enough. And boy. are you going to have a problem making something conservative enough for the Tea Party group.

Seems that most of them are new to this new occupation of politicking and have no idea that it means the art of negotiation and compromise. Now, you could say that about the Republican Party in general–and you’d be right–but most of the real politicians under the tail of the elephant realize that as long as you grandstand about the “big issues”, you can actually get everything else done without a whisper. Not our teabaggers! At least one of them has said that he isn’t gonna vote for any damn budget that doesn’t “defund Obamacare.” And the rest of them have similar demands. And like El-Orans in the desert, they are crying “NO PRISONERS!” as they charge into the august chambers of the august body. And it ain’t even August!

Now John knows that sooner or later, they need a budget. The WORST thing he could possibly do with the economy in its weak condition, excuse me, robust recovery (at least in the financial sector), is shut down the government. There is no consumer, no single employer more important, and to shut it down for even a few days could create such a downturn that even the wealthy could see a dent in their portfolios. He could pass a budget with enough compromises for some Democrats to come on board–but that would be a sin in the Tea Party’s eyes. He could try to explain to the Tea Party that THEY need to make some compromises…but then he’d be seen as a traitor also. As the saying goes (attributed to Mark Twain), “Never try to teach a pig to dance. It just wastes time and annoys the pig.” So somehow, he’s got to figure out how to pass a budget without Democrats and possibly without a whole buncha nominal Republicans. But a lot of Tea Partiers actually think shutting down the government would be a good thing so John might feel that he’s going to be talking himself blue in the face in the next few days.

Or maybe just green.

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INTRODUCING CAPTAIN TEABAG: SUPERCONGRESSMAN!

The new tea party candidates may find the task they've set themselves harder than they think.

Fighting for Fox News, no taxes ... and the American Way.

INTRODUCING: Captain Teabag! Newly elected to Congress, he plans to go to that den of iniquity, Washington DC, and turn it back to the truth of God and the US Constitution. Social programs? EVIL–they’re Social-IST! I’d never accept a penny from any one of them–not me! Maybe my lazy brother-in-law … and my cousins. And a few aunts and uncles. But not me–so WE don’t need them. Forget that one for all and all for one crap. Doesn’t the Bible say an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Well, I’m for myself!

And how do they pay for all these communist plots? All these unconstitutional TAXES. Tell me–where does it say that the government can COLLECT taxes? It says CONGRESS can LEVY taxes, nothing about collecting them. And it doesn’t say “INCOME taxes”. I’m gonna abolish taxes, abolish unemployment payments, abolish Obamacare. And that’s just on the FIRST day I’m in office!

Oh, and impeach the Kenyan.

BUT, we need to spend even more on Defense! All them Muslims are all out to attack us. We need to be more than ready to take care of them, we need to bring the fight over there. Let’s nuke Iran before they nuke us. And bring on the lobbyists so I know what to vote for.

My door will always be open to K Street.

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Is this what it takes to get Christine O’Donnell to accept evolution?

A monkey is evolved into Rush Limbaugh by a magician, proving evolution to Christine O'Donnell.

Christine O'Donnell is finally convinced about the validity of evolution.

Still a little bit under the weather here, but definitely nowhere quite as bad as last weekend, so I’m gonna take it easy on the commentary this week. Anyway, it seems as if one of the many great quotes from Christine O’Donnell concerned evolution. “Evolution is a myth. Why aren’t monkeys still evolving into humans?” Why indeed, when devolution is so apparent, with people making monkeys out of themselves all the time?

I could blame the schools for not teaching an accurate summary of what evolution actually is. I could ask the evolution deniers “just what part of millions of years don’t you understand?” But that’s like shooting fish in a barrel. You can’t blame someone for not understanding millions of years in a culture that thinks “oldies” were top 40 six months ago.

Instead, I’m going to put the blame squarely where it belongs. On the science fiction TV shows of our youth. How many times on “The Twilight Zone” or “The Outer Limits” did we actually witness evolution taking place–RIGHT IN FRONT OF OUR EYES? “Oh, my god, he’s evolving–he has SIX FINGERS AND TWO THUMBS!” Not just evolution, but devolution with men turning into men in gorilla suits. “Oh, my god, he’s reversed evolution–if we don’t stop this right now, he’ll become an amoeba by the last commercial!”

In many ways, the “science” we were presented in movies and on TV was just magic with a different mumbo-jumbo. If so many people cannot accept the realities of science, is it because they’re expecting magic and they don’t get it? Millions of years? What good is that? If something’s evolving, I want to see it right NOW. Christine O’Donnell will not believe in evolution until she sees a monkey turn into a person right in front of her eyes.

Worse than that, in science there’s no one to bribe. “O Science, grant me this promotion and I’ll give up sinning for the rest of my life.” Nope, don’t work that way. Far better to have someone to entreat who might answer than to have no one to talk to at all. God is someone who will answer your prayers. Usually with a “no”. But “no” is an answer, isn’t it?

So maybe the scientists should practice pulling a few rabbits out of hats to get people to believe. After all, it worked with the loaves and the fishes. It all depends on whether you have the right basket.

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