How Many Times Do You Have To Get Knocked Down Before You Realize Who's Hitting You?

One of the great mysteries of our time is the large number of people who always, always, vote for people who will end up hurting them in some serious way.

The MAGAts are finding out that they were merely a means to an end, and the end is not going to be good for them.

Of course, they're just the latest "real Americans" to get fucked over by Republicans--and yet blame it on the Democrats, or the Blacks, or the gays, or the women, or...

Who began the full scale destruction of the middle class? Ronald Reagan.

Who shut down U.S. factories and then moved all the jobs to the Third World? The plutocrat owners of the corporations, 99% of whom vote Republican. 

Who wants to take away ALL of whatever remains of our tattered social safety net? Republicans. 

Take away food stamps, take away health care, take away consumer protection, take away ANYTHING that might benefit working class people? You guessed it. Republicans. 

Who wants to give Wall Street  the Social Security trust fund to "play"with? Gosh, could it possibly be the Republicans.

Who wants to give big business free rein to poison our air and water, to literally kill the planet, all in the guise of "deregulation"?  Republicans.

Who hates unions with a passion, even though a strong union presence raises ALL wages, union and otherwise? Republicans.

Who wants us all to just roll the dice on preventable illnesses, vaccines be damned? Republicans. 

All of these are facts. 

But, come the next election,  millions of "real Americans" will ignore all facts and vote their "beliefs". 

And they believe in their guns, their God, and their various hatreds.

And the only consolation for the rest of us, the "unreal Americans", is that they will continue to suffer and die for their votes.

But, of course, they will blame all of their suffering, all of their problems, on, repeat after me, the Democrats, the Blacks, the gays, the women, "them". 

 

Running On Empty

For a 2 Party political system to function properly, you need two functioning political Parties. That's the bare minimum.

However, if you have one Party that wants to govern, create laws that help people, solve problems in the society, et cetera, and one Party that wants to behave like the monkey house at an underfunded, failing zoo, hurling their feces and shrieking, then, well, you've got a problem.

Time after time it has been proven that the majority of voters don't want what the Republicans are trying to serve them. On gun control, on voting rights, on abortion, on the minimum wage, on the environment, on everything, the people have said, over and over, "Nope".

You would think that they would take the hint, and try to come up with some policies that people like.

But, no, that's way too hard for the feces hurlers. That would require a certain degree of thought. And where's the fun in thinking? Thinking is hard. 

It's so much easier to just shriek a little louder and hurl another turd. Oh, and throw in something about Jesus, too.

Take a minute and try to think of one thing, one piece of legislation, that the Republican Party has come up with to help the majority of the American people. Not the bankers. Not the corporations. Not the Billionaires. The majority.

Nothing, huh? Not a goddamn thing.

Tax cuts for the rich? More guns for everyone? These are their favored policies. And all the proof you need that the Republicans have nothing to offer. 

ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.

This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things

In a land chock full of people who glory in their Christianity and profess their love of Jesus and all he stood for--many while using use him and the Bible like a cudgel against the rest of us--isn't it curious that any attempt to help the poor and sick is immediately shouted down as SOCIALISM?

Paid family leave? SOCIALISM!

Universal health care? SOCIALISM!

Hot lunch programs? SOCIALISM!

Day care? SOCIALISM!

After school programs? SOCIALISM!

Free Community College? SOCIALISM!

Student debt relief? SOCIALISM!

Progressive taxation? SOCIALISM! 

Living Wage? SOCIALISM!

So, it seems that the reason we can't have nice things is that a large number of us have a fundamental belief that the poor can never be made to suffer enough.

I'm not sure which book of the Bible that's in, but it must be somewhere. Right?

More importantly, it is the chief operating principle of one of our two main political parties.

The Orange Old Deal (notes from a Republican think tank)

Ok. We all agree that this Green New Deal nonsense is a nonstarter.

For one thing, it's Progressive. And we're against progress. Always remember that. It's our operating principle.

Progress leads to fairness. Fairness is antithetical to everything we stand for. After all, fairness is the root of socialism. YIKES!

But we have to offer an alternative with a catchy name.

So...The Orange Old Deal:

Forget wind and solar and bio fuels. We're going to burn coal until there's not a lump of coal left. Because 30,000 coal miner jobs are much more important than the 350 million other American lives. (Let alone all of those billions of foreigners. Foreigners are so...foreign.)

Same thing applies to oil, by the way. Drill Baby drill! Remember, climate change is a liberal myth. Or a Chinese plot. You choose. The Koch brothers will be happy to fund you either way.

Fetuses are sacred. Guns are even more sacred. Health care isn't a right. Russia is our friend. Collusion is not a crime. Black people are dangerous. So are brown people. So are educated people. Especially educated women.

Looks like we are going to need to build a lot of walls.

Social Security will work better after we give all that money to Wall Street. We promise.

A living wage is whatever your boss says it is. You're lucky to have a job. So shut up and get to work.

Anything else?

Oh yeah. Always remember to wear your flag pins. Now repeat after me: We Love This Country So Much!

All Republican Women Must Be Suffering From Stockholm Syndrome

That is the only logical conclusion.

I know that logic has nothing to do with Republicans in general and Republican women in particular, but still, that is the only logical conclusion.

Why else would they continually vote against their own self-interests?

Equal pay for equal work. Maternity leave. Reproductive rights. Pre-school programs. After school programs. Universal health care. Social Security. Affirmative action.

All of these things are anathema to Republicans.

All benefit women.

And yet Republican women vote against them.

They are a textbook example of Stockholm Syndrome, literally sympathizing with their captors (Republican men).

Things Can Always Get Worse

I guess when you have a traitor in the White House, anything goes.

Drunk, sexual predator on the Supreme Court?

Why the fuck not?! Probably just "youthful indiscretion" anyway.

In the bag for the Saudi's? You bet! They have lots of money, after all. Besides, we shouldn't meddle in other countries' business. And really, what's one dead journalist, more or less?

Grab your ankles and bend over for Putin? With pleasure! Anything for your master.

Voter suppression? Gerrymandering? Sure thing! Some folks don't deserve to vote--know what I mean? And some other folks vote shouldn't count as much as a wealthy white male's.

Destroy Social Security and Medicare? Well, if our friends can make a buck out of it...Hell yes!

Undo everything positive about the ACA? Got to! Universal health care is the first step to socialism.

Stop Me If You've Heard This One...

Guy with an automatic weapon and thousands of rounds of ammunition walks into a...

Hotel. Bar. Schoolyard. Shopping mall. Office. Movie theatre. Government building. Church.

Just another bloody, bloody day in America.

And here's the thing: Apparently we will NEVER see the end of this.

It's part of our culture.

Mass murder is part of our culture. 

Like apple pie and baseball.

One of our cherished national crooks, Don King, is fond of saying "only in America".

"Mostly in America" is closer to the truth.

When this sort of thing happens elsewhere, as it very rarely does, the people of those countries demand action and their governments respond quickly and decisively.

Not here. No, our government sends out "prayers and condolences". All deeply felt, I'm sure.

But nothing will be done.

Because we care less about public safety and public health than we do about the right to bear just as many guns as you can afford. Like Jesus intended...

Listen: Somewhere, somebody is ranting about their Second Amendment rights being threatened.

Well, Fuck them.

It's The Voter Suppression, Stupid

As the various postmortems of the 2017 election continue to dribble in, there seems to be a somewhat consistent theme in many of them:

Hillary Clinton ran a terribly flawed campaign. She didn't do enough of this or she did too much of that or....Therefore it's her fault she lost.

Let's set aside the fact that she got almost 3 million more votes than our so-called President. (We all know that the only "real" Americans live in the heartland. Big city votes just don't count as much because those aren't real Americans.)

Though there were some faults with the Clinton campaign, the major problems she faced were as follows:

1) It is hard to run against a pathological liar, especially when the media seems to think his pathology is "amusing" and good for ratings.

2) This same media is devoted to the "both sides do it" meme, which allows any minor Democratic misstep to outweigh 1000 Republican lies.

3) James Comey's unprecedented behavior in the last days of the campaign.

4) President Obama's reluctance to loudly and repeatedly announce the Russians' ongoing interference.

5) The above mentioned Russian interference, the size of which we're still trying to figure out.

All of these things might have been surmounted, by the way.

But then there was one other thing, something completely un-American, that couldn't:

6) Voter suppression.

The one thing Republicans are really good at, perhaps the only thing* they're good at besides fund raising and scaring simpletons, is voter suppression. Every state controlled by Republicans has systematically made it harder for voters who lean Democratic to vote.

EVERY. SINGLE. ONE.

They can't govern worth a damn, but boy can they stop minorities from voting!

*I forgot LYING. That's really what Republicans are best at.

LYING.

"Republican" Is Now Officially A Synonym For Traitor

And for their 30 pieces of silver (it was probably hundreds of millions if not a couple billion, but since our country is rapidly devolving into a oligarchic theocracy I thought I'd better practice using a biblical reference) the Russians were able to buy themselves an American president!

And his nominal Party, too!

Who says there are no bargains anymore?! You just have to know how to shop...

The most powerful and richest country on the face of the earth is now essentially a vassal state of Russia.

And our so-called President is a puppet of Vladimir Putin. Nice, huh?

And all those Republican "patriots" who wrap themselves in the flag and the Bible at the drop of a hat...where are they now?

Why, they're making excuses for Der Trump, of course! Remember, he's "new at this."

As long as they're free to implement all of their regressive, stupid, and downright cruel policies, Trump can do whatever he wants to dismantle the various alliances of the free world, up to and including handing over state secrets to his boyfriend Vlad.

There's a word for that kind of behavior:

Treason. As practiced by traitors.