"The strictest law sometimes becomes the severest injustice." ~~~ Benjamin Franklin

WTF?

She only wished to buy a meal.

An Ohio woman was collared for petty theft after she was caught swiping $2.87 in change from a fountain last week.

Deidre Romine said she had just fished the coins out of the Logan County Courthouse fountain in Bellefontaine to buy food when a cop approached her on Oct. 7.

“The cop asked me what I was doing and I was afraid to tell him,” Romine told WBNS-10TV. “The money didn’t belong to anybody, so I just took it out of there.”

After the officer found the stolen change in her pocket, he issued her a summons to appear in court on a petty theft charge.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/unemployed-ohio-woman-charged-2-87-fountain-buy-food-article-1.1488438


Oh yeah -- that ought to teach a lesson to those billionaire bankers and Wall Street con artists about lying, stealing and cheating your way to wealth and power.

Jeebus - what a world of horrifyingly fucked up priorities we live in.

Oh -- and do we even need to discuss the ramifications of such an act had the perpetrator been a young black or latino male instead of a middle-aged Caucasian woman?

The madness of it all.




----TFG

Ted Cruz: I Am Fuck! Fuck of the Mountain!! . . . . (watch the video at top of post)

Good lord (pun intended) -- this explains, quite succinctly in The Gadfly's humble view, the wholly twisted and conceited world view that Ted Cruz possesses (or which possesses Ted Cruz), as well as the psychological thought process that drives his equally poisonous political aspirations:

In a sermon last year at an Irving, Texas, megachurch that helped elect Ted Cruz to the United States Senate, Cruz' father Rafael Cruz indicated that his son was among the evangelical Christians who are anointed as "kings" to take control of all sectors of society, an agenda commonly referred to as the "Seven Mountains" mandate, and "bring the spoils of war to the priests", thus helping to bring about a prophesied "great transfer of wealth", from the "wicked" to righteous gentile believers.

http://www.talk2action.org/story/2013/10/16/143336/01/Front_Page/Cruz_Father_Suggests_Ted_Cruz_quot_Anointed_quot_to_Bring_The_Spoils_Of_War_To_The_Priests_


When your fellow religionists and family members are elevating your corporeal existence above that of the teeming masses by "anointing" you as a divinely inspired "king," it is only natural that you would eventually acquire some form of callous and grandiose God complex.  Of course that also implies that you are of such an ego-maniacal mindset to start with that the metamorphosis from mere, lowly human to celestial royalty is an effortless transition.

The Gadfly has referred to Cruz and his acolytes as "sociopaths" on more than one occasion in his writings on this site.  While this revelation of Almighty Ted's kingly anointment by his doctrinal peers appears to validate that observation, perhaps writer and theologian R. Alan Woods has a more insightful analysis of the good Texas senator's psyche:

“There are sins much more serious than socio-pathologies which really are mental illnesses, whereas self-righteousness is an illness of the soul."

~R. Alan Woods [2013]” 

----TFG

Equal Opportunity Haters . . .

[ click pic for larger image ]

Oh dear - what will we tell the children?

Apparently the House Speaker has been on the receiving end of some Teahadist sound and fury today.

Go to the link below and click on the REFRESH button a few times to get a sampling of some of the lovely comments that the scorned Teabaggers have dementedly been posting on Speaker John Boehner's Facebook wall this fine day.

http://clotureclub.com/tea-party-insult-generator/

And after you have had a gut full of that bile, come back here and tell The Gadfly how you still believe that Ted Cruz and his goggle-eyed, tea quaffing acolytes would make wise and judicious leaders of all America and all Americans.

 Jeebus . . . .



----TFG

A Day In the Life . . . . of the American Citizen . . .

The Gadfly read the news today oh boy
About a lucky man who did not make the GRADE
And though the news was rather sad
Well The Gadfly just had to laugh. . . .


The Gadfly is laughing because upon awaking and turning on his idiot box this fine morning, he was stunned to see the nation's harebrained mainstream media celebrities wringing their collective hands and clucking like perturbed hens all over the place about how foolish Ted Cruz and the right wing house caucus were to have done what they did with their government shutdown and near default on the national debt.  The media puppetoons were simply beside themselves with perplexity as to how the Teahadists could have gone so far, only to get as they viewed it, absolutely nothing for their efforts, while simultaneously hanging the cast iron albatross of failed leadership around the languid neck of their poor party helmsman John Boehner.

And The Gadfly just shook his head for it was plainly obvious that the punditocracy still had not, whether out of institutional laziness or abject fear, applied themselves fully to the daunting task of looking deep in to the dark and damnable recesses of the Teabagger mindset and soul in order to gain a meticulous understanding of their motives and goals.

For if they had, they would know full well that Ted Cruz and his merry band of Posse Comitatus hoodlums, in no sense of the words, consider their efforts to have been a "failure" or "pointless."  In fact, The Gadfly will goddamn guarantee you dear reader, that as the media's crocodile tears are being dribbled out and over the emasculated and still twitching corpse of hapless GOP House speaker John Boehner, the Cruzborgs are huddled in an undisclosed D.C. storm drain somewhere, drinking goblets of baby blood and plotting their next round of seditious ass-holery.

You have to remember - a large percentage of Cruz's, Lee's, Palin's and Bachmann's base are devout believers that the biblical end-times are imminent.  That means that they have no fear of the consequences of their destructive actions and feel that they have nothing to lose in this life, and everything to gain in the hereafter of their fevered imaginations, by continuing their scorched earth crusade all the way to it's infernal finale.

The Cruzborgs may have fallen short on this first attempt at neutering representative democracy, but the groundwork for their chilling aspirations has been established, and now they have tasted the blood of a suffering America, a taste which they are savoring this day, and for which they are determined to acquire more of - damned be all.







----TFG

Pedal to the Metal -- Racing Toward the Cliff With Reckless Abandon . . .

If perchance, dear reader, you might be in the mode of thinking that it is only us dirty fucking progressive hippies who are of the view that the Teahadists are out of their cotton picking suicidal minds, you might want to rethink that view:

A sizable contingent of more moderate Republicans have watched with alarm as their party has been commandeered by tea party members and right-wing activists trying to kill Obamacare at all costs.

The absurdity struck home for Rep. Pete King (R-N.Y.) Tuesday as the prominent conservative organizations Heritage Action, Red State and FreedomWorks all came out against a last-second GOP leadership plan to avert a crisis that Democrats had warned was too far to the right.

"This party is going nuts," King told HuffPost. "So many people I run into who are normal people -- and I hate to use that term -- they just can't understand what's going on."

"On this one they can't even see both sides," King said. "They just think Republicans are crazy. That's it. They see no justification for any of this."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/15/peter-king-gop_n_4103195.html


The Gadfly of course would resignedly say to GOP Rep Pete King and his fellow "moderates" -- welcome to the club fellas -- what took you guys so fucking long to realize that you have self-immolating lunatics in your midst?

The Gadfly, along with many other, much more prominent observers, has been screaming from the rooftops for several years that these Teabaggers weren't your daddy's staid, enlightened Eisenhower Republicans, and that in fact, has strenuously cautioned that they were just a few goose steps short of Mussolini territory.

But The Gadfly is not here to gloat over his rightness as to what these people and their neanderthal agenda were all about.  With even moderate Republicans now coming to the belated realization that their Frankenstein beast is out of control and needs to be stopped, that is no longer the principal point of discussion.  No -- what The Gadfly is wondering now is who within GOP traditional, conservative circles will be man enough to stand up to these narcissistic and noxious goons and send them stampeding back under the rocks whence they slithered?

John Boehner does not appear to be up to the task.  Nor are Pete King and the moderates exactly manning up and bedecking themselves with warrior accoutrements in anticipation of battle with their demented, wayward brethren.

That pretty much leaves the execution of such dirty work up to the moneyed bag men (The Gadfly is looking at you Koch Brothers) who have been aggressively funding the GOP primary campaigns of these sociopaths since their genesis the fortnight following Obama's 2009 inauguration speech.

And honestly, if you ask The Gadfly's humble opinion about the matter, that is precisely the way the denouement of this sad, sorry story should play itself out.  For without the political machinations via the dark money of the industrialists and their ilk, the Tea Party would be nothing more than a mildly annoying sliver in John Boehner's orange buttocks instead of the razor sharp Hara-Kiri blade currently pressed tightly against his and the GOP establishment's flabby guts.  It is only right that they be the ones to strangle their own Rosemary's baby creation in it's bassinet before it matures into a ravenous monster that no amount of money or intra-party influence can constrain.

So strap in kids, this ride has the potential to get dangerously bumpy here very quick, if indeed, courage among men in Washington has become an extinct character trait.



----TFG

"By their fruits you will know them. Do you gather grapes from thorns, or figs from thistles?" ~~~ Matthew 7:16

Apparently the organizers of the Million Vet March on Washington over the weekend are none too amused by the Tea Party goons, led by the trio of charlatans Ted Cruz, Sarah Palin and Mike Lee, hijacking their cause and their event and transforming it in to a right wing freak show/photo op.

From the Vet's Facebook page:

Official Stance of the Million Vet March on the Memorials:

The political agenda put forth by a local organizer in Washington DC yesterday was not in alignment with our message. We feel disheartened that some would seek to hijack the narrative for political gain. The core principle was and remains about all Americans honoring Veterans in a peaceful and apolitical manner. Our love for and our dedication to remains with Veterans, regardless of party affiliation or political leanings.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Million-Vet-March-on-the-Memorials/539097822833735


The Gadfly saw a few video snippets on the intertoobz of the Teabaggers preening and speechifying in front of a handful of like-brained sympathizers outside the Memorials,  Among those followers were a few who thought it would be just a dandy idea to fly the seditious Confederate flag alongside old Glory.  The sight of the flag of people who fought to defend the horror of state-sanctioned human slavery fluttering alongside the flag representing the freedom and democracy that Americans fought and died for in two world wars, became the crossed line in the sand and lit a fire under Esquire Magazine's Charles Pierce, whose enraged response to the whole degenerate display is worthy of printing in it's entirety:

My father died in 1989, a victim of Alzheimer's Disease. In his younger days, he was a combat Naval veteran of World War II. Because of that, he was able to take advantage of a big-government program called the GI Bill of Rights. Because of that, he was eligible for a comfortable big-government pension when he retired from his career in a big-government program called the public schools. His politics were very conservative, almost radically so. (It was he who suggested I spend a rainy weekend reading None Dare Call It Treason, a sort of ur-text for Birchite winguttia.) He is not here to speak for himself, so I will do so. It is not merely unseemly, but positively obscene for people like Ted Cruz, and Mike Lee, and the unspeakable Princess Dumbass of the Northwoods to use surviving World War II veterans to advance a political agenda that would make the lives of those veterans immeasurably worse. It is obscene for them to use old, brave men as camouflage for bigotry and nonsense. It is obscene for them to borrow courage that they never would find in themselves and to gussy it up in Confederate flags and trot it out as an an audience for crackpots like Larry Klayman. It is obscene for them to claim for themselves the dead of Normandy, and the Bulge, and Okinawa, and Saipan. It is obscene for them to try to purify their own vandalism in worthier blood than flows in their veins.

How dare these idiots? Tailgunner Ted Cruz, and Mike Lee, the constitooshunal skolar from Utah, and Ms. Palin. How dare they traffick in this manner of grave-robbing? They would all throw these veterans off Medicare, close the VA hospitals, bury the brave old men and women in substandard nursing homes rather than give an inch away of their indomitable ideology of entitled selfishness. Ted Cruz doesn't think the government has a role in making the lives of these veterans easier. Mike Lee thinks the Founders wanted vets to starve. Sarah Palin doesn't think, period, and is proud of it.

The American Right has never looked as fundamentally reckless and inhumane as it did when it attempted to burglarize heroism over the weekend. All the chickenhawks came home to roost, for sure. To see Princess Dumbass there, one hand on her heart while the other one very likely was picking pockets, attempting to wrap herself in the sacrifice of so many people, living and dead, when the hardest thing she's ever done in her life is quit her job halfway through doing it, is to see a kind of ghastly kind of historical vampirism. It takes a special lack of conscience to grift the graves of the honored dead. It's enough to make you root very hard for the Curse Of The Pharaohs. My father doesn't need the intercession of these delusional creatures. On his behalf, I say, in god's name, walk away from decent people in shame.

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/republicans-using-wwii-vets-for-political-agenda-101413


Amen Mr. Pierce.  Amen.

The Gadfly would strongly urge his fellow Americans to pay heed to the title of this post which has been universally interpreted to be Matthew's biblical warning against falling under the spell of corrupt piety from the mouths of false prophets.

And that is about all of the religiosity you are going to get out of this unreformed heathen.



----TFG

Lighten Up Ya Gimps!!

What 'r ya worried about ya shlubs?

Nothing will change until you speak up.

You'll just be the shlubs that you are.

And the world passes you by.

And people you think you know feign ignorance.

And the world passes you by.

And the world, stupid as it is, goes on.

Sigh . . . . . .

And The Gadfly can only take consolation that beautiful minds and spirits like this take us forward:









----TFG




*****and the The Gadfly acknowledges the beauty of Heineken Dark Lager .. and fuck the rest of you...

This Old Man and His Big Fucking Mouth!

Let's take stock of the situation:




The Gadfly is an ex military man.

The Gadfly is of the view America should pay it's bills.

The Gadfly believes in social justice.

The Gadfly likes music from the 1960's.

The Gadfly reads Thomas Paine, and, understands him.

Which one of those admissions do you dear read believe would condemn The Gadfly?




----TFG

Your Humble Servant . . . . . .

Oh but it's alright, once you get past the pain . . .




And Since this is The Gadfly's shitty little blog, he will take the liberty of issuing an ad hoc big Fuck U to the Tea Party.  You fuckers got your wish .... deal with the consequences now you narcissistic little twits.


----TFG

A Musical Interlude ...

Real men also pay homage now and then to scalawags .. . . . .







The Gadfly rests his credentials.


----TFG