There is nothing Obama can do right…

In the eyes of republicans, there is NOTHING Obama can do right. They refuse to give him credit for anything, no matter how much they might like it. It’s like an abusive relationship and Obama’s a hurt dog that keeps coming back to its master, begging to please, only to get beaten senseless at every trick preformed perfectly for the master’s amusement. I’m starting to think the president is somehow is mentally unstable.

Osama bin Laden is dead. Hunting him was one of the primary reasons (at least, officially) for why we invaded Afghanistan a DECADE ago. We hunted him down and killed him under Obama’s administration. But instead of making this an American victory, some conservatives are hell bent on making this a republican victory. (After all republicans = America and thus anything not republican ≠ America)

Lately I’ve heard a lot of talk along the lines of “Well, Obama’s not really responsible for killing Osama bin Laden since he wasn’t the one who pulled the trigger….”

You know what? If you follow that “logic” Osama bin Laden wasn’t really responsible for 9/11 because he didn’t fly the planes into the buildings… (But what am I say? Screw logic)

But now a lot of republicans are attacking Obama because apparently Osama was unarmed when we killed him. “How horrible was it that we killed an unarmed Osama bin Laden?!?!? The president is an evil evil man!”

I dare you, I fucking dare you to tell me republicans would be saying the same thing if Bush was the one who had an unarmed Osama bin Laden shot. There is no fucking way in hell republicans would be giving Bush shit for shooting Osama. They’d all be like “AMERICA!!!!! FUCK YEAH!!!!!!!111”

But no, the president is evil for killing the most evil man in the world simply because he puts a D by his name.

“You know, this really isn’t Obama’s victory because Bush was the one who started this whole thing. It’s really because of Bush’s policies that we’ve caught and killed Osama….”

I wish I was kidding, but that’s seriously what some of them are saying….

First off, Clinton (D) started the hunt for Obama before Bush ever took office, before 9/11. (But conviently ignore that unless you want to try and blame 9/11 on Clinton’s failed attempts to find Osama, at which point you’d also be ignoring the fact that the worst terrorist attack in US history happened on a republican’s watch)

Secondly, you’ll try to take credit for killing Osama because of policies enacted by Bush, but you won’t take credit for the economy crashing because of policies made by the exact same president?!?!?!

(Are you beginning to see how their minds work?)

Republicans do everything perfectly, democrats do everything horribly. Whenever something bad happens while a republican is in power, it’s the democrat’s fault. Whenever something good happens, it’s to the republican’s credit.

It’s the exact same “logic” they apply to god. God is on our side. Whenever something good happens, god did it. Whenever something bad happens, it’s because of our sinfulness and not following god. Everything happens for a reason. A tornado hits a house and kills an entire family except for one small child, “It was a miracle that the child lived! Isn’t god amazing?!” (Nevermind the fact that god allowed the tornado that just killed everyone else in the family) The game is rigged so god can never be put in a position of blame. Same is true for the republicans.

Not surprisingly, I’ve heard a lot of people attribute our killing Osama to god’s divine help. Yes laddies and gentlemen, the very same god who stood there and watched as 3,000 men,women, and children were butchered has finally decided to help us find and kill the man responsible after 10 years, $1,500,000,000,000, and 1,000,000 war dead. God works in mysterious ways eh?

It’s a great time to be a conservative

Last Wednesday at noon the republicans took control of the house with the vow to slash domestic funding and decrease the federal deficit.  They came in with a strong list of new rules. One of the biggest changes was “Slash as you go” instead of “Pay as you go.” This means that for every dollar in government spending you add, you must slash a dollar somewhere else. They also forbade anything that would add to the deficit.

But these are republicans, rules? principles? You’ve got to be kidding. Cue massive hypocrisy.

The biggest target in republican’s cross-hairs is the weak sauce healthcare reform. Unfortunately for them, the Congressional Budget Office (the non-partisan organization that crunches the numbers for everything the government does or is considering doing) came out and stated that repealing the health care reform would add $143 billion onto the deficit. That’s a mathematical fact provided by an independent accounting organization.

But then again these are conservatives. Reality and facts are what you want them to be.

The new speaker of the house, republican John Boehner simply replied “The CBO is entitled to their opinion.” The republicans tacitly admitted they knew the CBO was right because they then passed one of their first acts: giving themselves and exemption to their rule of “slash as you go” so they could kill healthcare and add $143 billion to the deficit. Bravo…. (Oh, and don’t forget, even when they kill healthcare, the republicans are planning on keeping their free healthcare that they get as US congressmen.)

But healthcare hypocrisy is not the only reason to celebrate! The republicans plan on gutting every protective legislative body they can. The FDA regulates businesses that make sure the food your family eats or the drugs you take aren’t poison? Kill it. The EPA regulates corporations that would dump toxic sludge in your neighborhood rivers? Kill it.

Yes ladies and gentlemen, they are going after protective legislation with a battle ax.  The goal is to put us back to the turn of the 20th century, where you were either dirt poor or one of those robber barons, where snake oil salesmen went from town to town bilking people of their money in return for poison, where tainted meat and vegetables made their way easily onto your dinner table, where environmental protection was only a dream. This is the goal.

Speaking of environmental protection, it’s official, there will be no improvement in the fight against global warming; the most dangerous and pressing issue facing us today. If we do nothing we may all die. We may very well push our planet out of the the knife edge thin “Goldilocks zone” where the conditions for life are just right, into a run away greenhouse effect that is currently cooking the planet Venus.

But that won’t happen. You know why? JESUS!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yep, denying reality (be it scientific or what the CBO says the numbers are) is mandatory for membership in the republican club house. A shinning example is John Shimkus. Johhny boy is trying to become the chairman of the committee responsible for oversight on those groups that regulate pollution, toxic waste, and the greenhouse gases that are cooking our planet. But have no fear! Even though all the observable evidence tells us that we are racing for the cliff edge, nothing bad will happen. Jesus won’t let it. God made this earth for us and he wouldn’t make it so we could corrupt it…. (original sin? releasing evil into the world? No? Guess he’s not big on reading his own book, but then again republican and hypocrisy are synonymous)

But the party continues! Now that the republicans are in control of the house they are promising non-stop investigations and witch hunts, even against organizations that don’t exist anymore.

Yet do you want to know the #1 reason right now is an amazing time to be a conservative? The icing on the cake? The piñata of goodies?

Because Obama is your bitch and no matter how bad your policies fuck up the country and the future of the world, ultimately he is president and there is a “D” by his name.  Obama just hired William Daley to be his chief of staff, replacing Rahm Emanuel. (Rahm who said liberals, ie the people who voted for Obama and make up the democratic base, were “fucking retarded.”) If you think Rahm is right wing and pro-establishment, get a load of Daley! Daley’s a right wing corporatist who works for JP Morgan and who wants to kill the consumer protection agency! There is no fucking way Obama is a liberal or has any intention of fighting the status quo! He is the status quo.

So republicans are vicariously living through Obama while pushing through their “kill all government agencies that don’t help the rich get richer” policies that, if they fail or fuck everything up, they can easily lay at the feet of the democrats just in time for the 2012 elections when they can do it all over again for another four years… Goddamn it’s a good time to be conservative!

Atheists are hate groups

So recently Obama met with The Secular Coalition for America and some right wing groups went nuts.

“It is one thing for Administration to meet with groups of varying viewpoints, but it is quite another for a senior official to sit down with activists representing some of the most hate-filled, anti-religious groups in the nation,” said Council Nedd, chairman of the religious advocacy group In God We Trust.

Seriously? Atheist groups are hate groups? We stand up for freedom of religion for all, and we’re hate groups? We stand up for separation of church and state and we’re hate groups?

Last time I checked, Atheists weren’t the ones protesting human rights. Atheists aren’t the ones killing gays and shouting “I hate fags!”. Atheists aren’t the ones who stone people or blow up health clinics. Atheists aren’t the ones who blow up restaurants and buses. Atheists are not the ones with a book, telling other people they are going to burn in HELL forever!

But yeah, other than that we’re totally hate groups. The idea that we fight for the equality of all human beings and stand up for reason and intelligent inquiry is just some conspiracy…

Dick Cheney and torture

Ah good ol’ Dick. I’d been thinking about writing this post for some time now, but after yesterday’s “dueling speeches” by the president and former VP I can no longer resist.

“Enhanced interrogation” is one of the most bullshit phrases I’ve ever heard. I mean, it’s so blatantly a new-speak euphemism it’s beyond me how some people can swallow it.

I find it very interesting that the one fall back position Bush republicans seem to have is “we kept the country safe! After 9/11 there were no successful attacks!!!” Yeah, well what about 9/11? Oh that doesn’t count? Let me guess, it was all somehow Clinton’s fault? What about all the time Bush spent playing golf and not reading the intelligence briefings before 9/11? The attacks did happen under republican watch.

Torture is illegal and wrong no matter what the Bush law team tries to come up with, no matter what they decided to name it. We executed Japanese war criminals after WWII for waterboarding. The really interesting thing that came out just recently is the story of how Alberto Gonzales was okaying torture months before the “torture memos” came out. He was doing this at a time when he was not attorney general, just Bush’s lawyer!

Check out this segment about it on the Rachel Maddow show.

Ali Soufan, the guy who first found uncovered the link between the 9/11 attacks and Al Qaeda was interrogating Zubaida and actually getting somewhere when he was pushed aside by a contractor, James Mitchell, working for the CIA. Mitchell, who had absolutely zero interrogation experience or training, developed a torture program that Gonzales signed off on.

Even if you accept the bullshit idea that just because a team of lawyers writes a magic piece of paper saying torture is ok, and that the US doesn’t need to abide by the Geneva conventions, the torture was going on before those lawyers wrote up that magical piece of paper.

I think a lot of republicans are very scared people. Dick Cheney, and the republican leaders know this and exploit it. I think he brought up 9/11 in his speech 24 times. He even opened by recounting the terror of that day. Am I scared? No. Yes there are people out there who want to kill us, but if we live in fear of them, they win. What Dick Cheney advocates is nothing short of destroying all the values we stand for in a misguided attempt to make us safer.

If we compromise on our values, then what do we have left? What have we then become? The terrorists will have succeeded in destroying America. Do I dispute that the people like Zubaida are bad people? No, but republicans like Cheney are so swept up in a blind, fear fueled rage that they think they are justified in stooping this low. They are so sure of their own righteousness that they can’t fathom anything they do as wrong. They see themselves as patriotic heroes, willing to do the dirty work to protect their country.

For this reason I don’t call them evil, but they are sorely mistaken. Their attempts at making us safer only give the terrorists a rallying point. It tarnishes our image in the world as “the good guys”. In a war of idea, this is crucial. The only way we can try to regain some of our lost image is to prosecute those responsible just like we prosecuted the Japanese war criminals.

Yeah, it may be hard to swallow, but if we don’t, then we have absolutely no right to claim that we are a nation of laws. By not prosecuting we will be saying that our laws don’t mean anything as long as you are sure enough of you’re own righteousness, and have a group of lawyers write up a magical piece of paper. What kind of foundation is that for justice?

Republicans want to secede? Let em

So just this last April the good old governor of Texas, Rick Perry, suggested that his state could secede and leave the United States. Also, just recently DailyKos commissioned a poll that found nearly half of Georgian republicans favor seceding from the country.  Another 31% of Texas republicans want to leave this the country. South Carolina and Oklahoma also recently adopted sovereignty resolutions.

These people make me sick. After a little over a hundred DAYS of not getting their way they are ready to destroy the country and secede. 100 DAYS!!!! Liberals had to put up with the republicans ruling the country for 8 YEARS!!! Whatever happened to “Country First”? These people accuse liberals of being un-patriotic for years, and after 100 days of not being in power they have no problem with ripping the country apart. But come to think of it, let the traitors secede.

Let them go. The US would be much better off without them. Ever hear of “Red State Welfare“? Yeah, that’s right, the red states take more money out of the federal government than they pay in. The Blue states end up paying in more than they take out, subsidizing the red states. Ironic considering conservatives accuse liberals of wanting to create a welfare state.

What also gets me is how these republicans complain that we are taking their liberties. Taking their liberties? WTF! This coming from the party that just spent the last 8 YEARS trying to destroy the constitution and bill of rights at every turn. This is the party that brought you such hits as warrant-less wiretapping, torture, and the patriot act.

No, the only liberty they want is the liberty to sit on their front porch and shoot black people and homosexuals with their guns while not paying taxes and sending their kids to churches instead of schools. I say let them go and cut off all federal welfare propping those states up.