We Are All Just At-Will Citizens of America, Inc. -- That Is Their Vision . . .

OOPS: Mitt Romney Calls United States A ‘Company’

Mitt Romney is focused on convincing Americans that his private-sector business record qualifies him to be President, which is perhaps why he accidentally called the United States of America a “company” instead of a “country” on Friday.

While Romney has spoken extensively about running the government more efficiently, like a private business, he has never compared the entire American enterprise to an actual business enterprise. But today, at an event in Florida, Romney did just that, saying his administration will reach out to people who “want to make sure this company deals with its challenges”:

Paul Ryan and I understand how the economy works, we understand how Washington works, we will reach across the aisle and find good people who like us, want to make sure this company deals with its challenges. We’ll get America on track again.

http://thinkprogress.org/election/2012/08/31/783791/romney-calls-america-company/


Oops My Ass!  That was no idle slip of the tongue.

That is exactly how Willard and Ryan and the Koch Brothers and the Wall Street gangsters and the rest of the 1% view America.  The United States of America is their fucking private company to run as they goddamn well please - period.  Fuck the democracy bullshit, and the Constitution, and the one man/one vote garbage.  The bottom line is that if they want to, they will gamble with America, Inc.'s money, reputation, people and this country's destiny as they damn well please.  And the reasoning, which they would only dare admit to amongst like-minded company, is because they are the majority shareholders and they own it all - they own fucking everything - and that includes you, me, our children, our grandchildren and the futures of each and every one of us.  And believe you me -- they definitely want more for themselves and less for us the people -- to them, we're just the hired help.


You all better wake up and start paying attention to this shit.


Here's the video:





----TFG

Marry Me Stephen Colbert!

Stephen Colbert tears into Lyin Ryan's convention speech like a starved lion sinking it's incisors into a fresh safari kill.  Quote:

"May I remind everyone out there - this is the Presidential RACE!  And to win a race - sometimes - you need to (taps arm) juice!  Ryan - stretching the truth to make his speech more effective, is just another form of doping - in that - if you believe him, you're a dope."

Stephen then makes a snide reference to Hitler's WWII Nazi propaganda chief Josef Goebbels, and while the crowd awkwardly held it's collective breath, most certainly aware of the implications of using the dreaded "Nazi" reference in politics, Colbert actually managed to make a salient, albeit joking point in the process.  That is his fucking genius.

Anyway - it's simply priceless - and the fucking lapdogs in the MSM, who for fear of hurting the oh-so sensitive fee-fees of their corporate paymasters and the right-wing media bloodhounds, they just slink off, tail between their legs and curl up in the corner -- dreaming that perhaps someday - they too might be permitted to be as bold as a comedian like Colbert in telling the truth to the American people in their chosen medium.

Watch the video - and cry for the death by abdication of duty, of your neutered fourth estate:






----TFG

Reality - What a Concept . . . No Really - It's a Helluva Important Concept

Blogger Digby ponders the dynamic behind the right winger's instinctive ability to just simply shut down their brains like a computer's power switch when confronted with irrefutable proof of their political leader's lies.

There are tons of people doing fact checks on Paul Ryan's unprecedented mendacity in a convention acceptance speech so I'm not going to bother. The Romney campaign has clearly decided that this is a base turnout election and the way to win is to throw red meat at their followers, regardless of the truth. They have their own media, after all, so it doesn't really matter if the other half of the country is screaming about their lies. Their voters won't hear it, and even if they do they won't believe it.

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2012/08/creating-their-own-reality-were-still.html


One entirely feasible possibility for this phenomenon, as Digby notes, is just plain old tribalism.  One side, when confronted with a truth that doesn't fit their black & white narrative of the world, willfully retreats in to their safe ideological bubble and stares out of it blank-eyed at the faces of those outside the bubble pleading to reason with them.  Only they are not hearing anything, because their bubble is vacuum sealed and no outside sound can penetrate it.

Former George W. Bush adviser Karl Rove once told writer Ron Suskind that people in the media, and anyone else who dared to disagree in any way with Bush's decisions and policies, were people who lived "in what we call the reality-based community."  Darth Rove went on to explain, "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

And this is exactly what the modern day conservatives, spearheaded by the dizzying ignorance of the teabagger/birther crowd, have done.  They have created their own fantastical, adolescent, paranoid, and warped view of the entire world and by God they just know that anyone who disagrees with them is a commie, pinko, socialist, Muslim loving, gun confiscating, America hating, evil liberal tool of Satan himself.

It is simultaneously tragic and fascinating to watch it unfold all at once.  Unfortunately, the tragic aspect of it will end up adversely affecting not just the delusional wingnuts themselves, but everyone else on the planet as well via the ripple effect.  And when it gets to that juncture folks, there is no uncomplicated and safe retreat to sanity and reality.


----TFG


**UPDATE**

The Rude Pundit sees what I see re: the inability of right wingers to experience the unfettered beauty of reality and accept it for what it is (reality), and sums it up only as the Rude One is capable of doing:

Imagine you have a friend who a few years back heard that if you feed poodles money they will shit out gold bricks. So your friend starts feeding his hard-earned cash to all the pampered poodles he can find, and they gobble those bills down. But, surprise, surprise, despite what he heard, the dogs end up shitting shit. Still, he clings to this bizarre, completely disproven idea: poodles shit gold. Now, after some time, he's low on cash. You tell your friend to stop putting out plates of money for the goddamned poodles. No, your friend says. Instead, he must cut back on other things, like doctor visits and food and more, just so he'll have the spare money to give the fucking dogs. "One day, these little bitches are gonna pay off," he tells you, sounding completely crazy, "and I'll be on easy street." But until then, he's just got hands that stink like dog shit. And there's your lesson in Republican economics.

KA-CHING!


----TFG

RightWingneyCare [ Let 'em Die! ] . . .

Ahh yes - along with a (see chart above) high child poverty rate, here is yet another lovely legacy that conservative political ideology and governing policies have gifted to Americans:

Americans younger than 65 are more likely to die from a lack of timely healthcare than their peers in France, Germany or the United Kingdom, according to a new study.

Research published in Health Affairs looked at the rate of "potentially preventable" deaths — deaths before age 75 that could be avoided with timely and effective healthcare — and found that the United States lags behind its U.K. and European peers.

The United States was also less effective than France, Germany and the United Kingdom in remedying the problem between 1999 and 2007, study authors wrote. 

The research was sponsored by the Commonwealth Fund, a nonprofit research foundation.

"Despite spending about twice as much per person each year on healthcare as France, Germany or the U.K. ... the U.S. is increasingly falling behind these countries in terms of progress in lowering the potentially preventable death rate,” said Commonwealth Fund President Karen Davis in a statement.

http://thehill.com/blogs/healthwatch/public-global-health/246515-study-us-tops-france-germany-uk-in-potentially-preventable-deaths


Far be it for me to presuppose, but it seems to me that it would be somewhat difficult to realize the full potential of that rugged American individualism and exceptionalism when you are zipped up in a body bag due to the fact you have died prematurely as the result of a shitty and inefficient for-profit driven health care system.

Dontcha' think??



----TFG

Lying Liars And Their Lying Lies: Zombie-Eyed Granny Starver Edition

Of the many bald-faced lies and misleading claims that zombie-eyed granny starver Paul Ryan made in his speech last night, there is one in particular that gets the 'Pants & Scrotum Sac On Fire' prize.

Ryan insinuated that Obama was somehow responsible for the closing of a GM SUV manufacturing plant in his hometown of Janesville, Wisconsin and giving the 2000+ workers there a sense of false hope that their jobs would be secure.  Ryan's quote:

"A lot of guys I went to high school with worked at that GM plant. Right there at that plant, Obama said: 'I believe that if our government is there to support you … this plant will be here for another hundred years.' That's what he said in 2008. Well, as it turned out, that plant didn't last another year."

While the Obama quote Ryan refers to is accurate, the details Ryan is willfully and deceitfully excluding are that Obama made the statement while visiting the plant as a presidential candidate in February 2008.  At that point he was simply a Democratic presidential candidate and had not even wrapped up the nomination. Four months later, in June of 2008, while George W. Bush was still President of the United States, GM announced that the plant would drastically scale back production. The plant completed laying off most of its workforce in December 2008, a full month before Obama had even taken the oath of office. The "government support" Obama spoke of to the Janesville workers in his February 2008 visit – his auto bailout plan, which took effect in early 2009 – simply did not arrive early enough to save the plant.  Ultimately that very same bailout plan has been widely credited by a majority of economists, and the auto industry execs themselves, with saving the American auto industry from complete and utter collapse and preventing a recession from turning in to a full blown depression.

Also - it is critically important to acknowledge the full mendacity of granny starver Ryan's lie by noting it in the context of the fact that Ryan's would-be boss, one Willard Mitt Romney, published an op-ed in the New York Times in November 2008 (one month before the remaining Janesville employees were layed off) under the headline "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt."

The core lesson to be gleened here from Senator granny-starver's speech last night - is that he and Willard both know full well that it is vital to their White House ambitions to keep the low information voters that Fox News churns out week after week fat, happy and gullibly misinformed.  Thus - their entire campaign, right down to the bare foundation, is built upon layers and layers of outright lies and misinformation.  There is an old saying that "in war, truth is the first casualty."  Politics is war in a sense.  But Willard and Ryan have moved the goalposts so far when it comes to the truth, that not only is it a casualty, they are now gleefully pissing on that casualty's corpse.


----TFG

Whistle While You Work (and work until you die) . . .

Pat Robertson: Raising Retirement Age To 72 Won't "Hurt Anybody Because People Really Like To Work"

Hell - why not raise the retirement age to 80.  Fuck it - better yet -- just eliminate the retirement age altogether!  That will most assuredly instill the spirit of American "exceptionalism" in the peasantry! 

I have no doubt that if Willard and Paul Ryan were to hear Robertson's senile musings on this subject, they both would get instantaneous 2 inch erections.

And it goes without saying - how dare Pat Robertson call himself a Christian?  What kind of heartless  prick would want people working themselves into the grave?  Honestly, if I live to be a bazillion years old, I will never, ever understand what motivates these lizard brains to think the way they do.


----TFG

Gordon Gekko On Steroids . . .

If you read one single article about Mitt Romney prior to entering that voting booth come Tuesday, November 6, 2012 - make it this one.  Here is an excerpt:

By making debt the centerpiece of his campaign, Romney was making a calculated bluff of historic dimensions – placing a massive all-in bet on the rank incompetence of the American press corps. The result has been a brilliant comedy: A man makes a $250 million fortune loading up companies with debt and then extracting million-dollar fees from those same companies, in exchange for the generous service of telling them who needs to be fired in order to finance the debt payments he saddled them with in the first place. That same man then runs for president riding an image of children roasting on flames of debt, choosing as his running mate perhaps the only politician in America more pompous and self-righteous on the subject of the evils of borrowed money than the candidate himself. If Romney pulls off this whopper, you'll have to tip your hat to him: No one in history has ever successfully run for president riding this big of a lie. It's almost enough to make you think he really is qualified for the White House.

The unlikeliness of Romney's gambit isn't simply a reflection of his own artlessly unapologetic mindset – it stands as an emblem for the resiliency of the entire sociopathic Wall Street set he represents. Four years ago, the Mitt Romneys of the world nearly destroyed the global economy with their greed, shortsightedness and – most notably – wildly irresponsible use of debt in pursuit of personal profit. The sight was so disgusting that people everywhere were ready to drop an H-bomb on Lower Manhattan and bayonet the survivors. But today that same insane greed ethos, that same belief in the lunatic pursuit of instant borrowed millions – it's dusted itself off, it's had a shave and a shoeshine, and it's back out there running for president.

Mitt Romney, it turns out, is the perfect frontman for Wall Street's greed revolution. He's not a two-bit, shifty-eyed huckster like Lloyd Blankfein. He's not a sighing, eye-rolling, arrogant jerkwad like Jamie Dimon. But Mitt believes the same things those guys believe: He's been right with them on the front lines of the financialization revolution, a decades-long campaign in which the old, simple, let's-make-stuff-and-sell-it manufacturing economy was replaced with a new, highly complex, let's-take-stuff-and-trash-it financial economy. Instead of cars and airplanes, we built swaps, CDOs and other toxic financial products. Instead of building new companies from the ground up, we took out massive bank loans and used them to acquire existing firms, liquidating every asset in sight and leaving the target companies holding the note. The new borrow-and-conquer economy was morally sanctified by an almost religious faith in the grossly euphemistic concept of "creative destruction," and amounted to a total abdication of collective responsibility by America's rich, whose new thing was making assloads of money in ever-shorter campaigns of economic conquest, sending the proceeds offshore, and shrugging as the great towns and factories their parents and grandparents built were shuttered and boarded up, crushed by a true prairie fire of debt.

Mitt Romney – a man whose own father built cars and nurtured communities, and was one of the old-school industrial anachronisms pushed aside by the new generation's wealth grab – has emerged now to sell this make-nothing, take-everything, screw-everyone ethos to the world. He's Gordon Gekko, but a new and improved version, with better PR – and a bigger goal. A takeover artist all his life, Romney is now trying to take over America itself. And if his own history is any guide, we'll all end up paying for the acquisition.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/greed-and-debt-the-true-story-of-mitt-romney-and-bain-capital-20120829


If this article doesn't fucking make you seriously concerned about your children's and your children's children's futures, then honestly, I cannot fathom any other humanly possible way of getting through to you.


----TFG

Voter Discrimination - So Easy Even A GOP Caveman Can Do It . . .

Discrimination so blatant that even GOP appointed judges were easily convinced by the evidence:

By Robert Barnes, Published: August 28

A federal court on Tuesday threw out Texas’s redistricting plans, saying the maps drawn by the Republican-led legislature undermined the political clout of minorities who are responsible for the state’s population growth.

The three-judge special panel in Washington said Texas could not prove that plans for the state’s congressional districts and both houses of the legislature were not drawn without intentional discrimination against the state’s burgeoning Latino population. In addition, it said new district lines removed the “economic guts” from congressional districts now held by African-Americans.

“The only explanation Texas offers for this pattern is ‘coincidence,’ ” wrote U.S. Circuit Judge Thomas B. Griffith. “But if this was coincidence, it was a striking one indeed.”

Griffith was joined in the decision by U.S. District Judges Rosemary M. Collyer and Beryl A. Howell. Griffith and Collyer were nominated by President George W. Bush; Howell is an Obama nominee.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/texas-redistricting-discriminates-against-minorities-federal-court-says/2012/08/28/f6e6a2e0-f156-11e1-892d-bc92fee603a7_story.html


This story truly highlights the level of desperation that the GOP is gripped by, and the underhanded lengths to which they are entirely willing to go to in order to keep themselves in power.  It's not sinister enough that, in states where they are in political power, they are using the legislative process like a bludgeoning weapon to pass all of these fraudulent voter ID laws, to address as they smugly claim, a problem (in person vote fraud) that they cannot even provide evidence that it exists.  Anyone with half a fucking monkey brain knows goddamn well that these laws are intended for one singular purpose - and that is to prevent as many minorities and Democratic leaning voters as possible from exercising their constitutionally guaranteed right to participate in the American electoral process.  I have no shame in stating that this kind of chicanery is eerily reminiscent of the pre-WWII fascist/totalitarian regimes of Germany and Italy and if anyone can disprove that claim, please feel free to take a whack at it.

What truly needs to be noted though is that these anti-American tactics are being used primarily because the right wing knows that this modern conservative movement, spearheaded now by the extremist Teabaggers and the corporate authoritarians who make up their leadership, are morally, intellectually, spiritually and ideologically bankrupt to the core.  Therefore - they have no choice but to cheat to compete in the marketplace of ideas.

This election is not even about Obama or Romney at this point.  It's about whether or not America is going to embrace the fair and just principles of it's constitutional forefathers or the corruption, greed and avarice of a small group of moneyed elites who believe they own America and have the right to ignore constitutional law and precedent whenever it is contrary to their financial interests.

It's a simple choice.


----TFG

50 Shades of Orwell . . .

I mean truly - is anyone outside of the Fox News wingnut bubble even remotely surprised by this?:

Earlier this month, Mitt Romney was welcomed for a campaign event at the Century Mine in Beallsville, Ohio, by hundreds of coal workers and their families. Now many of the mine's workers are saying they were forced to give up a day-worth of pay to attend the event, and they feared they might be fired if they didn’t, according to local news radio WWVA.

The claims have been mostly denied by Rob Moore, Chief Financial Officer of Murray Energy Company, which owns the mine. He acknowledges that workers weren’t paid that day but says no one was made to attend the event. Well, kind of.

"Our managers communicated to our workforce that the attendance at the Romney event was mandatory, but no one was forced to attend," he told local news radio WWVA, which has received several emails from workers claiming that the company records names of workers that don't attend those types of events.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/28/century-mine-romney-ohio-mandatory_n_1836674.html


And check out those priceless non-denial denials ("mostly denied") by the Mine company official in that they acknowledge that the miners were docked a day's pay for the event, yet purportedly "no one was made to attend the event."  Yet in the very next sentence the same official admits that the miners were indeed informed that attendance at the Romney speech was "mandatory."

Now - I don't know what kind of dictionary right wingers use, but I checked three of the most popular dictionary sites on the web and looked up the word "mandatory" and the definition was consistent and similar in all three editions.  The definition was something like this:

1: authoritatively ordered; obligatory; compulsory:
2: permitting no option; not to be disregarded or modified:

I am unable to comprehend how the right wingers can see this for exactly what it is - and no - online dictionaries do not have a well known liberal bias.

There is a well known word for this type of behavior.  It is called authoritarianism -- bordering on fascism.  It is dangerous to Democracy and freedom.  It is sinister.

Some of you may actually believe that you aren't part of the 99% simply because you identify your political affiliation as Republican or Libertarian or Independent, but if that is the case, you best wake up and smell the coffee.  The Romneys and the Kochs and the Adelsons of the world do not give a flying fuck about you after you've pulled that lever for their chosen puppet in the voting booth.  They are aristocrats, as are their puppets, and you and I are just the hired help, and the sooner you accept that reality and feel betrayed enough by it to want to do something about it, the better off all of us will be in this country.


----TFG

Wake up Elders . . . . The Grim Reaper is Knocking at Your Door - and it's the duo of R & R

This isn't rocket science kids.  Just look at the numbers and the charts.  Numbers don't lie:

The Romney/Ryan proposal to transform Medicare’s guaranteed benefit into a “premium support” structure for future retirees could increase costs by almost $60,000 for seniors reaching the age of 65 in 2023, a new report from the Center for American Progress finds. Current seniors would also have to pay more for preventive, hospital, and physician services should Romney and Ryan repeal the Affordable Care Act, facing an increase in health spending of between $7,900 and $18,600 over the course of their retirement.

http://thinkprogress.org/election/2012/08/24/739271/seniors-will-pay-60000-more-for-medicare-under-romneyryans-plan-report-finds/


If America let's these two corporate tools have power over everything ... grandma - grandpa -- you better start stocking up on cat food because that is all you will be able to afford to eat if these cocksuckers get their way.


----TFG

Show Us The Long Forms Willard!!

After Ann Romney's bug-eyed and overtly defensive harangue in response to an MSNBC reporter's question re: Willard's taxes, Lawrence O'Donnell analyzed her words and deftly picks apart the Queen wannabe's entire charade:




The most pertinent point that O'Donnell makes is --- if, as Ann Romney vehemently claims, she and her husband's steadfast refusal to release any more tax returns other than the 2010 and the as yet unseen 2011 filings, is because people would "go after" them --- if there are no improprieties and no shady dealings, what motive would anyone then have to "go after" them for?

It is undeniably obvious at this point that Willard is hiding something that would be fatally damaging to his Executive Office aspirations in those 2009 and prior returns.

As Mark Karlin at Truthout.org speculates, the fatally damaging details in those returns may just be that:

"Romney may have taken advantage of a 2009 IRS amnesty period to disclose income hidden in offshore accounts but subject to US taxation.  The amnesty offer allowed such persons to escape potential criminal prosecution for tax evasion."

http://truthout.org/buzzflash/commentary/item/11684-did-romney-possibly-commit-fraud-on-his-2009-taxes-but-received-amnesty


In other words, in order to avoid FELONY charges of unlawful tax evasion, Willard surrendered himself to that 2009 IRS amnesty program to save his corrupt hide from criminal charges being brought against him.

It makes all the sense in the world to me, and Willard could clear up that type of speculation in an instant by simply releasing several more years of his returns from 2009 and prior.

The more he and his wife bluster about "privacy" and people using the taxes issue as "ammunition" against them, the deeper they dig their own political grave hole.


----TFG

Charlatan - Thy Name Is Paul Ryan . . .

Even the most creative minds in the entertainment industry can't make shit like this up:

Ayn Rand, Hypocrite?Legendary opponent of “welfare state” received Social Security and probably MedicareBy Patia Stephens

Critics of Social Security and Medicare frequently invoke the words and ideals of author and philosopher Ayn Rand, one of the fiercest critics of federal insurance programs. But a little-known fact is that Ayn Rand herself collected Social Security. She may also have received Medicare benefits.

An interview recently surfaced that was conducted in 1998 by the Ayn Rand Institute with a social worker who says she helped Rand and her husband, Frank O’Connor, sign up for Social Security and Medicare in 1974.

Federal records obtained through a Freedom of Information act request confirm the Social Security benefits. A similar FOI request was unable to either prove or disprove the Medicare claim.

Between December 1974 and her death in March 1982, Rand collected a total of $11,002 in monthly Social Security payments. O’Connor received $2,943 between December 1974 and his death in November 1979.

According to a spokesman in the Baltimore headquarters of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Rand and O’Connor were eligible for both Part A, which provides hospital coverage, and Part B, medical. The spokesman said their eligibility for Part B means they did apply for Medicare; however, he said he was not authorized to release any documentation and referred the request to the CMS New York regional office. That office said they could not locate any records related to Rand and O’Connor.

The couple registered for benefits shortly after Rand, a two-pack-a-day smoker, had surgery for lung cancer in the summer of 1974. Medicare had been enacted nine years earlier in the Social Security Act of 1965 to provide health insurance to those age 65 and older.

http://www.patiastephens.com/2010/12/05/ayn-rand-received-social-security-medicare/


Am I the only one who sees supreme irony that zombie-eyed granny starver Paul Ryan's political hero is a long-dead, libertarian novelist -- best known for her philosophy that centered on the idea that selfishness is a “virtue,” concern for the welfare of others (altruism) is “evil,” was an atheist who condemned Christianity for advocating compassion for the poor, and viewed the feminist movement as “phony” -- ended up dying nearly destitute, living with her husband, who both at the time of her death had been collecting and living on Social Security and Medicare benefits for several years?

[sound of cricket's chirping . . . .]

Yeah.  That's what I thought.


----TFG

More evidence that truth and reality have a well known liberal bias . . .

Oh dear!

The chairman of presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s national steering committee on Tuesday angrily shouted for a CNN anchor to "put an Obama bumper sticker on your forehead" after she tried to fact check Republican claims about Rep. Paul Ryan's (R-WI) plan to overhaul Medicare.

Any time a reporter can get Willard hack John Sununu, (often mistaken for a nattily dressed, harpooned whale), to start sweating cake donuts and squealing like a stuck pig that knows he's about to become carnitas burrito fare, then it's a good indication that that reporter is actually doing their goddamn job.

Watch the video above as CNN's Soledad O'Brien, bless her soul, lures Sununu in with an innocuous question re: the wholly accurate observation that Romney's evolved views on healthcare reform now creepily sound a whole lot like zombie-eyed granny starver Paul Ryan's, which are outlined in Ryan's budget plan. Then, after spewing out an already weeks old, debunked lie instead of answering the question, and being called on it by O'Brien, watch as Sununu The Hutt's Hemorrhoids implode inward, up through his brain stem, and summarilly shoot wads of icky anal matter out of his popping eyeballs while he screams at O'Brien that she's an Obama tool and should go "put an Obama bumper sticker" on her forehead.

The whole thing is just magical to watch and had me giggling like a schoolgirl.

But - you know - this is what happens when wingnuts are exposed to the facts and have their own versions of reality questioned. It causes a major warp in their internal space-time continuum and they just simply go ape-shit.



----TFG

12 Things You Should Know About Vice Presidential Candidate Paul Ryan....

Learn it.

Know it.

Share it.

Remember it --- hopefully before you make that solemn trip to the voting booth (and provided of course that the GOP hasn't purged your name from the voting rolls because you happen to be a democrat with a name that vaguely looks or sounds like some other person's name who is on their top secret list of ineligible voters).

Mitt Romney has picked as his running mate 42 year-old Republican Congressman Paul Ryan (R-WI), the architect of the GOP budget, which the New York Times has described as “the most extreme budget plan passed by a house of Congress in modern times.” Below are 12 things you should know about Ryan and his policies:

1. Ryan embraces the extreme philosophy of Ayn Rand.
2. Ryan wants to raises taxes on the middle class, cut them for millionaires.
3. Ryan wants to end Medicare, replace it with a voucher system.
4. Ryan thinks Social Security is a “ponzi scheme.”
5. Ryan’s budget would result in 4.1 million lost jobs in 2 years.
6. Ryan wants to eliminate Pell Grants for more more than 1 million students.
7. Ryan supports $40 billion in subsides for big oil.
8. Ryan has ownership stakes in companies that benefit from oil subsidies .
9. Ryan claimed Romneycare has led to “rationing and benefit cuts.”
10. Ryan believes that Romneycare is “not that dissimilar to Obamacare.”
11. Ryan accused generals of lying about their support for Obama’s military budget.
12. Ryan co-sponsored a “personhood” amendment, an extreme anti-abortion measure.

http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2012/08/11/677171/12-things-you-should-know-about-vice-presidential-candidate-paul-ryan/



I hope some of you are at least paying partial attention to this shit.


----TFG

This Is Potentially Your Future America...

• Willard's legacy at Bain Capital marches onward:

  
  

  
  

  'I'm sick to my stomach': anger grows in Illinois at Bain's latest outsourcing plan

  The Sensata plant in Freeport is profitable and competitive, but its majority owner, Bain Capital, has decided to ship jobs to China – and forced workers to train their overseas replacements

  
  
  

  The shock of losing a precious job in a town afflicted by high unemployment is always hard. A foundation for a stable family life and secure home instantly disappears, replaced with a future filled with fears over health insurance, missed mortgage payments and the potential for a slip below the breadline.

  But for Bonnie Borman – and 170 other men and women in Freeport,Illinois – there is a brutal twist to the torture. Borman, 52, and the other workers of a soon-to-be-shuttered car parts plant are personally training the Chinese workers who will replace them.

  It's a surreal experience, they say. For months they have watched their plant being dismantled and shipped to China, piece by piece, as they show teams of Chinese workers how to do the jobs they have dedicated their lives to.

  "It's not easy to get up in the morning, training them to do your job so that you can be made unemployed," said Borman, pictured, a mother of three who has worked for 23 years at the Sensata auto sensors plant.

  
  

  Borman knows her eventual fate in the stricken economy that surrounds Freeport. "I am going to be competing for minimum wage jobs with my own daughter," she said.

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/aug/10/illinois-workers-bain-outsourcing?newsfeed=tru
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Can't happen to you huh?
  
  
  Vote for Willard and find out.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ----TFG
  
  
  
  
  
  

Ohhhh! The Stupid!! It Buuuuuurns!!!

Mind boggling.  Just out and out mind boggling:

Rep. Todd Akin, the Republican nominee for Senate in Missouri, wants to ban the morning-after pill, considering it to be a form of abortion, he told a Kansas City radio station Wednesday. 

"As far as I’m concerned, the morning-after pill is a form of abortion, and I think we just shouldn’t have abortion in this country,” Akin said Wednesday, the day after his victory in the Republican primary, in an interview with Kansas City radio host Greg Knapp. Audio was posted by the liberal site Progress Missouri.

http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/08/todd-akin-ban-the-morning-after-pill.php

This buffoon is a Tea Partier.  And like many of his tea bagging brethren, he demonstrates an amazing aptitude for stunning ignorance and stupefying idiocy.

According to this blockhead, the "morning after pill" is a form of abortion.  Now - I do not profess to be anything near an expert in human biology, but doesn't fertilization/conception have to take place in the woman's womb first, thus creating a zygote which arguably is something resembling a human being, before it can be aborted?

These people are just plain and simply - morons.  And the people who vote them in to office are just plain and simply - morons.  I'm flabbergasted that they are even capable of dressing themselves in the morning.


----TFG

Where's a Goddamn Cornfield When You Need One??

Lol.

Remember that old Twilight Zone episode where the snotty little kid discovers that he possesses vast mental powers, but lacking emotional development, holds his terrified family in thrall to his every juvenile wish, and every time he became upset with one of the adults, he would "wish them in to the cornfield?":





It so reminds me of Willard and his refusal to release his tax returns.  He would just love to wish all of the people bugging him about it, and the entire issue itself, in to the cornfield.

And now it appears that due to one of his lackeys going on Fox "News" yesterday and praising RomneyCare to the high heavens, Willard and the wingnuts are wanting to wish that issue as well in to the cornfield:

The morning after Mitt Romney campaign spokeswoman Andrea Saul drew heavy criticism from conservatives for invoking Romneycare as a defense against an attack ad, Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), a co-chair of the Women for Mitt coalition, refused to acknowledge the former governor's health care plan in an interview.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/09/marsha-blackburn-romneycare_n_1759618.html



RomneyCare??   What's that?  I've never heard of it!!  Let's talk about how the evil ObamaCare is and how it's turning all patriotic, god fearin' Amurrikins into god-hating, socialist parasites.

ROFLMAO! If these fuckers weren't so pathetic and such superficial buffons, my laughter would not be accompanied by such a feeling of impending doom and gut-wrenching unease when I ponder the consequences to Democracy if they should happen to win.


 ----TFG

The Rude One Speaketh...You Listeneth...

What The Rude one says re: Harry Reid's charge that a little Bain investor fairy whispered in his ear that Willard hadn't paid any federal taxes for 10 years:

The Rude Pundit does not give a happy monkey fuck if Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is lying when he says that someone told him that Mitt Romney paid no income taxes for about a decade. What? You think Romney did? You think deferred compensation packages, offshore accounts, and historically low capital gains tax rates didn't give him a tax burden of "too fucking low for a rich dude"? At best, Reid was slightly exaggerating.

Politics is not an ethical game. Governing should be, but isn't. However, politics is a wallow in filth that'd make farm hogs say, "Whoa, save some shit-filled mud for the rest of us." For years, we on the left have had to sputter and suffer as Republican after Republican has lied willfully and consciously about the records and lives of Democrats. We have tut-tutted and demanded retractions and corrections. We have slapped our foreheads bloody as we've seen the lies become what many, many people believe is the truth, whether it's Dukakis being soft on crime or Clinton having Vince Foster killed or Gore saying things he simply never said or Swift-boating or birthering. Outrageous, easily proven lies, and we have been told to suck on them like they're a candy cane sticking out of the pants of Uncle Sam.

So you know what? What's good for the motherfuckin' goose is good for the motherfuckin' gander. How's it feel, conservatives, to be helpless in the face of both the allegation about Romney's taxes and your candidate's smug refusal to release any information that would disprove the allegation? Pretty sickening, isn't it? Hey, that candy cane actually tastes like cock when you have to put it in your own mouth.

http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2012/08/the-case-for-more-allegations-and-lies.html


In layman's terms, what The Rude one is saying to the Republicans is FUCK YOU you whining little cunts.  You love dishing out the smears and lies about Democrats but boy, when somebody passes on a rumor about your chosen one, you cry and scream as if you're getting an XXXL sized Al Gore Special Edition dildo shoved up your asses.

And the conservanuts know full well that all Romney has to do to shut up Reid and embarrass him (and you know damn well they would do it if they could) forever is to release his tax returns, just as every single presidential and vice presidential candidate has done going back to Romney's own father's Time as a presidential candidate.  So by The Gadfly's observation, since Romney refuses to do that and clear his good name, he most definitely is hiding something quite harmful to his reputation (if by reputation you mean that steaming pile of fresh dog shit, that you just bare foot stepped in, oozing through your toes).

You can't make it much clearer than that.


----TFG

They Drilled Baby! They Drilled! Now Shut The Fuck Up!!!

This story is about the oil boom currently on-going in western North Dakota.  Interesting, if not disappointing.

However, the most fascinating part I saw was where statistics were cited which states that in the past two years, America's reliance on imported oil has been been around 66% of the country's needs.  Now, with all of the drilling going on in North Dakota, in addition to other leases that the Obama administration has approved in other states, the amount of U.S. reliance on foreign oil has dramatically dropped to less than 50%.

So here's what The Gadfly is getting at. How does that FACT comport with the conservatives wild claims that Obama is stifling U.S. domestic oil production?  Who has been president of this country these past couple of years and which administration signed off on having those oil fields being developed?  Care to take a guess?

Frankly The Gadfly is not thrilled that the fossil fuel industry is continuing it's destructive environmental activities, but it is what it is for now.  But I will say this unambiguously - the next time The Gadfly sees that lipstick dipshit Sarah Palin on television criticizing Obama for not drilling enough for more domestic oil with her juvenile chant of "drill baby drill," I'm going to  force myself to vomit all over my tv screen just so I can view chunks of my hurl sliding down her stupid fucking, makeup caked face.

Watch No. Dakota Boomtown Struggles Trying to Keep Up with Demand on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour.

---TFG

Jeebus wept . . .

"One of these grotesque laws enacted by referendum was Proposition 100, an amendment to the state constitution denying bail to those presumed to be in the country illegally, who have committed a "serious felony offense," defined by the Legislature as a Class 4 felony or above.

In 2006, Prop 100 received a 3-to-1 endorsement by the electorate. Never mind that bail for all but the most serious crimes is a cherished privilege protected by parts of the Arizona and U.S. constitutions."

A Woman Was Held in Jail Because Authorities Thought She Was Illegal 

Recently, the Maricopa County Attorney's Office alleged Briseira Torres, a shy, 31-year-old single mom from Glendale, was here illegally and that Briseira Torres was not her real name. 

She was accused of three counts of forgery, in part because her driver's license had her real name on it, which the MCAO thought was bogus. Following her arrest, she was held without bond in Estrella Jail for 4 1/2 months. 

Torres lost her home and car because she couldn't make the payments as she endured Estrella's harsh conditions, lousy food, and detention officers. 

Worst of all, she was separated from her 14-year-old daughter, who stayed with Torres' friend Amy Diaz while her mom was behind bars. 

Torres' eyes well up as she recalls the days her daughter came to visit and had to see Torres in county stripes. 

"It was really hard, especially the first time," Torres tells me in the offices of her attorney, Delia Salvatierra. "She was very sad." 

Torres was released on August 3, after the MCAO was forced to dismiss the case.
Salvatierra, a well-known immigration attorney, along with the aid of criminal attorney Antonio Bustamante and Johnny Sinodis, a counsel in Salvatierra's office, went to battle on Torres' behalf. 

In the pile of paperwork they provided to the court, to the prosecutor, and to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement was a silver bullet: a sworn statement from Arizona's Office of Vital Records attesting to the legitimacy of documents on file for Torres. 

Among these docs is Torres' birth certificate, showing she was born August 14, 1981, in Avondale (Avondale is a western suburb of Phoenix, AZ).

http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/2012-08-09/news/a-woman-was-held-in-jail-because-authorities-thought-she-was-illegal/


So basically a bunch of redneck, clumsy, wetback huntin' public officials in Maricopa County (home of wingnut Sheriff Joe Arpaio btw) fucked up, and for whatever incompetent reason, believed a 31 year old Hispanic single mother with a 14 year old daughter to be in the country illegally for allegedly forging her AZ state driver's license.  They held this poor lady in jail for nearly 5 months, separated from her daughter, and caused her to lose her home and car.  To add insult to injury, after the woman's attorneys presented irrefutable proof that the Arizona Vital Records dept. indeed had a valid birth certificate for the woman on file, the Maricopa County Attorney then tried to accuse her of forging that document as well.

A big thank you to the pin-headed Arizona voters who voted for this medieval law to begin with and for the moronic and xenophobic public officials tasked with enforcing it.  You all should be fucking ashamed of yourselves.  If it were up to The Gadfly, he would have every single one of you lizard-brained bastards forced to take a basic civics exam - and if you fail - we deport your dumb-as-a sack-of-doorknob asses to some poor African country like Burundi or the likes thereof for a minimum period of 5 years where you shall remain before you are allowed to re-take the U.S. civics and citizenship exams and re-enter the country.

Oh and btw -- we dirty fucking hippie liberals predicted shit like this was going to happen with these laws - and once again we were proven right.  The Gadfly ponders -- how often do conservatives get to keep making all of these fuck-headed wrong governing decisions before we just simply suspend their right to vote until they start learning all of the provisions in the constitution instead of just that single one about letting them keep their stupid goddamn guns?

The Gadfly dearly hope Ms. Torres sues the living fucking daylights out of Maricopa County and the State of Arizona for false imprisonment, false arrest, slander, mental abuse and emotional distress.

It's the least they deserve.


----TFG

Banksta Gangstas - It's Just How They Roll . . .

So they pay the $4.8 million fine and skip all the way (while laughing) to the bank to deposit $295.2 million of ill-gotten gains from John and Mary Consumer.

And who says crime doesn't pay??

Aug 7 (Reuters) - A federal judge grudgingly approved Morgan Stanley's $4.8 million settlement of electricity price-fixing charges over activity estimated to have cost New York consumers about $300 million, turning aside claims by a major nonprofit that the accord let the bank off too easily.

The case, which also involved the electricity generator KeySpan Corp, was the first in which the U.S. Department of Justice said it tried to recover improper profit from a financial services company that used derivatives to foster anticompetitive behavior.

Morgan Stanley entered a swap agreement with KeySpan in 2006 that gave it a stake in revenue by Astoria Generating Co, which also operated in New York City. It also entered a related hedge with Astoria.

The government said the arrangement allowed KeySpan to withhold substantial electricity generating capacity from the market, driving prices higher for consumers, and generated $21.6 million of net revenue for Morgan Stanley.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/07/morgan-stanley-price-fixing_n_1753637.html


The Occupy folks question the legality and fairness of this shit and demand accountability.  The Teatards defend it as capitalism - American style - and shill for right wing political candidates who believe likewise.

Now do you understand why The Gadfly has such a visceral dislike of the Tea Party zombies?


----TFG

Oops there goes another Willard white lie! Oops there goes another Willard white lie! Oops there goes another Willard white lie!

Hahahahaha!!  This is just priceless:

But in absolving Romney of responsibility, Saul awkwardly embraced the individual mandate and other provisions in the Massachusetts health care law that Romney has pledged to repeal for the nation as part of his attack on Obamacare.

Saul insisted that Romney was not in charge of Bain when the woman lost her job and employer-sponsored health insurance coverage — and died from cancer years later — but suggested that she would have been eligible for government-subsidized insurance under Romneycare:

SAUL: To that point, you know, if people had been in Massachusetts under Governor Romney’s health care plan, they would have had health care. There are a lot of people losing their jobs and their health care in President Obama’s economy.

http://thinkprogress.org/election/2012/08/08/658311/romney-spokesperson-touts-the-health-care-benefits-he-seeks-to-repeal/


So basically, the Romney people, out trying to be Willard's mouthpiece attempting to tear down and smear the ACA Healthcare reform act (Obamacare to the Teatards), pretty much validate that Romney's health care plan which he signed in to law in Massachusetts, and is the blueprint for Obamacare, is actually a good plan and just may have life-saving qualities to it.

You got to love these fucktards.

Willard's lackeys, not unlike their candidate, are so tangled up in their lies and spinning that they just simply look like foolish amateurs at this point. And to think that Romney is the best of the best that the GOP could come up with as a presidential candidate? It boggles the Gadfly's mind. I mean Willard has such a stench about him, that even John McCain ended up selecting Caribou Barbie over him - that right there tells The Gadfly all he needs to know about this man's fitness for the office.


----TFG

IT LIIIIIIIIIIIVES!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!

Well this pretty much settles the question of who it is that The Gadfly will be voting for in November:

Former Vice President Dick Cheney criticized President Barack Obama and said it was crucial to help elect Mitt Romney, for whom he held a recent fundraiser at his home in Jackson Hole, Wyo.
"I think he's been a terrible president," he said on Fox News Channel's "Hannity" in an interview to air later Monday, adding that he "fundamentally" disagreed with him.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/06/dick-cheney_n_1748529.html

Considering the fact that just about every political venture Dick Cheney has had his slimy hands on over the length of his career has been an unmitigated disaster, it stands to reason that the curmudgeonly old prick has been cursed with the Reverse Midas Touch - basically instead of everything he touches turning to gold, it turns in to a maggot-infested, heaping pile of cow shit.  As such - if Cheney says that Barack Obama has been a terrible president, truth be told, Obama must be pretty damn good then.

However, setting all of that aside even -- who the fuck gives a shit what a draft-dodging war criminal thinks to begin with?  This asshole can't even travel abroad for fear of being nabbed and put on trial at The Hague for his war-mongering.  If someone can cogently explain to The Gadfly why Dick Cheney's thoughts on anything re: this country's future at this point are relevant, The Gadfly is all ears.


----TFG

Those Lyin' Climate Scientists and Their Lyin' Lies . . .

But Al Gore is fat.

Half of U.S. Counties Now Considered Disaster Areas

(ST. LOUIS) — Nearly 220 counties in a dozen drought-stricken states were added Wednesday to the U.S. government’s list of natural disaster areas as the nation’s agriculture chief unveiled new help for frustrated, cash-strapped farmers and ranchers grappling with extreme dryness and heat.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s addition of the 218 counties means that more than half of all U.S. counties — 1,584 in 32 states — have been designated primary disaster areas this growing season, the vast majority of them mired in a drought that’s considered the worst in decades.

http://nation.time.com/2012/08/02/half-of-u-s-counties-now-considered-disaster-areas/#ixzz22P3ZzLa3


All The Gadfly can say is:





----TFG

Ummm no - we really don't take care of our own . . .

From Bruce Springsteen's last album "Wrecking Ball."

Where're the eyes, the eyes with the will to see
Where're the hearts that run over with mercy
Where's the love that has not forsaken me
Where's the work that set my hands, my soul free
Where's the spirit that'll reign, reign over me
Where's the promise from sea to the shining sea
Where's the promise from sea to the shining sea
Wherever this flag is flown
Wherever this flag is flown
Wherever this flag is flown

We take care of our own
We take care of our own
Wherever this flag's flown
We take care of our own
We take care of our own
We take care of our own
Wherever this flag's flown
We take care of our own

By the looks of this story (of which The Gadfly has read too many similar ones lately) The Boss's words are falling on the deaf ears of our political leaders, our corporate leaders, our religious leaders and, even more glaringly, our Tea Bagger friends:

“I got cheated out of the American dream,” states Don Jablonski, a 53-year old former vice president of a manufacturing company who has been homeless for more than a year. The company where he worked was acquired by a leveraged buyout firm in 2007 which proceeded to load it up with debt before stripping assets that forced the company into bankruptcy.

“I went to university, got a job, worked my way up and kept taking classes all the years I worked,” he says. “What’d I do wrong?”

At the time he was fired, Jablonski owned a house, a row boat he used when he would go fishing, and was considering buying a lake cottage. “Within two years, everything was gone. I couldn’t find a new job, the recession hit, my mortgage rate went through the roof and I was left with nothing” after his house was repossessed.

“What happened to my piece of America?” he wonders. Jablonski has been homeless for nearly three years now. “I don’t want to be rich like that asshole Romney. Guys like him got rich off guys like me. I just want to live in my own house, save a little money and go fishing once in a while.”

http://www.laprogressive.com/downwardly-mobile-americans/


There but for the grace of god go thee.


----TFG