A little good news

You really have to admire the courage of the people who walked out of their jobs at Wal-Mart on one of the busiest days of the retail year, Black Friday--to fight for a better standard of living for all of their co-workers, and maybe even the poor saps at Target and Kmart who don't have it any better. Workers are little more than rabbit turds to the powers that be that run Wal-Mart (and Target and Kmart), and it takes a world of hope to fight back against such callous disregard for the welfare of one's own.

It's a lot like one man fighting a swarm of killer bees with a flyswatter, but as a wise man (Dave Edmunds) once wrote, from small things mama, big things one day come.

Peace,
emaycee

Oh, pretty please?

Seems one Charlotte Allen (never heard of her and may never again) suggested in the Los Angeles Times this week--seriously--that the ideal republican candidate in 2016 would be one Sarah Palin.  Leaving aside the fact that it's highly doubtful Palin would be willing to take a massive cut in pay for something as silly as serving her country, the main gist of Allen's contention (short version) is that since Palin is a woman, it will be much easier for women to vote for her (it wasn't the anti-woman message, it was the male messengers...riiiight).  There's some comparisons to Reagan, something about her being blue collar (again, riiiiight), having a single Mom daughter, yadda, yadda, yadda.  Nothing mind you, about her actually being qualified to be President.  Nonetheless...

I heartily endorse this proposal.  Fucking heartily.  I mean, winning back to back Presidential elections has been a real treat--and with Palin at the top of the republican ticket, it would just about guarantee a third straight Democratic victory.

I'm guessing the thinking is that after back-to-back assholes (McCain, Romney) got slaughtered by Barack Obama, it's time to give an idiot a chance.

And good fucking luck with that one.

Peace,
emaycee

Happy Thanksgiving, Part II

A poll was released this week that showed that 45%--that's right forty-five percent--of Americans would prefer to skip Christmas because of the financial stress.

I realize that we may be a bit different--the Beautiful Boy is eight and Frosty the Snowman, Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer, and Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town are still a lot of fun to watch, and the thrill of opening presents on Christmas morning hasn't waned due to Christmas lists ending the element of surprise.  We also don't go into debt for the next year to pay for it.  We're glad it only comes once a year, but it's still a happy time.

But you can see their point.  Christ, Black Friday now starts on Thursday night.  The amount of commercials on T.V. touting one half-assed store or another has reached the point where they rival those for political campaigns at the height of election season, which is really saying something.  Worse, the products they're selling are just the same shit in a different year.

We are probably a bit past the point where a roasted goose, some plum pudding, and a lively jig a la  A Christmas Carol is going to be a very special Christmas, but if we want to find the root of the problem we need look no further than corporate America, which always manages to turn everything it touches into more work than it's worth, while giving it all the joy of a dead tree stump.

Peace,
emaycee

Happy Thanksgiving, Part I

Donnie Downer reporting on this festive day....

Seems more Americans are using food stamps this Thanksgiving than ever before.  There's something inherently wrong in that--the wealthiest nation in the history of the world having so many with not enough means to fucking eat.  I know the losers on the right are quick to blame President Obama, or the black folk, or the brown folks, or too high of taxes, or too much regulation on Wall Street, but you've got to be tremendously naive to believe any of that malarkey.

There's been a systematic destruction over the last thirty years of the working class in this country and this is the upshot.  From ending company paid pensions to an ever increasing employee share of healthcare, from the disappearance of merit raises to the failure to index the minimum wage to the rise in the cost of living, the playing field has become littered  with the rubble of a dying American dream for far too many Americans.

How long do you suppose it is before the powers that be realize that it's going to get down right ugly when we have to begin to fight for the right to eat?

Peace,
emaycee

Apple and cherry pies

I have something of a sweet tooth (and a gut to match it) and have, over the years, bought a Hostess product or two.  I never much cared for Twinkies (boring to the taste buds is being kind) and Ding Dongs, Ho-hos, and Zingers have all gotten considerably worse over the years.  But their cupcakes (both the chocolate and the orange) and especially their apple and cherry pies were quite the junk food glory.

Yesterday Hostess announced that it is shuttering its doors after 80 years, costing over 18,000 people their jobs.  The usual suspects--Fox News, conservative media, the brain dead--are doing their best to spin this as the fault of a union refusing to accept a new contract.  In reality, it was a company asking its workers to completely capitulate, make wages that wouldn't support their families, while vastly overpaying their executives (their CEO was recently given a raise that was an increase of over 200% of his previous salary despite the company's financial troubles) whose mismanagement was responsible for much of the financial trouble the company had.  It was another vulture capitalist deal, where investors got their money and then the investment firm shit all over the workers.

I'm sure that my sweet tooth will find other junk food delights but you have to wonder how many more times American workers will get screwed while a few profit greatly financially before they wise up and the bombs--literally--start exploding.

It won't be class warfare--it will be survival.

Peace,
emaycee

Who wants to sharpen the guillotine?

Keeping in mind that in the past year one in five Americans has been short of money for food:

• Papa John's CEO John Schnatter is threatening to cut employee hours and charge more for his shitty pizzas because of Obamacare.
• Aetna CEO and mega-millionaire Mark Bertolini is threatening to lay off workers if corporate America doesn't get its way (less taxes for them and millionaires) in the fiscal slope negotiations.
• An Applebee's franchise owner is threatening to stop hiring and cut employee hours because of...wait for it...Obamacare.
• Another franchise owner, of Denny's, Dairy Queen and some other shit restaurant I never heard of is threatening to add a surcharge to his restaurant tabs and cut worker hours, again because of Obamacare.

Setting aside the fact that a) it's unseemly for fabulously wealthy people to complain because they lost a quarter due to a hole in their pants pocket, b) that most of us don't give a fuck what their day to day business problems are, we just want their products and services quickly, and c) especially for the restaurant owners, there's nothing like less help to kill your business...are these people the epitome of fucking stupid or what?

I mean, for fuck's sake, people are still really hurting financially and they're bitching about having to pitch in a few pennies to help provide healthcare to people who really need it?  Why don't they just wear sandwich boards when they walk down the street that say "PLEASE SHOOT ME!"

How they hell they ever got to the positions they're in is completely beyond me.

Peace,
emaycee

Bitter much (Part II)?

Seems that those perennial poor losers, republicans across America, are so unhappy over this last election that they're signing petitions to secede from the union

People who are much kinder than I are chalking it up to temporary disgruntlement and feel that people don't really understand what seceding would mean and don't really want to secede.  They're just really upset they lost.

The poor little fucking crybabies.

In case you're wondering, I'm not chalking it up to anything other than the fact that the only America republicans love is the one they envision in their tiny little brains, the America that doesn't exist.  America is messy and multi-colored, morphing and multi-cultured, and if that America doesn't interest you, then adi-fucking-os!

Seriously, for the most part all we'd be losing is a bunch of southern states that are little more than a big drain on the rest of the country.

In other words, don't let that open door hit you in the ass on your way out.

Peace,
emaycee

Bitter much?

As if we needed another reason to be glad that Willard didn't even come close to winning the Presidential election, comes his comments today that President Obama won because he gave lots of governmental gifts to Latinos, Blacks, and young people.

Guess those 47% comments weren't so far off the mark after all....

Anyhoo, don't suppose it had anything to do with the fact that a) Romney is an asshole, b) People still remember which party got us into our current economic mess, c) He ran a horrid campaign, and d) That people don't much care for republican policies?

It doesn't take a political scientist to realize that racism, homophobia, and misogyny aren't winning issues, unless of course, you're a republican, in which case the alternate universe you live in is from here to fucking Pluto removed from reality.

Peace,
emaycee

Dee-fucking-licious

For anybody who's wondering, that big, old cold dish of revenge I had last night was dee-fucking-licious!

Peace,
emaycee

Twenty-five reasons to vote for Obama: #1--...

In the end, I wish I had a really heart tugging number one.  I wish I had an intellectual reason that would blow away anyone who still cares that might be reading this.

Nope.  I've heard tell that revenge is a dish best served cold, and tomorrow I'm going to find me a big old ice cream dish, a big old spoon, and eat me a hearty helping.

Because after the last four years, after Rush Limbaugh's hoping that the President failed, after Mitch McConnell's assertions that the number one priority of Senate republicans was to make Barack Obama a one term President (and how sweet is it going to be, despite all the odds, of us holding onto the Senate majority tomorrow as well), after Ann Coulter's calling the President a retard, after all the bumper stickers calling Obama a moron, after the birthers, the truthers, the Obama's a Muslim, the Obama's a Socialist, after the Obummers, Keep the Change, One Big Ass Mistake America,, after the comments of he'll be gone in five months, four months, three months...the best reason to vote for Obama is going to be...

...the look on their fucking faces tomorrow night when they realize that Barack Obama is going to be President for four more years.

And even sweeter than that--especially considering the magnificent jobs he's done in the past four years despite republicans doing their damndest to destroy his Presidency--will be eight to ten years after he's left office when Americans look  at the President and Mrs. Obama like we currently look at Bill and Hillary Clinton:  with huge approval ratings and a sense that his Presidency was good for America and done the way it should be.

Peace,
emaycee

Twenty-five reasons to vote for Obama: #2--The Democratic Party

These programs, enacted since the Franklin Delano Roosevelt administration over the course of the last eighty some odd years, have one thing in common:

Social Security.  The G. I. Bill.  Medicare.  Medicaid.  The Food Stamp Act.  The Voting Rights Act.  The Affordable Care Act.  The Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.

The following also have one thing in common:

The successful management of World War II.  The racial integration of the U. S. military.  The space program which took us to the moon.  The ending of "Don't Ask Don't Tell."  The first sitting President to come out in support of full marriage equality.  The end of the Iraq War.  The killing of Osama bin Laden.  The end of the War in Afghanistan.

In case you have a case of Romnesia, all of these programs and actions occurred under Democratic administrations (in fairness, we reached the moon while Nixon was President but nobody other than some lameass republican would feel the moon voyage was his aspiration--it was JFK's).

You would be hard pressed--fucking hard pressed--to come up with the actions of republican administrations that have had such a positive impact on America.  Eisenhower's interstate highway projects.  Nixon started the EPA (which is a dagger in the heart of current day republicans, who would love nothing more than to completely dismantle it).  The Nixon administration was in office when the Vietnam War ended, but their role was such a fiasco as to make it a bit dubious.  Nixon opened the door to China (double-edged sword as now many of our products are made there by people earning less than a dollar an hour while we have many talented people out of work).  Some people credit Reagan for the fall of the Soviet Union (I don't).

In the end, Democratic administrations haven't made people more dependent on government, they've made government more responsible to its people.  I would hate to imagine where we'd be as a nation without the dreams of those who have lead, and continue to lead, the Democratic Party and our nation. 

Peace,
emaycee

Twenty-five reasons to vote for Obama: #3--The Last Line of Defense

There are those who believe--and they may be proven right eventually--that President Obama is willing to trade his legacy or his need to appear bipartisan for some sort of "grand bargain" on Social Security and Medicare, leaving two of our nation's greatest legacies with greatly reduced benefits.

But we don't know that.

We do know, though, that republicans have been hell bent on ending both since T. Rex had to dodge dinosaur shit while stalking his prey.

We don't know what's going to happen in the election of 2014, but we do know that the Antoinettes are as radical a group as has been in this country in generations.  They have no vision for going forward--they want to move us backward to the Gilded Age.

We don't know what four more years of Presidenbt Obama will bring but we do know that it won't bring an end to abortion, a decline in the gains we've made for LGBT issues, more bad justices on SCOTUS, further erosion of union influence, or a dismantling of the EPA.

And for all its faults, Obamacare will begin its most important provisions in 2014.

What another term for the President means is that we will have another four years where we have the last line of defense, knowing that no matter what batshit insane proposals get through our dysfunctional Congress that we have the President to veto them, that no matter what goofy fucking ideas gain public traction that we'll still have the President's bully pulpit to argue against them, that we will have an administration that is at least willing to acknowledge and listen to our ideals and not wave us away with the back of a hand that we'll spend four years daydreaming of severing.

It gives us four more years to elect more Elizabeth Warrens and more Tammy Baldwins, and that would go a long way toward insuring a  more progressive agenda.

Peace,
emaycee

Twenty-five reasons to vote for Obama: #4--The Continuing Class War

A recent Gallup poll showed that nearly one in five Americans have been short of money for food in the last year.  Think about that--this means that if you went to your child's school to see a play, and thirty parents showed up to watch their little munchkins, six of them have been short of money for food in the last year, in the wealthiest nation in the history of mankind.
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There's something a little bit fucked up about that.

And yet, Willard Romney and his minions would have you believe that if we just keep those Bush tax cuts, or better yet, reduce them even more, all will be well.  Or that if we just reduce regulations on the bastards of Wall Street--even though people going hungry is a direct result of their incompetence--that prosperity will fall upon us all.  And this is all done in such a way as to insinuate that the poor and the middle class just don't know any better and we just need to let our moral superiors take care of it.  As if the mother fuckers aren't already catered to enough.

Ever since President Bonzo fired over 11,000 air traffic controllers in 1981, in effect breaking the union, it has been all downhill for the poor and the middle class. From losses in pay, to losses in jobs, to losses in benfits (with the exception of the Clinton economy of the mid to late nineties), to losses in basic human services.  And yet any time some guy like me points this out, republicans scream "class warfare!"

Ya fucking think? 

They started the war.  We need to finish it, or else it won't be "tax the rich", it will be "kill the rich."

Peace,
emaycee

Twenty-five reasons to vote for Obama: #5--Income Inequality

Income inequality in America is the worst since 1774.  A large part of last year's Occupy Movement was to make income inequality a part of the discussion about America's future. A recent piece by Chrystia Freeland in The New York Times stresses that contrary to what the 1% believe, their unlimited wealth is itself under siege because they are killing the golden goose--history has shown that the more people that beneifit from the economy, the wealthier those at the top become, and that the reverse is true (she cites 14th century Venice as a prime example, and I'll, uh, just take her word for it).

I don't believe that if President Obama wins re-election he is going to step behind the curtain, pull a few levers, and the 99% of us who aren't fabulously wealthy are suddenly going to become so.  I do know that the President is at least talking about letting the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy end.  I know that as the Occupy Movement was in full swing the President was willing to acknowledge that income inequality is a threat to the future of our nation.

Compare and contrast that to republicans, who instead of trying to argue on the merits threw out lame ass sixties rhetoric about dirty hippies and made totally unsubstantiated claims about women being raped by Movement participants and defecating wherever they please.  Compare and contrast that to republicans like Mitt Romney who just wave their hand at income inequality as if it is a non-starter, that those wealthy fuckers at the top are creating job after job (all evidence to the contrary) and we need to just leave them alone and let them be.  Besides, America is a dog eat dog country, and those that don't make it...well, it's nobody's fault but their own.

Not my America.  It's about a hand up, not about a handout.  It's about when more succeed, we all succeed.  It's about looking after the least of our brothers and sisters.  It's about understanding that the more egalitarian our wealth distribution is the more it benefits us all in healthier Americans, better educated Americans, and ultimately, happier Americans.

President Obama by far and away gives us the better chance for the best outcome.

Peace,
emaycee