Intravenous Caffeine

Totally Unfair and Completely Unbalanced

What Would It Take For A President to Say “The State of the Union Ain’t Very Strong”?

Two Hookers critique the state of the union address: Good oral, now let's see a little bump and thrust.

Or maybe a little slap-and-tickle on the right side of the aisle?

I mean seriously, what WOULD it take for the President to start out, “The State of the Union isn’t very strong”? Massive depression? Naw, even Herbert Hoover said the SOTU was strong. Open rebellion? I bet even Abe Lincoln said the state of the union was strong. And it was, if you didn’t count the 11 states that up and left when he was elected. Perhaps alien invasion? “Let me remind you, you still have two out of three branches of the federal government and that ain’t bad,” as the President said in MARS ATTACKS. Actual unemployment and underemployment is around 20%, we’re in debt up to our yinyangs to China because of a double recession during the Bush presidency, two wars that we shouldn’t have been in in the first place, tax cuts for the people who didn’t need them and a massive bailout of banks that had been holding a craps game with our money, credit card companies charging 30% interest, 30 million people without health insurance, BUT–The State of the Union is strong.
We did get one moment of high comedy tho–thanks to Chris Matthews of MSNBC. Forgot he was black for an hour, Chris? Way to GO! Only one month into 2010 and you already have the gaffe of the year! But wait–maybe you can outdo yourself–you have 11 more months to do it in!
President Obama gave himself a number of pats on the back, waved his finger at the right side of the aisle and outlined an ambitious agenda to get us back on track–well, not all that ambitious, there were a lot of half-measures–i.e., we need to increase jobs, but we need to keep the budget under control, so hey, let’s just do a little of both. He pointed the finger at the Bush administration for getting us into this mess more forcefully than he had since…his inauguration. You told Justice Roberts where to get off (and Stephen Colbert brought up a great point about how Roberts is willing to overturn precedent if he has only two dissents to do it on–and just where WERE Scalia and Thomas last night anway?). And he wants to see things on his desk! Well, Barry, let’s hope that you tell people exactly what you want on your desk this time around the calendar and that you knock some heads together to do it.
The problem is that we’ve heard all this before and we haven’t seen enough action on it. As my hookers say in the cartoon, you’re good at oral, now let’s see a little bump and thrust. You told us bank presidents weren’t going to get away with things and then you turn around and let them get away without showing up for their meeting with you. LEAD! Stop taking things off the table before you start negotiating. Get rid of your bad advisers. Rely more on Joe Biden than on Rahm Emanuel–Emanuel’s been advising you to give away the farm for nominal victories but Biden knows where the bodies are buried. Get rid of the financial cronies and slap around those bank presidents like you did the auto manufacturers. And for god’s sake, stop going on expensive dates with Michele while your middle class is going down with the ship–at least look like you have a bit of empathy. You said you’d rather be a good one-term president than a poor two-term one. Well, we don’t want you to be a good one-term president–we thought we were voting for a GREAT president. So stop futzing around and be what you promised.

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Hey, TeaBaggers–want some Activist Judges to protest against? Try Justice Roberts…

As George Dymme watches a Corporate sponsored campaign ad, Fred'n'Bert, dressed as two colonials, comment on how appropriate it was for the East India Company to get tea tax relief from Parliament.

Applauding the breathtaking honesty of the Roberts court for finally killing the pretense of Democracy is the US

IRONY ALERT. Well, Kiddies, here’s a story from history, the way Justices Roberts, Alito, Scalia, Thomas, and Kennedy, remember it. Back in 1773, the British East India company was near collapse and decided that building up their market in the American colonies would be a good idea. Now since 1767, the Colonies were subject to a tax on tea, so the CORPORATION went to Cong… Parliament and asked for an exemption from the tax, since this would give them an advantage in the market. Parliament, many of whom had interests in the corporation, decided that this was a good idea and passed the Tea Act, setting up a somewhat complicated way of keeping the tax off the company. Now the American colonials never liked the Tea Tax to start out with and when Parliament granted the company its exemption, things exploded. They refused to allow tea to be landed at every port up and down the seaboard. The captains of most of the ships obliged and left without delivery–except in Boston, where the colonial Governor decided to take a hard line and would not sign departure papers for the vessel. So the colonists in Boston upped and chucked all the tea into Boston Harbor and the first Tea Party was held.
Now, NONE of this happened because the colonists disputed the RIGHT of the East India Company to spend money to influence Parliament for legislation on its behalf. Oh, NO, the colonists APPROVED of corporate influence on the government. In fact, they wished that there was some way to increase the influence of corporations–like expensive election campaigns that the corporations could freely underwrite and make sure their chosen candidates had all the money they needed to defeat their opponents. No, the only issue was the Tea Tax–no taxation without representation, as our grade school history books repeated ad nauseam in lieu of trying to get brainless little monsters to understand an issue with subtleties and complexities. As a matter of fact, most of the colonists didn’t understand it either–but the “Framers” all did, especially since many of them were tea merchants. So when they compained about the reasons for declaring independence in that little document of 1776, they put the blame SQUARELY on King George, who probably wasn’t aware of the entire imbroglio, NOT on the East India Company. So when Messrs Madison and Jefferson tried to float an additional amendment to the new Constitution in 1789 against the formation of monopolies–having fought a WAR in the meantime that was provoked in part by corporate interference in governing the colonies–it was rejected–NOT because the various states had laws against monopolies already, but because, by gum, these would be AMER’CUN monopolies and thus, because of the principle of CORPORATE PERSONHOOD, have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, which in the case of corporations, is defined as ungodly profits.
I want to applaud the five justices for the chutzpah of having the honesty to pound the last nail in the coffin of Democracy. This outdated concept was certainly not in the Framers’ minds at the outset…after all, these five justices are strict constructionists and that means they See Dead People and talk to them all the time. And what did they see in the Framers’ minds? Why Corporatism, of course. After all, corporations are much more reliable than ordinary citizens–they always have but one goal. And, unlike citizens, they don’t have to die, so the most successful corporations can literally live forever, giving the government the benefit of its influence. And now, through the power of globalization, these corporations are in a large part owned by foreign powers, giving the US the benefit of what other nations think we should do to help them help themselves. And I do mean, “Help Yourself!”
Imagine, some people have the strange idea that this development should be opposed. Get with the program, guys, stocks and bonds, not ballots!
/End IRONY

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Why Get Upset–the Democrats couldn’t win anything even WITH a Supermajority

Rahm Emanuel advises Obama to blame the Massachusetts senate seat loss on those divisive liberals ...

Or holding banks accountable for the recession or the Bush administration for war crimes or...

The American eagle is a funny bird–it’s been trying to fly with two right wings and no left–or rather, with a right wing and an even righter wing. It’s hard to fly anywhere like that, the best you can do is go around and around in circles–on the ground. In another display of incompetence, the modern Democratic party has managed to lose Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat, in the bluest of blue states, Massachusetts, to a Republican news anchor and the fingerpointing has begun. Letting aside for the moment the idiocy of Coakley, the Democratic nominee, taking a week’s vacation in the heat of the campaign, the Democratic moronocracy has begun to claim that the Republicans have been right and that Obama has been too radical, despite poll after poll showing that VOTERS think his problem has been not being radical ENOUGH. In this scenario, blame for any lack of success is placed squarely on the liberal and progressive blogosphere–which was to a large extent responsible for the Obama victory–who have been denigrated for divisiveness because of their expectation that Obama fulfill the promises he made the American people throughout the election. Chief among these is the President’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, whose chief duty seems to have so far been showing Barry the best way to go down with the ship.
Should we be worried that the Democrats no longer have a supermajority, despite the fact that they couldn’t get anything done uncompromised WITH ONE? Not if they get their collective “””” together and act like an ALTERNATIVE to the eight years of the Bush Administration instead of their little brother. But in order to do that, a certain Chief Executive is going to have to act like a Leader instead of an Infomercial…that if he wants something done, he has to say what he wants and then stick to it, that he can’t just ask the finance industry to accept reform, he’s got to shove it down their throats, that if he wants health care reform, he can’t take his strongest bargaining chip off the table before negotiation even has started. And that the way to handle the opposition’s complaint that he’s being too radical is to show them what being radical really MEANS. But I’m afraid that kind of confrontationalism isn’t in Barry’s bones, because that requires a commitment instead of a compromise. I remember reading somewhere–and unfortunately I can’t remember where or I’d note it–that back when Obama was editor of the Harvard Law Review, contributors could never tell whether or not he actually agreed with their positions or not and that during his tenure, he himself only contributed one article–and it was published anonymously.
Anyway, the State of the Onion address is tonight and we’ll see if the Wall Street Journal is correct about Obama’s declaring he will take a hard line with the financial sector…or whether we’ll just get more words. TTFN! Oh, one final thing–today is Squirrel Appreciation Day–go out and scatter some nuts for our furry neighbors!

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Help is On the WAY–in a few days…

A marine shouts to victims under a pile of rubble that they will get help as soon as the marines finish setting up a secure base camp.

We would have sent in food and water immediately, but there was no security structure in place.

Well, we’re finally doing something over in Haiti, but, sad to say, we got beat to the punch. Rescue teams from … Iceland … were despatched almost immediately after the earthquake struck. Sniffer dogs arrived from … China … within 48 hours. In the immediate aftermath of the earthquake, the President of the Lumbering Giant of America said that we could get the first 2000 Marines to Haiti–a mere 700 miles from Florida and a hop, skip and jump from Puerto Rico–in a few days. A few days means a lot to a victim still buried under rubble. Or someone sitting on the roof of their submerged house as we found out from Katrina. But Haiti is not New Orleans. It’s simply the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.
Greg Palast has a remarkable precis of the screwy US response. I don’t want to copy what he’s said, but what it boils down to is that instead of treating the Haitian tragedy as an EMERGENCY, our response has been to treat it as a military operation. Secretary Gates said he would not send in food and water immediately because there was no security apparatus in place. OF COURSE NOT, an entire country has been devastated. The proper response in an EMERGENCY is to send in rescuers first, followed up by relief and security. But America is so hamstrung by both its muscle-bound state and its security paranoia that instead of doing the right thing first, we started out with the back end of the horse.
Our first operation appears to have been to secure the Port-au-Prince airport and try to take over rescue efforts in a way that had French Cooperation Minister Alain Joyandet complain that we seemed to be more concerned with occupying Haiti rather than helping it. Indeed, we secured the airport so well that we refused landing to an aircraft from “Doctors without Borders” carrying supplies and an inflatable surgical hospital, forcing them to land in the Dominican Republic and truck in the supplies over the mountains, delaying their arrival for 24 hours. Danny Schecter on Media Channel suggests that our overweaning focus on security may be driven more by a desire to keep US-deposed President Aristide out of Haiti than on anything to do with the safety of the country.
We’ve heard a lot about things being “too big to fail” in recent months–the banks are too big to be allowed to go under after they’ve screwed up the economy, the health insurance industry is too big to be allowed to be given competition from a single payer health plan. And even when the leading political party is in agreement on something in general, it can’t agree with itself about what it wants. Could it be that the US has become too big to act effectively? Man, if so, we better get some streamlining in pronto before we choke to death on our immensity.

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Haitians Protest: We’re already past the seventh generation, Pat

Sinners in the hands of an angry televangelist: Pat Robertson gloats over Haiti's misfortune.

The essence of Pat Robertson's religion: feeling smug about someone else's misfortune because God loves ME MORE!

You can depend on Pat Robertson–he ALWAYS gives Christianity a bad name. Every time there’s a terrible catastrophe somewhere in the world, he can find a reason to blame it on somebody else’s sinfulness. And gloats over his own good fortune and religious superiority. Now take this earthquake in Haiti. Terrible tragedy, death and destruction everywhere, at least 100,000 dead. You’d think a catastrophe of this magnitude would call for a little Christian kindness. Not from Pat! He hauls out this story–which as far as I know, he made up–about some Haitian selling his soul to the devil for independence–and that’s why they’ve suffered poverty and famine and unstable governments and now this devastation. Well, Pat, the guy you’re thinking about had a name, Toussaint L’Ouverture. He led a rebellion for Haitian independence and managed to defeat every army sent at him. He was also black.
Now, I don’t want to accuse Pat of racism, I think he’s more of a religious bigot. You see, Haiti is the homeplace of Vodou, or as we more commonly spell it, Voodoo. Pat has this Hollywood idea of Voodoo consisting of zombies, dolls with pins in them, devil worshipping and worst of all, dancing. If Toussaint L’Ouverture had not sold his soul to the devil, there’d be none of that deviltry going on! Haitians would all go to church on Sunday, sing hymns, listen to some preacher for about 4 hours and become prosperous and Protestant. As it is, most Haitians are Catholic–they’re also devotees of Vodou and don’t see a contradiction in this. After all, they both worship , don’t they? It’s just that Catholicism has been syncretized with African beliefs, customs and rituals.
Well, Pat will have none of it–that African stuff is all devil worship to him and to hell with ya. Cursed forever for Toussaint L’Ouverture’s effrontery of being a black general who defeated white European armies, which he obviously could never have done if he hadn’t sold his soul to the devil. Why else would Haiti be so poor when the other half of the island of Hispaniola, the Dominican Republic, is so prosperous and stable–we’ll never mind the century or so of political upheavals the Dominican Republic suffered before the present calm. It’s obviously the fault of all that Voodoo–and dancing–which makes their misfortunes their own fault. God is merely punishing them like a father a naughty child, because a father loves his children, even when giving them the buckle end of the belt. After all, as St. John said, God is love. And in Pat Robertson’s view, God just loved those Haitians to death!
I’m so glad Pat Robertson isn’t God…

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