Oh no. Duck and cover. Two weeks ago I accused the Cons of waging a real War on Christmas, by laying off people and killing jobs at this time of the year. Now it turns out they're also in the trenches defending themselves from the imaginary War on Christmas.
Well I see that Stephen Harper hasn't dared reply to Tom Steyer's letter demanding to know whether he has been working with the Tea Party extremists to blackmail the U.S. government. We have a saying in the United States that I believe may also resonate in Canada: When you go to bed at night with no snow on the ground, and you wake up in the morning to find snow, you can safely conclude it snowed. And I must say I'm not surprised eh? Not just because he'd rather not admit that his Harperite oil pimps HAVE been lobbying the Tea Party extremists like a gang of Nigerian spammers. But also because him and his Con gang are teabaggers themselves. Their stealthy ideological twins.
Uh oh. I knew Stephen Harper's all out offensive to try to force Obama to approve the Keystone pipeline was going to end badly eh? First he made a fool of himself by declaring that he wouldn't take no for an answer. Now Tom Steyer wants to know if he's been collaborating with the Republican teabaggers who are trying to shutdown the U.S. government.
Well yank my doodle dandy. One more good reason why right-wingers should never be allowed anywhere near a democracy. In Canada they've closed down Parliament, in the United States they've closed down the government.
It's a frightening and truly disturbing sight. The Republicans in the House of Representatives threatening to shut down the American government.Again. With one vote on Friday, the Republican-led House launched the latest spending battle in Congress -- one that could bring a government shutdown in less than two weeks.
By a 230-189 tally almost strictly on party lines, the House passed a short-term government spending plan that would eliminate all funding for Obamacare. Just to try to kill a bill that would provide millions of Americans with health care they otherwise couldn't afford.
OK. Let me get this straight. The Republicans are still in shock. The crazed teabaggers are threatening to rip the GOP apart. Wednesday, the political direct-mail pioneer Richard Viguerie gathered a group of disenchanted conservatives for a news conference in Washington. Calling Romney's loss "the death rattle" of the GOP, Viguerie, chairman of ConservativeHQ.com, said, "The battle to take over the Republican Party begins today." Or demanding to secede like the slave states of the old Confederacy.
Golly. Don't look now eh? But I hear that Stephen Harper has fallen hard for the new Republican heartthrob Paul Ryan.
You have to believe that the duo of Stephen Harper and Jim Flaherty are salivating at the chance to work with a Mitt Romney/Paul Ryan White House.
Ryan is a supporter of the Keystone XL pipeline and has praised the Tories' decision to cut Canada's corporate tax rate to 15 per cent, pointing to the U.S. rate of 35 per cent as increasingly noncompetitive...And yes, like Harper and Flaherty, Ryan has 'Tea Party' tendencies.
And I have to admit, it's a marriage made in Con heaven.
Don't worry. You can watch it all here in 45 seconds...
The irony?
By the standards of today's Teabagger Party, Ronald Reagan was a tax and spend communist.
When he was governor of California, Reagan “signed into law the largest tax increase in the history of any state” until that point in an effort to balance the budget (How would that sound to todays’ GOP candidates, all of whom indicated they would not raise taxes by a single dollar even if it were offset with $10 in spending cuts). Once president, Reagan raised taxes seven out of eight of his years in office—including four times in just two years.
The tragedy?
There are no greater teabaggers than Dumbo Harper and Jimbo Flaherty...
Because apart from their plans to kill government, come hell or high water, they're "flexible."
Sort of.
We showed we could respond effectively to a global downturn. Of course now debts and deficits are the problem. So that’s why our plan is right, to reduce the deficit, to reduce our debts because we don’t want to see the kind of problems we are seeing in Europe and elsewhere here.”
Nevertheless, with instability now in Europe, and difficulties in the U.S., Canada’s economy, he said, “could get sideswiped here and the government has to be ready for that.”
Or put it another way, they don't know what they're doing.
The horror?
Expect what's happening in Michigan to soon happen here.
Gov. Rick Snyder on Tuesday signed into law a stricter, four-year lifetime limit on cash welfare benefits, prompting advocates for the poor to warn that tens of thousands of residents will find themselves without cash assistance on Oct. 1.
Because can you imagine what The Great White North Detroit is going to look like after Dumbo and Jimbo have finished with it? So much for the economic miracle.
Not that I blame the government for hoodwinking Canadians. That’s politics.
The fault lies with the media. Even a quick look at basic numbers would have revealed that the Conservatives were telling a whopper. But far too many journalists didn’t bother to look at the numbers.
They were too busy applauding.
Good one Jimbo. Thanks IDIOTS.
Oh boy. It's a teabagger world people.
How could those incompetent, ideological, brutish Cons be running our economy in a time of Global Depression?
It's a scary and surrealistic spectacle. The most powerful nation on earth being held hostage by a group of fanatical teabaggers, who are dragging the President, the country, and the global economy towards the abyss. And acting like the Taliban.
"We now have a group of US politicians seeking political purity, who seem to have much in common with the Taliban. They are Tea Party members; and because of blind adherence to smaller government, they seem intent on risking destroying what American political leaders have constructed in more than two centuries of hard, often painful work..."
And the scariest thing is when you read the latest so-called compromise.
Officials close to the talks, speaking on condition of anonymity, said both Republican and Democratic sides were now discussing a plan to raise the debt limit by about $2.4 trillion, as well as enact slightly larger cuts in spending, to be carried over two stages.
It's pretty clear that the Teabagger Taliban are winning. And that Obama has surrendered to the tyranny of simple solutions, and political expediency. Agreed to savage cuts that will hurt the poor and the elderly. And failed to make the argument that taxation is the foundation of a civilized society. And that the rich can and should pay more taxes.
The world is watching in fearful —and sometimes gleeful — fascination as the Tea Party drives a Thunderbird off the cliff with the president and speaker of the House strapped in the back. The Dow is hiding under the bed with a glass of single malt. Can it get more excruciating? Apple has more cash than the U.S. government.
Because that's so true you could die laughing. And this needs to be said:
Democratic lawmakers worry that the Tea Party freshmen have already “neutered” the president, as one told me. They fret that Obama is an inept negotiator. They worry that he should have been out in the country selling a concrete plan, rather than once more kowtowing to Republicans and, as with the stimulus plan, health care and Libya, leading from behind.
As one Democratic senator complained: “The president veers between talking like a peevish professor and a scolding parent.” (Not to mention a jilted lover.) Another moaned: “We are watching him turn into Jimmy Carter right before our eyes.”
Now I don't want to be too harsh on Obama because nobody can reason with fanatics who take their instructions directly from their God.
“Where’s the chapel?” Rep. Tim Scott (S.C.) asked as he emerged from an arm-twisting session with Majority Leader Eric Cantor Thursday night. The freshman lawmaker explained that he wanted to “go to the divine source.
”As it happens, the Lord gave Scott the wisdom to oppose Boehner. “I think divine inspiration already happened,” Scott said. “I was a ‘lean no’ and now I’m a ‘no.’ ” And he’s not much worried about default, saying: “I hope the Lord blesses our nation in a way that is measurable.”
And Obama must surely know that these Teabagger Taliban also believe that they have a divine mission to destroy the first black President, by whatever means necessary.
Which is why I find this blast from the past so chilling.
Mix rabid ideology, crazy religion, guns, a weak President, a decaying empire, a naked class war, and you have all the elements for a real disaster.
So how bad will this movie get?
Gawd. I don't know eh?
But at least as bad as this one...
But one way or the other be very afraid.
Because the Teabagger Taliban are torching America. The craziness is out of control.
I had heard about this ugly event. How when a group of Muslims held an event in Yorba Linda, California, to raise money for a women's shelter and services for the homeless, they had to run a gauntlet of hatred.
A mob of about 200 crazed teabaggers, angry at the presence of two speakers they called "terrorists", turned up and bombarded them with vile insults.
But I didn't realize how ugly and deeply disturbing it was, until this video was released yesterday...
Because I don't care what those rabid teabaggers were protesting against, NOTHING can justify that display of naked hatred.
I think what was most striking about that video is that the presence of small children didn't give these anti-Muslim protesters even momentary pause; they just continued screeching their ugly invective while staring at 4-year-olds walking with their parents. People like that are so overflowing with hatred and resentments that the place where their humanity -- their soul -- is supposed to be has been drowned.
And when these soul destroyed bigots are not attacking Muslims, they're attacking gay people.
Because bullies are bullies, and fascists are fascists.
Scott Sumer, a public teacher from Rockford, Illinois: "I brought my son here because this is what democracy looks like and feels like. He needs to see this. He needs to know this."
Jeff Skiles, US Airways co-pilot who helped safely ditch a packed passenger jet on the Hudson River in New York City in 2009: "On that day, there were many many heroes: pilots, flight attendants, traffic controllers, firemen, policemen, folks in the ferry boats, EMTs. We didn't abandon those passengers to save themselves. We all worked together to save everybody. That's a lesson that people in this capitol building need to learn ... Every one of them was union."
In recent weeks, Madison has been the scene of large demonstrations against the governor’s budget bill, which would deny collective-bargaining rights to public-sector workers. Gov. Scott Walker claims that he needs to pass his bill to deal with the state’s fiscal problems. But his attack on unions has nothing to do with the budget.
What’s happening in Wisconsin is, instead, a power grab — an attempt to exploit the fiscal crisis to destroy the last major counterweight to the political power of corporations and the wealthy.
That is what will happen to us if Harper and his teabagger Cons ever win a majority. And so is this.
Republicans in the House of Representatives are mounting an assault on women’s health and freedom that would deny millions of women access to affordable contraception and life-saving cancer screenings and cut nutritional support for millions of newborn babies in struggling families. And this is just the beginning.
These are treacherous times for women’s reproductive rights and access to essential health care. House Republicans mistakenly believe they have a mandate to drastically scale back both even as abortion warfare is accelerating in the states. To stop them, President Obama’s firm leadership will be crucial. So will the rising voices of alarmed Americans.
So when I wonder will Canadians finally be alarmed?
When will we take OUR struggle into the streets?
Isn't it time to ask Canadians. If the Cons are the Republicans.
I don't think there's anything wrong with sending half naked washroom mirror pictures of yourself to those you wish to impress eh?
Or remind how much they miss you.
As long as you keep your shorts on. As long as you can keep the pictures off the web.
And most importantly, as long as you are not a "family values" crusader, and a married Republican Congressman.
Yesterday, we reached out to Rep. Lee, whose support for "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and vote to reject federal abortion funding suggests a certain comfort with publicly scrutinizing others' sex lives.
"The Congressman is happily married," said Lee's spokesman when pressed for answers to our questions. "The only time he or his wife posted something online was to sell old furniture when they changed the apartment they keep in DC."
More importantly, if you’re going to send an enchanting temptress a shirtless photo over the Internet, don’t do so wearing dress pants and a belt while semi-flexing your biceps. It sends mixed messages. There’s only one man who could ever pull that off: Patrick Swayze, and he’s gone (but not forgotten).
It’s also, in my experience, quite difficult to be “relaxing at home,” as he says along with the pic, in dress pants and a belt. It screams desperate liar.
Today was the day to remember the victims of the Tucson massacre. A day to remember the dead, and the wounded like Gabrielle Giffords, who are fighting for their lives.
It was an ugly speech. There wasn't a trace of genuine sorrow in it. Just anger and self pity. Because it's always about Sarah.
You know that friend of yours for whom everything is always about them? Your dad is in the hospital and your cat just died and you lost your job, and yet she blows up at you because you forgot her birthday? Palin is that friend.
Even though it was obviously written for her, it made no sense.
She just doesn't get it. Doesn't understand that words have consequences. Or even that they have meaning.
It was tragic...and LAUGHABLE.
"When we say 'take up our arms,' we are talking about our vote."
The giant ego. The lizard brain.
The ignorant screeching demagogue who still doesn't understand that when she hastily took down this death map.
She might as well have pleaded GUILTY. The idiot.
I'm not saying that she drove Jared Loughner to open fire. But she will never be able to deny that she is largely responsible for having created an atmosphere of threatening violence, that has poisoned American politics.
Because let's face it eh?
This isn't democracy.
This is MADNESS.
And Sarah Palin was its midwife and its First Prophet. She was the one who accused Obama of being a terrorist, of palling around with the Weather Underground. She was the one who accused him of wanting to kill babies, sick people, the elderly and the disabled, with his healthcare "Death Panels."
She was the one who played to the paranoid fantasies of the old white racists who can't stand the idea of a black man in the White House. She was the one who urged her rabid followers to RELOAD. She was the one who put cross hairs on her opponents. She was the one the cameras followed.
How many other crazies are out there tonight I wonder? Staring at Palin's map. Licking her picture. And loading their weapons.
How much damage have Palin and all the other crazed right-wingers and American Taliban done to U.S. democracy?
How much horror is still to come?
Oh boy. Keep hoping for Gabrielle Giffords and all the other real victims of this tragedy.
Keep hoping that our neighbours can make their country a safer, saner, place.
Tell Palin she's not a victim. She's a political terrorist who deserves to be ARRESTED.
A Congresswoman is shot in the head. A judge, a nine-year-old girl, and four others are killed. Eleven people are wounded some of them critically.The madness.The horror.
Because Giffords is a Democrat, the Republicans are weeping crocodile tears, and claiming a crazy man did it.
But nobody can dodge responsibility for the kind of society America has become. A violent militaristic one, where racism still divides, religious fanaticism inflames the ignorant, and guns are too easy to get.
Where a mentally ill person can get hold of a powerful weapon.
Post a picture on his website.
And nobody hears his cries for help. Or recognizes the danger.
"WOW! I’m glad i didn’t kill myself. I’ll see you on National T.v.! This is foreshadow .... why doesn’t anyone talk to me?.."
"I don’t feel good: I’m ready to kill a police officer! I can say it."
Because it's just too crazy EVERYWHERE.
And the Republicans, and the tea baggers, and the right-wing-radio hosts can't dodge the responsibility for creating an atmosphere of violence.
No matter how it tries, the right cannot divorce itself from the pustulence of its violent rhetoric no matter how many times its practitioners say "not me, not me" after people are murdered for taking these vile imprecations to heart. A few crocodile tears from Glenn Beck won't cut it.
They noted that Jesse Kelly, a tea-party candidate who narrowly lost to Giffords, held a fundraiser at a shooting range in which he invited supporters to "help remove Gabrielle Giffords from office" by shooting an M16 with him. They pointed to an online map, posted by Sarah Palin, in which gun sites marked each congressional Democrat that the former Republican vice-presidential nominee wanted to defeat, along with her frequent use of shooting metaphors.
Oh boy. What's happening in the United States both horrifies and scares me. But I love and admire the many good people in that country. I share their struggle against the hatemongers of the rabid right, and I want to cheer them on to victory.
So this is what I would tell them. Make those Republican teabaggers WEAR this massacre. Use it to attack them harder them ever.
Make Sarah Palin EAT this map. Over and over again.
Tell them they're not patriots they're TERRORISTS.
Tell them if the founding fathers got hold of them, they'd horsewhip them or hang them.
Organize, mobilize, drive those crazies from power.
And above all make it clear to them that they don't speak for America.
Because you need them like you need a hole in the head.
The richest 1 percent of Americans now take home almost 24 percent of income, up from almost 9 percent in 1976. As Timothy Noah of Slate noted in an excellent series on inequality, the United States now arguably has a more unequal distribution of wealth than traditional banana republics like Nicaragua, Venezuela and Guyana.
For the first time in American history, then, social mobility has been replaced with class struggle. Europeans have always been mystified that poor people in this country don't rise up and throw potatoes at Donald Trump – instead, they make him a reality TV star. But that's because everyone here us sure they are going to be rich like him someday, too. Maybe tomorrow.
Which like Elvis, has left the building.
If the news outlets were actually reporting, they would tell us the honest and awful truth: the United States is a post-industrial empire in decline, like England or Belgium or worse (is there worse?). There is no next. We are at next.
These uninformed lost souls vehemently shout for "small government" and "less government handouts," but ask them if they'd like to lose their Social Security and Medicare and they smile and say, "Oh no, that stuff I like!" They don't know what the hell they want, yet that hasn't stopped them from being really, really angry anyway.
They're still looking for it.
In the 1950s...
So they're bound to be disappointed.
And the day they realize that they've been manipulated by the REAL elites.
Will be the day the second American revolution starts.
It was a cold, grey, fall day. All I could do was pull my hoodie over my head, stare at the Wall of Despair. And try to figure out which story was more depressing.
America elected Obama president, and America needs a strong president -- all the more so when he's under siege. But as Republicans gear up for the fight of their lives, Obama appears to be ironing his white flag.
Because who does Obama think he is? The leader of the progressives, or the darling of the lynch mob?
This story...
Because those poor sheep seem to love freedom more than he does.
And we all know it won't be long before the ruling teabaggers start screaming how DARE they build a slaughterhouse so close to Ground Zero? #!@#!#
So what’s up? Pundits worry more about fundamental rights than ordinary Canadians? Average Joes are too clueless to appreciate the slippery slope we’re on? Hard times have made people mean-spirited?
Or maybe they just think he’s guilty. Either way, Canadians seem determined to make up their own minds these days.
Because goodness knows the mob is NEVER wrong.
And my conclusion? All those stories are EQUALLY depressing.
Both countries have been taken over by crazy people.
They've got their teabaggers.
And we've got our ZOMBIES...
And of course the moral of my story is... the day progressives stop acting like sheep.
Will be the day those Cons stop eating our brains.
Who said there wasn't some good news to come out of last night's horror show in the United States?
Remember Carl Paladino, the teabagger candidate for Governor of New York? The homophobic zombie who declared that the "gay lifestyle was not valid."
Well I'm happy to report that he got clobbered by the Democratic candidate Andrew Cuomo.
In his victory speech, Cuomo took shots at Paladino and his Tea Party backing, saying: "They were trying to exploit the fear. They were trying to exploit the anger."
"The people of this state today said you're not going to divide us," Cuomo said. "You can try it somewhere else, but you're not going to sell that in New York."
And went out like a thug...
Golly. Who knew zombies carried orange baseball bats?
I could say a lot about last night's teabagger tidal wave, about the madness and the racism.
But right now all I want to say is that this right-wing freak is the new governor of Florida.
Despite his sordid background.
Scott's victory came despite relentless attacks from Sink over massive fraud at the hospital chain Scott founded, which led to his ouster and the company's payment of a record $1.7 billion fine. His supporters overlooked that history, accepting Scott's promise that he was guilty of no wrongdoing other than his failure to hire more auditors.
Scott was ousted by Columbia/HCA's board in 1997, days after FBI agents served warrants to search company facilities in six states and federal officials warned executives could face criminal charges.
You know...the guy who financed these ads...
And as if that wasn't bad enough, in Louisiana David Vitter was re-elected to another term in the Senate.
Despite his sordid record...
A Senator who paid hookers to dress him up in diapers, while attacking gay people in the name of "family values" is re-elected.
Oh boy. What more can you say eh?
Except that Stephen Harper and his foul Cons are Canada's teabaggers.
Harper wants to kill medicare more than he wants to do ANYTHING.
Obama was too soft on these evil reactionaries, and we cannot afford to make the same mistake.
They say it’s time to sell off and privatize schools, hospitals and public services. We should say there are some important things best done together – like good public education for our kids and good health care no matter how big your wallet is.
The United States is a corrupt and dying nation, Canada must LIVE.
The stunning rise of the Tea Party — which seems to have had spillover effects here with Rob Ford’s victory — shows how the wealthy have manipulated the anger following the devastating 2008 financial crash, and turned it into a battering ram for their own causes.
Don't call what's happening in the U.S. journalism.
On Larry King Live last week, commentator Ben Stein noted how the media were now running America. They choose the issues to amplify, they tell the people what they should think on these issues, they do it around the clock, and no one, not even a president as eloquent as Mr. Obama, can avoid being crowded out by the cacophony.
Because it's just propaganda...
And whatever you do, don't ever believe it couldn't happen here.
And here’s news for those of you still in shock: The real meaning of the Ford victory is that a true, reactionary Conservative can easily be elected in the 416 area code. With the right media strategy. Now, lie down with a cold cloth on your face for a while.
Because if Canada keeps on becoming more and more like Amerika.
And the Cons get their own news propaganda network.
We will wake up one day, in a country we don't recognize...
