As many Americans today put the finishing touches on their New Year’s Eve plans, democrats in congress are trying in vain to reason with the fools and crooks across the aisle.  President Obama has been bending over backwards to try to pacify these scumbags by offering up concessions that go against what he campaigned for during the last election, culminating with his offer to cut Social Security benefits in order to get a deal to avoid the so called fiscal cliff.  I’ve just read that Vice President Joe Biden and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnel were up late last night negotiating.  To that, all I can say is thank you Joe, somebody needed to get President Obama away from the poker table before he folded with a hand full of aces.

President Obama re-won the White House, and democrats gained seats in both the Senate and House.  All national polls show overwhelming support for raising taxes on the wealthy as opposed to draconian spending cuts to balance the budget.  The President campaigned on letting the Bush tax cuts expire on those making over 250 thousand dollars, and said that Social Security would not be part of the negotiations over the fiscal cliff.  Going over the cliff means that everyone’s taxes will go up on January 1, and everyone knows that the republicans will be to blame.  The republicans will be the party that raised everyone’s taxes because they were not allowed to keep their tax cuts for the top two percent of the wealthiest Americans.  And despite all this leverage, Mr. Obama has turned out to be the republicans’s best ally, and the democrats’ weakest negotiator.  And the republican tea baggers in the House, led by John Boehner, are either too stupid to realize this and take a deal, or they have come to view Mr. Obama as the number one worst poker player on Capital Hill, and sense that he can be taken for everything we own if they bluff and threaten him long enough.  Thanks Vice President Biden for stepping in, but now, it’s time to walk away from the republicans that are holding this country hostage in the name of the top two percent, and let the chips fall where they may.

When all your friends who voted republican this past time around start complaining that their taxes have gone up, you remind them it is the republicans in office who flat out rejected cutting 98 percent of Americans’ taxes, because the rich 2 percent they represent didn’t get to keep their Bush tax cuts.  You remind them that these scumbags they voted for are the reason for their tax hikes, and all the new across the board spending cuts.  You remind them that the republicans they voted for cared so much for their millionaires’ and billionaires’ tax cuts, that they would rather bring down the entire country out of spite.  You remind them that the republicans they voted for demanded Social Security and Medicare cuts before raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans.  You can also remind them that it was the Bush tax cuts, that were supposed to expire many years ago, along with the two wars, and the Great Recession, that caused the deficit the republicans pretend to be so worried about now.

Maybe, with a new year, and new tax hikes for all, and  economically damaging spending cuts implemented, maybe, just maybe, a super majority of American voters will wake up and hold the republican party accountable.  Then, it might be possible that enough responsible republicans in office will stand up to their Tea Bagging, right wing nut jobs, and negotiate in good faith instead of hostage taking and sabotage.  Until we are willing to call their bluffs and actually fight them, the republicans will continue their scorched earth policy of hostage taking and extortion.   Maybe President Obama will finally realize that unless you stand up to a bully, you will keep getting bullied.

But hey, I’m an optimist.  Happy New Year !  Here’s how much I feel like jumping:

 

 

 

 

My blood reached the boiling point tonight as soon as I watched “The Ed Show” on MSNBC tonight and learned that President Obama is offering the republicans cuts to Social Security benefits in order to reach a ‘fiscal cliff deal’ by changing the way the cost of living is calculated for senior’s benefits to go up each year.  And it appears that Nancy Pelosi is ready to go along with it.

I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised, given President Obama’s history of conceding way too much to the crooks across the aisle, but I was hoping that after his reelection and the democrats’ gains in the election as well, and with polls showing overwhelming support for raising taxes on the wealthy and not cutting Social Security, that the President would grow a spine and stick to his guns this time. It even appeared recently that he has gotten his mojo back, but sadly, pathetically, he is already offering big concessions on taxes by raising his threshold to 400 thousand a year instead of 250 thousand for whom the Bush tax cuts will expire, AND, he is now offering to reduce the already small amount of increases seniors receive in their Social Security benefits as a cost of living adjustment.  And when asked about his plan, House Minority leader Nancy Pelosi indicated she would be willing to go along with it.  I guess this too should not be too surprising,  since she has gone on record in the recent past, along with my good democratic senator from New York, Chuck Schuummer, as offering republicans no tax increases for people making 1 million dollars a year or less.  Apparently, both of these otherwise fine democrats, are so wealthy that they consider those in their own personal circles making 900 plus thousand a year as middle class, and deserving of a tax cut. Unbelievably out of touch, or just cowards when negotiating with the hostage taking minority party ?  It is becoming hard to say which, but I am currently leaning towards both.

Why is Social Security even part of this debt reduction package that the ‘fiscal cliff’ hopes to force?  Social Security is a separately funded entity, it is not part of the federal deficit, and it’s board of trustees in charge of its’ financing estimate that under current circumstances, it will be completely solvent until 2036 without any changes, and then able to pay 75 percent thereafter.  As recent as November, the White House had said that Social Security was not part of any budget negotiations, but now that the election month is over, and even though Obama won reelection and the democrats made gains in both houses, we are hearing that the White House is offering to make Social Security ‘adjustments’ – cuts by bullshit recalculation of cost of living adjustments.  Why in the bloody hell, should senior citizens, and us future senior citizens, be asked to sacrifice more in the most vulnerable part of their lives so that the rich can keep more of everything they have already have in abundance ?

The answer is obvious, and until Obama turned coward negotiator and appeaser once again, it was the position of the White House and democrats that Social Security was not up on the chopping block for the vampire republicans and their blood lust for cutting entitlements.  Now they are offering to push up the threshold of tax cut rates to favor the wealthy more like the republicans want, and, they are now willing to offer up Social Security cuts to these greedy bastards as icing on the cake.

What a betrayal, President Obama and Congresswoman Pelosi, what an utter spit into the eyes of the people who voted for you, and supported you vehemently like myself and other progressive commentators and activists, but worst of all, what a cowardly betrayal of senior citizens, who are once again being thrown under the bus so that the most greedy can keep their historically low tax rates.  You should be ashamed.

And we will not be fooled by the bullshit your White House spin machine is surely churning up, about how this adjustment is actually more accurate or that the cuts would be minimal.  If you are saving money through it, you are making cuts to benefits and are lying, and if it is minimal, it is still too much, since it shouldn’t even be in the negotiations, which you claimed it wasn’t until you were past reelection.   You are cowards when it comes to negotiating with the wealthy and powerful and the idiots of the republican house, and you are betraying us.

President Obama, liberals, democrats and the like have been very forgiving of your past concessions, but if this change to Social Security happens, there is a good chance that you will not be forgiven, and all your tough decisions on foreign policy and going after Bin Laden will not be enough to make up for your shitty negotiations with the the tea bagging den of republican thieves.  Where is the fight for the middle class and seniors that you promised? I think we can afford to go off that so called fiscal cliff if necessary, and if you don’t think that is acceptable, then why in the hell did you ever agree to it in the first place?

I hope that progressives like independent Senator Bernie Sanders from Vermont and democrats Sherrod Brown from Ohio and Senator Jay Rockefeller from West Virginia keep up the good fight for us, since the democratic leadership in the House of Representatives and in the White House are sorely lacking right now in spines.

I am including a link to a petition from Senators Tom Harking, Brown and Rockefeller  asking President Obama to stand up for seniors and the middle class, please copy and paste and sign :

http://www.sherrodbrown.com/petition/e1212fc/

 

 

Once again, the former preacher and pastor, and now Fox Propaganda Network liar, Mike Huckabee, has outdone himself as a professional asshole by public shitting all over the victims of the tragic school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, suggesting that we shouldn’t be surprised by this senseless act of violence, since we do not have religion in public schools.

Mr. Huckaee’s passion for sticking up for the insurance companies over sick children is now well known, and his willingness to display his hate and ignorance towards gay people through his public support of a ‘national Chic-Fil-A’ appreciation day’ is no longer news.

His recent remarks though, are so far off the chart, it baffles the mind.  While families and loved ones of these innocent, child victims are struggling to cope and make sense of this barbaric act, there are politicians, law enforcement officials, and mental health professionals trying to find answers not just to why this happened, but how to prevent it or turn the tide in what is now becoming an all too familiar nightmare in this country.   Ordinary citizens across the country continue to offer their prayers and condolences and messages of support, and many are engaged in meaningful debate as to how to help curb this crisis.

Mike Huckabee, ex-preacher, ex-pastor, ex-governor, and current republican propaganda megaphone, is blaming our constitutionally backed secular institutions and the victims.  Instead of offering words of comfort through scripture – like you might expect a preacher to do – he is offering words of judgement.  In this disgusting man’s mind, we shouldn’t be offering comfort or questioning how we can make deadly weapons less accessible or how we can care for the mentally ill better.  In this laughable excuse for a pastor, politician or commentator, we are to somehow blame ourselves because we have supported the constitutional separation of church and state and therefor, brought this on ourselves because “we have systematically removed God from our schools.”

Mr. Huckabee, perhaps instead of worrying that we have removed God from our schools, you should be asking yourself how you removed God from your heart, if you even have one.  How dare you pretend to know of God when all you do is spew hate and intolerance and promote greed.  You are less than a joke anymore,  you are nothing more than another pathetic, delusional man like Pat Robertson, who has imaginary conversations with a god that reinforces your bigotry and simple world views.

If we were following the Old Testament teachings of an eye for an eye, perhaps a fitting punishment for you would be for you to choke on a Chick-Fil-A sandwich, or be impregnated by a gay rapist, or denied coverage from your health insurance provider for your future diabetes because of your preexisting condition of being a gluttonous, greedy asshole.  Perhaps worse.

We can only hope.  But in the mean time, could you do preachers, teachers, politicians,  commentators, and most of all the victims of the tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut,  a favor, and shut the fuck up !

 

 

Calloused and single minded assholes like the leaders of the NRA will always tell you that now is not the time, during this great tragedy in which another homicidal maniac unleashed a hail of bullets upon innocents in a senseless slaughter – that now is not the time to talk about gun control.  They couldn’t be more wrong.

While the nation prays and sends it condolences to the victims and community in Newtown, Connecticut, it should also be having a frank conversation about gun violence and gun control while the families and loved ones of the victims grieve together in what what must be an unimaginable hell.  We can offer our heartfelt empathy, but these victims and the inevitable future victims of gun violence in this country deserve more from the rest of us, who at this moment, have the luxury of suffering their tragedy from a distance.  Those of us not directly effected by this current tragedy should have the courage and will power to stand up for common sense gun control, particularly, closing the so called ‘gun show loop hole.’

There are many areas of gun control that need addressing, but I am going to stick to the most obvious, sensible gun control that a simple majority of Americans should be able to agree on.  At the time of this writing, the news continues to change on the facts and details as more information becomes available, but it appears right now, that the guns of the killer belonged to the mother, a gun enthusiast, and that the guns were all legally purchased.  This is surely a fact that right wing nut jobs will jump on, claiming with their typical rhetoric that laws can’t prevent criminals from acquiring guns. Anti-gun people will say that people should not be allowed to own weapons capable of such carnage, by limiting the type of weapon and the ammunition capacity of gun clips, and there is plenty of evidence to argue for this point as well.  But let’s take this moment, while we are reflecting on gun violence as a whole in this country, and focus on what could be done most immediately, such as closing the gun show loop hole.  This may not have prevented this tragedy, but it stands to reason that this simple common sense approach to regulating guns by requiring that anyone who buys one must pass a background check, no bullshit gun show laws tolerated anymore.  This is something that the majority of Americans should be able to agree on as a starting point.  I am including this short, informative, less than four minute video explaining what the gun show loophole is, and hoping that in our emotional and intellectual, philosophical and political conversation, we can at least agree that to some extent, guns need to be controlled.  They should not be readily available and easy to stockpile and wage a one man crazy war against the innocent.  We will never completely cure mental illness and evil in our society, but we should at least be able to limit their access to weapons, as well as limiting the access that criminal gangs and organizations in our big cities and the drug cartels in Mexico enjoy thanks to the gun show loophole.

Please, share this video with friends and family and don’t be distracted by old NRA bullshit about ‘guns don’t kill, people kill,’ or that God allows such violence in schools because officially lead prayer was removed.  We can stand up as a nation to the special interests of the gun lobby and still protect the constitutional right to bear arms without having to let everyone that can spit and drag their knuckles to posses a military grade firearm.

Here is the video, and a special thanks to a politician I admire and respect but sometimes disagree with, Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York City, who has devoted considerable time and effort to control the trafficking of illegal guns in our society: