Dubya: Popularity Is Fleeting

And he should know.  Can anyone point out another leader that had garnered 90% approval rating from Americans, only to fall to 23% by the time he left office?  I don’t think so.  It wasn’t because he wasn’t affable.  It was because he demonstrated how little he and his cronies cared about American values and priorities.  He occupied a country that had nothing to do with 9/11.  He put the final set of nails on the economic catastrophe that Reagan started.  He lied about anything and everything that Americans cared about.  Then he tells a crowd that they shouldn’t waste energy chasing popularity.  Well, he should know.  He never did.  He did what he set out to do, what leading conservative “thinkers” told him to do.  And the results were disastrous.

Oh, and to CNN’s Alexander Moody, this is a flat-out lie:

The president himself saw wild popularity swings during his eight years in the White House.

Wrong, wrong and wrong.  He had a clear, steady decrease through 7 years, all of his own doing.  You could argue that Truman saw wild popularity swings during his Presidency.  Maybe even Reagan or H.W. had “wild” swings.  But not the Boy King.  He did exactly what he wanted to do, regardless of what people thought of him.  The only question left for him is whether those attending the motivational speaker meeting should follow Bush’s advice.  My advice is stay as far away from Bush’s as possible, lest you end up like he did: among the worst ever.

By the way, this clown obviously learned nothing about being used:

“We are safer than we were before 9-11 because of President Bush,” Powell said.

Not according to any intelligence analyst currently employed, Mr. Powell, and you know it.  To say otherwise reinforces the disgrace you set upon yourself by lying for Cheney.

Obama’s Admin: Fox Not Legitimate

It’s time to throw some parties!  It’s not the first time it’s happened, and I don’t at this point think it will be the last either.  Two Obama advisers went on two different Sunday TV talk shows and stated unequivocally what most rational people have thought to themselves for years:

Fox is not a legitimate news outlet.

They’re an biased entity with access to the airwaves.  They have opinions, which everyone and every entity has a right to have.  But having an opinion doesn’t make one a journalist or a news network.  They can think of themselves as whatever they want, but it’s impressive and encouraging that the Obama administration is forcefully keeping Fox away with a 20′ pole.  After all, there are thousands (millions?) of opinion-holders out there.  They can’t all get into Presidential press briefings.  Those should be reserved for widely accepted news outlets.

The difference between this administration and the Bush cabal in this arena is stark.  Bush’s cronies used Fox and other non-serious groups (remember the non-credentialed gay prostitute who was allowed into press briefings to lob softballs to the Boy King?) to push their agenda on America by force.  Obama and his staff are serious about actually governing the country.

Gun Dealers Break Laws; Conservatives Don’t Care

I always wondered how airtight the federal law to require a background check be done on potential gun purchasers were.  I wasn’t sure private gun sellers would actually, you know, follow the law.  More on that in a sec.  Well, it turns out, a majority of private gun sellers in an investigation didn’t follow the law!  The law is quite simple, you see.  If a private seller “knows” or “has reason to believe” the buyer is a criminal, it is illegal to sell the gun to them.  So let’s set up a crazy hypothetical situation: imagine if a potential gun buyer told a private gun seller that they wouldn’t pass a background check.  According to the law, what do you suppose the seller is supposed to do?  Not sell them the freaking gun!!!!!

Now, I didn’t suppose that a majority of private gun sellers would break the law, knowingly or otherwise, but reality has a mean way of breaking you down.  A full 63% of private sellers at gun shows tested were all too willing to sell to buyers who admitted up front that they would fail the background test.  When conservatives talk about “American values”, it would be nice if they would occasionally include following laws.  But as has become all too clear, conservatives don’t think laws actually apply to them.  They’re special!  Laws are for dirty liberals, not country-loving patriots, dont’cha know?  The video at this link demonstrates how many true patriots this country really has.  Watch it in all it’s glory.

A quick question: how many convicted felons have acquired guns this way?  How much extra crime has been committed in this country thanks to law-breaking gun “rights”-as-a-religion fanatics?

On a related note, pay attention to the sellers.  Do you detect a pattern?  Aside from the fact that too many of them laugh when they’re told the buyer wouldn’t pass a background check, that is.

Oh, the 2nd part of the lede?  That’s an acknowledgment to the diarist’s point that conservatives hosed their shorts getting ACORN’s funding revoked.  Where are they on real, excessive law breaking?  Looking for their next mythical liberal conspiracy to break up, probably.

Where Are The Angry Hordes Today?

With news that billions in American aid to Pakistan wasted due to lack of Pentagon planning and accounting, I’m sure we’ll hear about all those truly concerned grass-roots-types calling their Representatives and Senators and demanding that the government stop foreign aid to the nuclear country.  Right?  Right?

I mean, after all, their outrage wasn’t manufactured or focused on what a handful of corporations wanted them to be, was it?  That’s what we kept hearing from all of them – “Nobody is telling me to be out here with my Obama=Hitler sign.  I’m real and I’m angry, dammit!”.  So where are they today?  Are the phone lines in Washington jammed with thousands of angry citizens demanding to know why the Pentagon threw away $6 Billion?  Are the servers crashing from all of the traffic as people demand to know via email where their taxpayer dollars are?

Of course they’re not.  Because the outrage was manufactured.  Because the military can do whatever they damn well please with taxpayer dollars.  The righties aren’t concerned about their fellow Americans’ health.  Somehow, they’re just fine with the idea that $6 Billion of our dollars went to Pakistani economic subsidies, including fighting with India, instead of tracking down and killing terrorists.  They’re not truly angry that the government is getting involved with things … as long as the government is involved in the things they want it to be.  The tea-baggers and anti-health care reform mobs that descended on town halls this summer were as fake as can be.  Few of those people would have gotten out to the town halls if they weren’t organized by firms who specialize in such things.  The fact that the people didn’t know they were being used could be considered sad.

But I don’t waste any pity on those who don’t truly care for their fellow citizens.  They deserve to have billions of their tax dollars flittered away by their political leadership.

Nobody ‘Stole’ The Cup

I’m a hockey fan.  I’m not the biggest hockey fan ever, but I do love to watch and play the game.  I got pretty spoiled by having the Quebec Nordiques move to Denver in 1995 to become the Colorado Avalanche and then win the Stanley Cup in 1996, especially since no other major sports franchise had won a championship at that time in the Mile High City.

I have a healthy respect for the tradition of the game and the NHL.  As an Avs fan, I have a special place in my mind reserved for the Detroit Red Wings.  They’re a good hockey club.  They’re so good, their fans are arrogant.  So I love it when they lose anything – be it one game or Game 7 of the Stanley Cup playoffs as they did back in June.  That loss capped off the best week of my life.

All that aside, it is disappointing as a sports fan to read this kind of stupidity:

It’s been almost four months since that dramatic June night at Joe Louis Arena when the Penguins held on to defeat the Detroit Red Wings and steal the Stanley Cup from the defending champions.

Nobody ’stole’ the Cup, Scott Burnside, no matter what the Wings or their fans might tell you.  Pittsburgh played every game of that series, the same that Detroit did.  They earned the Stanley Cup as much as the Wings earned it in 2008.  The 4th best team (in regular season) from the East beat the 2nd best team from the West in a 7-game series.  By the way, Detroit was up 3-2 in the series before dropping the last two games.  Nobody forced them to lose those games.  They just played a little worse than Pittsburgh did.

Writing things like Pittsburgh ’stole’ the Cup from the defending champions is an attempt to cheapen their achievement and that’s immoral.  Get over your sour grapes, already.

Faux Outrage & The 1st Amendment

Remember when MoveOn.org placed a full-page ad in the New York Times on Sep. 10, 2007 about General Patraeus that the right-wing nutjobs found oh so objectionable?  Was the ad an expression of free speech or not?  It was an expression of free speech, no matter how distasteful anybody found it.  That’s what free speech is all about.

Remember how Congress passed amendments condemning the ad?  Do you remember who pushed those amendments?  Republicans, that’s who.  The entire right-wing fringe movement was all up in arms about the ad and how disgusting it was.  Why didn’t they defend MoveOn for expressing their 1st Amendment rights?  Because it was all about the politics to those sickos.

Now that the right-wing extremists are showing up at town hall meetings with disturbing material, how are Republicans in Congress and the corporate media responding?  It’s all about the first amendment, of course.  I call b.s.  It’s still all about the politics – they’re not interested in any rights, only politics in its most primal form.  In this case, the first amendment rights happen to work in their favor.  As vile and disruptive as the Deathers are, Republicans will defend them – no matter what.

Democrats should learn a lesson.  When someone is expressing their 1st Amendment rights, you should stand up for them.  It doesn’t matter if it was MoveOn, where they failed to stand up for the group’s 1st Amendment rights, and it doesn’t matter if it is the Deathers, whom they’re silent to similarly condem.  By failing to stand up for MoveOn, Democratic elected officials have demonstrated it’s all about the politics to them too.

Bill in Portland Maine’s Excellent Question

Dear Conservative Free-Market Capitalism Muckety Mucks,

Why haven’t you fixed the economy yet?

It’s a shame it took a serial snarkist to ask the most pertinent question of this whole Great Recession.  Want more?

I’m asking because conservatives in fancy suits keep telling me—okay, screaming at me—about how fundamentally sound their ideas are, and how the private sector, not the government, is our best and greatest hope for making the economy leap back to life…

We’ve been in a recession since December of 2007. Why aren’t things all better yet for ordinary Americans? You were so awesome at making the mess, but cleaning up the pile of poopies you left on the nation’s living room rug seems to be proving a bit more, um, problematic. Why?

You’ve got an army of giant, throbbing brains in your right-wing think tanks working day and night. The Heritage Foundation has never been wrong…just ask ‘em! And the U.S. Chamber of Commerce never misses an opportunity to proclaim their infallibility in multimillion-dollar ad campaigns. So…why are we still in Sucksville?

And don’t try and hide behind the fact that there’s a Democrat in the White House. He’s been shoveling money into your coffers faster than Sarah Palin shoveling bullshit through Twitter.

Fix the damn economy on Main Street already, you Ayn Rand-worshipping free-market capitalist wizards. Show us how it’s done. Be the heroes we’ve been holding out for. I’ll check back on your progress in 30 days. I expect Americans to be squatting over solid gold commodes by then. That’s how much I believe in you.

They can’t, of course, because their version of the mythical “Free Market” isn’t designed to help the little person.  It’s always been designed to make the rich filthy rich.  It’s always been designed to screw the little person over.  But they’re damn fine questions.  And I know Billy will check back in 30 days. 

Anti-American Republicans Undermine Obama Israeli Policy

That’s the only thing I get from this ridiculous news article:

The Obama administration’s policy on Israel is misguided, puts too much emphasis on the issue of settlements and ignores the bigger threat of a nuclear-armed Iran, a U.S. delegation of Republican congressmen visiting Israel said Thursday.

The Cons tripped over themselves rushing to microphones to denounce Democrats during the Bush “presidency” when Democrats questioned foreign policy plans that were clearly not in America’s best interest.

Had a Democratic contingent done the same thing from 2001-2008, you can be sure the corporate media would have been only too happy to spread the Cons’ disruptive message.  Now that Obama is in office, it’s suddenly okay to criticize the President’s initiatives and prerogatives.

That is Anti-American.

Corrupt Democrat Found Guilty

And I’m pleased he was found to be so.  Corruption doesn’t care what political party a person belongs to.  This time, it was a corrupt Democrat who got caught.  There were certainly plenty of Republicans who were similarly caught in the past few years.  But the story of William Jefferson is fairly bizarre.

Rep. Jefferson took more than $400,000 in bribes and was seeking millions of dollars more in order to broker business deals in Africa.  The bizarre part?  FBI agents found $90,000 in his Washington home’s freezer.  That’s one way of keeping your cash cold.

Interestingly, the judge in the case allowed Jefferson to remain free on bond, despite possible connections to Africa which could entice him to flee the country.  That would be a big slap in the face of American Justice.

Crazy Suburban White Men Continue Their Rampages

Another story theme the corporate media doesn’t cover is the excessive number of crazy, suburban, white men who go on shooting rampages in their communities.  If you’re at all grounded in reality, you would recognize that if any of these people were a minority, that characterization would be in the headline.

As usual, you had to wait until they found a photograph of the guy to figure out if he was white or not.  As usual, a mentally ill American citizen killed and maimed innocent people before killing himself.  And until America realizes there’s a problem, it will do nothing to fix it.

My condolences to the families who have lost loved ones in this senseless act of terrorism.