Category: National Politics

Foolish Phobia Friday

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Paranoid Parrot

1. Homophobia: From the Niagara Falls Reporter, as part of a story about why fighting is good for hockey. 

Ha ha! Gays! The ways in which the passage above is offensive are many, but to suggest that gays are not manly, or are emasculated; and to contrast the desirability of fighting versus homosexuality are idiotic and ignorant. Chances are, there are plenty of gay guys who could beat the living crap out of the author, so I fail to see the validity of the argument. 

Since that paper got a new publisher with a regressive attitude towards women and who expounds on “manliness”, this sort of thing is to be expected. 

2. Islamophobia: Member of Congress and renowned lunatic Michele Bachmann (R-Cloudcuckooland) refuses to be out-crazied by the likes of Allen West, so she had her own Joe McCarthy Moment this past week, “revealing” that the Muslim Brotherhood has infiltrated the highest levels of the federal government Islamo-Kenyan-Indonesian N0bama Administration. Actually, the term she used was downright pornographic, “deep penetration in the halls of our United States government”. When asked to clarify, she singled out Huma Abedin, who is the wife of disgraced Congressman Anthony Weiner and an aide to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Abedin also happens to be Muslim (married to a Jewish man, incidentally, thus proving that co-existence is possible). 

A writer for Salon summarized the six-degrees-of-terrorism in which Bachmann engages: 

As evidence, she pointed to Abedin’s late father, Professor Syed Z. Abedin, and a 2002 Brigham Young University Law Review article about his work. Bachmann points to a passage saying Abedin founded an organization that received the “quiet but active support” of the the former director of the Muslim World League, an international NGO that was tied to the Muslim Brotherhood in Europe in the 1970s through 1990s. So, to connect Abedin to the Muslim Brotherhood, you have to go through her dead father, to the organization he founded, to a man who allegedly supported it, to the organization that man used to lead, to Europe in the 1970s and 1990s, and finally to the Brotherhood.

Ms. Abedin’s office released this statement:

They are nothing but vicious and disgusting lies that have no place in reasonable political discourse. And anyone who traffics in them should be ashamed of themselves.

Finally, a homophobic nominally Christian woman from Minnesota is willing to stand up to the Islamic faith!  To his credit, Senator John McCain took the Senate floor to blast Bachmann, as everyone with a brain should. Always. About everything. 

3. Omniphobia: “traditional marriage” enthusiast and drug addict Rush Limbaugh claims that, “Bane”, the villain in the new Batman movie, was thusly named so that the Hollywood media elite (which is code, incidentally, for a different type of hatred) can equate Mitt Romney’s “Bain Capital” with evil, or something. Bane was actually created by comic book writers in 1993. So, you’d have to believe that it was a very prescient conspiracy, indeed. 

Send your suggestions to buffalopundit[at]gmail.com.

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Sweating the Small Stuff

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When Patrick Henry declared, “Give me liberty, or give me death!” he was totally talking about his freedom to drink corn syrup and caffeine at a volume vastly in excess of the average human stomach in one sitting. 

He would have totes ignored things like warrantless wiretapping, baseless airport harassment, indefinite detention, and drone kill lists. 

Forward, Randian masters! Return from the gulch and save us from big government and its job-killing cup regulations!

We Are the Job Creators

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A lot of what I learned as a political science major in the late 1980s is now obsolete – with a particular interest in Eastern European studies, all of my textbooks became woefully outdated between August and December 1989.  

But among my studies of why Weimar failed and analyses of Milovan Djilas’ New Class, I also recall that the American struggle for independence, the Civil War, and the European upheaval of 1848 were “bourgeois revolutions” and direct or indirect offspring of the Enlightenment.  A phrase that gets thrown about quite frequently in contemporary American politics is “class warfare”, but that’s absolute nonsense. The United States doesn’t have anywhere near the class conflict of, say, the UK. After all, we banned nobility and titles. 

The irony, of course, is that the notion of class struggle being a political struggle is an inherently Marxist concept. So, welcome to Marxism, Republicans!

These bourgeois revolutions generally replaced nobility and power-through-hereditary-entitlement with the rule of law and representative democracy. Some worked, others didn’t.  But in the United States, at least, the post-Civil-War 14th Amendment paved the way for the society we have today. But our national priorities and policies since the early 1980s have uniformly helped the very rich and harmed the middle class and working class. Unions are weaker, your purchasing power is stagnant, your earnings have stayed about the same.  Average Americans’ savings have declined, debt is up, trickle-down is a myth, and wealth has become ever-more concentrated, rather than spread around widely. 

So, as part of its “Ideas Worth Spreading”, the TED series of talks invited Seattle venture capitalist Nick Hanauer to speak on March 1 at the “TED University conference”.  Hanauer’s topic was income inequality, and he argued that it was the middle class, and not wealthy entrepreneurs who are the true “job creators”.  TED, however, won’t release video of the speech. Too political. Too controversial. So, here it is: 

It is astounding how significantly one idea can shape a society and its policies.  Consider this one.

If taxes on the rich go up, job creation will go down.  

This idea is an article of faith for republicans and seldom challenged by democrats and has shaped much of today’s economic landscape.

But sometimes the ideas that we know to be true are dead wrong. For thousands of years people were sure that earth was at the center of the universe.  It’s not, and an astronomer who still believed that it was, would do some lousy astronomy.  

In the same way, a policy maker who believed that the rich and businesses are “job creators” and therefore should not be taxed, would make equally bad policy.  

I have started or helped start, dozens of businesses and initially hired lots of people. But if no one could have afforded to buy what we had to sell, my businesses would all have failed and all those jobs would have evaporated.

That’s why I can say with confidence that rich people don’t create jobs, nor do businesses, large or small. What does lead to more employment is a “circle of life” like feedback loop between customers and businesses. And only consumers can set in motion this virtuous cycle of increasing demand and hiring. In this sense, an ordinary middle-class consumer is far more of a job creator than a capitalist like me. 

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Principle

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Xavier University has suddenly announced it will cancel birth control coverage for its employees. As Atrios writes, 

Obviously this is an incredibly principled move based on deeply held religious beliefs that they discovered about 5 weeks ago.

In other words, around the time that the GOP made contraception a campaign issue, and people began bleating about how the uniform application of a civil statute constitutes a violation of “religious freedoms”. What will race hustler Barry NObama think of next? 

Stimulus

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Although Republicans generally follow the thought-process that “stimulus”, or Keynesian pump-priming is a horror matched only by, e.g., Pol Pot’s forced agriculturalization of mid-70s Cambodian society, they seem to change their tune when the economic stimulant is related to military spending. Talk about cutting back on, say, the Niagara Falls Air National Guard Base and all hell breaks loose, regardless on whether it’s really needed. It’s all about the jobs at the base, and the ancillary jobs it creates; in other words, its economic stimulus effect whereby government spending creates economic demand. 

It’s so bad that when the Pentagon promotes its spending priorities for the next federal budget, Medicare-killing wunderkind Paul Ryan calls the generals liars. It’s good to see that Republicans are just as supportive of government stimulus as Democrats, would that they would be honest about it and instead of scoring political points against our Indo-Kenyan Muslim usurper “President”, that they would put country first. 

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Trayvon Martin: Reality Check

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[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5OiLQjUcOU]

That’s police surveillance video taken about 4 hours after Trayvon Martin was shot & killed. It shows George Zimmerman at the Sanford Police Station, in handcuffs, before his release. He doesn’t look too hurt here. At all. So, let’s examine the right-wing and racist freakout over Trayvon Martin and the outrageous attacks on him and his character. 

So far, nothing has been revealed to rebut the fact that the police expressly instructed George Zimmerman to not chase down Trayvon Martin.

So far, nothing has been revealed to rebut the fact that Trayvon Martin was completely unarmed at the time of his killing.

So far, nothing has been revealed to rebut the fact that George Zimmerman used deadly force to “defend” himself against a young kid armed only with snacks, who was trying to defend himself against a predator who had hunted him down. It’s quite likely that in Trayvon’s mind, this crazy man who chased after him could have been trying to rob him. Or kidnap him. Or worse. If anyone had a right to self-defense, it was the teen who was being attacked by the so-called, self-proclaimed “neighborhood watch” captain. 

By the way, when you’re part of a “neighborhood watch”, you’re supposed to watch. If you see something, you call the cops. You don’t play Batman. 

When this thing goes to court, all that crap about Trayvon’s school conduct, Zimmerman’s past arrests, and other extraneous nonsense is not going to be in front of a jury. What happened that day in that gated community, will. Based on that, I hope Mr. Zimmerman has a fantastic lawyer. 

Not to be outdone, Buffalo’s most reactionary and unentertaining Brian-the-dog-from-Family-Guy impressionist has this to say on his Facebook page: 

Funny. I own three or four hooded sweatshirts. None of them look like this. I guess wearing a hooded sweatshirt is exactly the same as being in the Klan, and clearly people who wear hooded sweatshirts deserve to be shot and killed when armed with Skittles. 

Fear & Propaganda

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Lost amid the sound and fury of the race for the Republican nomination is how candidates Romney, Santorum, Gingrich, and even former candidates like Cain, are really focusing on issues and not engaging in race-baiting or hyperbole. 

Nah, I’m just kidding. The issues are secondary. This is all about how Obama has destroyed / is about to destroy America, grandma, apple pie, and Chevrolet. Why, yesterday Obama got caught on a hot mic telling Russian PM Dmitry Medvedev the truth – that missile shield talks need to wait until after the election, at which time Obama will have “more flexibility”. 

Given that Mitt Romney went on record yesterday all but demanding war against Russia, Obama’s position is a bit more sane. 

So, here are some pretty awesome advertisements that Santorum and Cain’s PAC have put out in recent days. I’d call these “blatantly false propagandistic fearmongering”, but Limbaugh and his clones tell me only Democrats do that. 

 This one is from Rick Santorum. It’s got everything – how Obama destroyed the economy while he was President in 2008, how Ahmadinejad is going to rocket-destroy America and, like, take it over – maybe with Obama’s help, because he’s a seekrit Kenyan Mooslim!

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DApjHZq9o7M]

Herman Cain isn’t going to be outdone by the patent insanity of a Rick Santorum. So, he’ll start out by displaying his hatred for “stimulus” by having a little kid kill a goldfish: 

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYN-Awrq3og]

And, not content with sanctioning the killing of a 10-cent fish, Cain pays for some really poor CGI showing a guy shooting a bunny rabbit in mid-air. 

Because nothing says, “I disagree with Keynesian economic pump-priming” like blowing a rabbit into little bits!

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdpN5C1_flQ]

Your 2012 GOP: Totally out to lunch!

Fear & Propaganda

11 comments

Lost amid the sound and fury of the race for the Republican nomination is how candidates Romney, Santorum, Gingrich, and even former candidates like Cain, are really focusing on issues and not engaging in race-baiting or hyperbole. 

Nah, I’m just kidding. The issues are secondary. This is all about how Obama has destroyed / is about to destroy America, grandma, apple pie, and Chevrolet. Why, yesterday Obama got caught on a hot mic telling Russian PM Dmitry Medvedev the truth – that missile shield talks need to wait until after the election, at which time Obama will have “more flexibility”. 

Given that Mitt Romney went on record yesterday all but demanding war against Russia, Obama’s position is a bit more sane. 

So, here are some pretty awesome advertisements that Santorum and Cain’s PAC have put out in recent days. I’d call these “blatantly false propagandistic fearmongering”, but Limbaugh and his clones tell me only Democrats do that. 

 This one is from Rick Santorum. It’s got everything – how Obama destroyed the economy while he was President in 2008, how Ahmadinejad is going to rocket-destroy America and, like, take it over – maybe with Obama’s help, because he’s a seekrit Kenyan Mooslim!

Herman Cain isn’t going to be outdone by the patent insanity of a Rick Santorum. So, he’ll start out by displaying his hatred for “stimulus” by having a little kid kill a goldfish: 

And, not content with sanctioning the killing of a 10-cent fish, Cain pays for some really poor CGI showing a guy shooting a bunny rabbit in mid-air. 

Because nothing says, “I disagree with Keynesian economic pump-priming” like blowing a rabbit into little bits!

Your 2012 GOP: Totally out to lunch!

Unjustified Homicide of Trayvon Martin

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Imagine your 17 year-old kid is at home watching college basketball, and during a break in the action he goes to the 7-11 to get some iced tea and Skittles. On his way back, as he’s walking through the apartment complex, he sees a hulking man in an SUV, talking on the phone and staring ominously at him. Your kid stops and checks the guy out. Something doesn’t fit here. It’s scary. In fact, your kid is on his own phone with his girlfriend. She tells him to run. He says no, he’s just going to walk fast. After all, while he’s scared of this weird guy in the truck, he’s not doing anything wrong.

The man gets out of his car and starts chasing your kid. Your kid runs too, but he’s no match for his larger predator. They end up wrestling on the ground. The whole neighborhood hears the tussle, and calls to 911 are made. On one of the calls, your kid’s voice is clear as a bell, screaming, pleading for help – for this unprovoked attack to stop. Suddenly, a shot rings out. The 911 caller gets away from the window. The screaming has ended abruptly. Your child is lying on the ground, wearing a hooded sweatshirt, bleeding from his chest.

He’s shot by a guy with a police record involving violence; a part-time rent-a-cop security guard. A guy who packs a 9mm while running a neighborhood watch in a gated apartment complex.

I mean, there had been 8 break-ins at the complex in recent months, all allegedly done by young black kids. Trayvon Martin was a young black kid. Ipso facto, right?

When the cops come and find the shooter and your dead kid, the shooter is taken into custody for an investigation to take place, but he’s quickly released. You see, you live in Florida, and the self-defense statute has been amended to take away any requirement that the person claiming self-defense first retreat before using deadly force; under this new rule, drafted and promoted by the powerful gun lobby, a gun owner can “stand his ground”.

Meanwhile, your kid is dead on the ground – armed only with an Arizona iced tea and Skittles – for the crime of, at worst, looking at someone funny.

Trayvon Martin wasn’t breaking any law when he was shot and killed. And when all the nonsense shakes out, we’ll quickly learn that this case doesn’t really invoke the much-criticized “stand your ground” law. Martin’s killer, George Zimmerman, didn’t “stand his ground”; he affirmatively chased Martin down before shooting him. He was a predator hunting what he called “f*cking coons” on his 911 call to Sanford Police – the same police department that instructed Zimmerman to not pursue Martin.

It’s not just the facile prejudice that Zimmerman had about a black kid wearing a hoodie that’s distressing here; Martin, after all, had every right to be in the complex – he was at his father’s apartment there.

There was no moral or legal justification for this homicide. In fact, the police department here appears to have interfered with its own investigation – to call it a cover-up isn’t out of line. As witnesses recounted their stories – some said the shooter yelled “help”, others said it was Martin, the police on the scene made sure to “correct” them and insist that it was Zimmerman who yelled for help.

Help from what – a kid who weighed 100 lbs less, who had tried to flee from him?

“Stand your ground” may indeed be a horribly misguided law that has led to terrific difficulty in prosecuting gun crimes in Florida, but this case doesn’t even invoke that statute.

I think it’s pretty clear that George Zimmerman committed a murder. He shot and killed a kid who was unarmed and unable to harm him. He had no reasonable fear of imminent death or severe bodily harm – he had subdued his victim to the point where Martin was screaming for help.

The shot to the chest shut him up, and now the only criminal running around that gated apartment community is its own self-appointed “neighborhood watch captain”.

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