Whoa, Where’s the Benefit?

So I was viewing this morning’s politics talking head shows as is my usual Sunday morning routine, and watching the Romney apologists spell out, for the umpteenth time what it is that Romney truly plans in his tax cut plan should he become president.

 

And they were pooh-poohing the claims by the non-partisan Fact-Check.org think tank, a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center, that in order to make up for the tax cuts for the very rich in this country, Romney would have to raise the taxes on the middle class.

He would have no other way to pay for the tax cut, they say.

Baloney said the pundits. Mitt Romney has all of this already handled in other tweaks to his tax plan where the rich will have fewer deductions by eliminating some, and lowering others.

It should all come out the same in the wash these people said.

But it was like this was the first time I was hearing this clearly. Whoa, I said to myself, what is the net benefit then? If the goal is to decrease the tax burden on the rich so that they would hire more people and expand the economy – which is The Plan – where is the net tax savings? Where do the rich get to have more money? If Romney makes the tax cuts for the rich deficit neutral by paying for it with reductions in other areas, doesn’t that mean that there is a zero sum change for the rich?

Where’s the benefit in that?

My guess is that there is a zero sum change for the rich, but a huge change for the middle class. The eliminations of deductions for the rich will also go for the middle class, however the middle class will not have tax rate reductions to offset them.

It was like scales fell from my eyes. Mitt Romney and his spinners are all telling the truth in plain view. Why would anyone vote for Mitt Romney for a zero sum change in their taxes? It makes no sense and now I see why the whole thing is being argued.

Hey presto, it’s a shell game. Now you see it now you don’t. The middle class has fallen for that game for decades. For centuries.

Congressman Batman Gets Ugly

Adam West (well, not the guy who played Batman in the 60’s series) is getting a little down and dirty in his campaign to fight off a young whippersnapper who dares to challenge his re-election. The Florida congressman, redistricted into a Democrat-friendly district, has opted to run in a newly drawn district that will be more friendly to his extreme TEA Party antics. And he is apparently in trouble.

 

So much trouble that he has opened a disturbing can of worms that can only blow up in his face – and that mixed metaphor is truly yucky when you think about it.

Adam West has a new ad that shows where his political opponent was the night he was considering a deployment to the battlefield back when he was an officer in the US military. While he was there on his base contemplating a year in harm’s way, his opponent, Patrick Murphy, who was 19 years old at the time and still doing young foolish things, was busy getting a mug shot of himself taken for being drunk and disorderly at a South Beach nightclub.

Saying…what? Saying that Alan West has the moral high ground in going to war while his opponent was going to the slammer all those years ago?

Opening up the can of worms, and it is a big can of worms, about the story that led to the end of West’s military career.

That is, who has the higher moral ground, a drunk 19 year old or a mid-rank soldier in Iraq who took out his pistol and fired it next to the ear of a prisoner in an effort to extract information? Who has the advantage of an upstanding moral character, a 19-year old inebriate, or a middle aged middle ranked soldier guilty of torture on the battlefield?

And the real beauty of this is that Adam West himself broached the conversation. He brought it up. Now let him try and finish it while still standing up.

Wake the F**k Up

OK, I found a clean version of Samuel L. Jackson’s Wake the F**k Up video, a video that reads like a children’s book, but delivers a punch for the lazy, the lax and the listless. The voters who have not yet checked in that there is a critical election in just 39 days.

 

This video has other versions out there that are not bleeped, and I’ve heard them, and have found myself rolling on the floor. No one says F**k like Samuel L. Jackson. But I run a PG site and I needed to find a version much like the one I just saw on TV.

So here it is.

Hee hee.

Must Be a Slow News Day

Well all I can say is that it must be a slow news day at the Austin American-Statesman if they have to resort to printing a story about, of all things, Republicans stealing Obama campaign signs off the front lawns of their neighbors.

 

From the Austin American-Statesman:

 

"Doug McLean, who owned the sign, said he had lent it to his neighbor, from whose yard officials say Koble took the sign. McLean said signs had been taken out of the yard four times over the last couple of weeks, so he and his neighbor decided to stake out the property."

 

"McLean, 41, said he has video and audio showing Koble, who was walking down the street with another person and a dog, taking the sign. McLean said they confronted Koble, who McLean claims admitted he’d stolen the signs before."

 

I mean, really? This is news? It is news that a Republican will try to suppress the ability of a neighbor from making a political statement that opposes his own? My god, what's next? A headline story about the fact that a bright yellow ball came up from the horizon this morning?

 

Stealing political signage is not only commonplace here in Crazyred Fort Bend County it is expected local behavior. I do believe that if Republicans all of a sudden exhibited a respect for the sanctity of a neighbor's opposing political opinions, let alone the sanctity of his lawn, it will be a sign of the iminence of Apocalypse.

Occupy Pepper Spray

Remember just a year ago when the “Occupy Movement” was going strong and the law enforcement officials in various jurisdictions found a new hobby? Pepper spraying innocent civilians exercising their constitutional rights – and also a little bit of civil disobedience?

Remember the New Yorker women who were pepper sprayed while they were being held in a barricade?

Remember the UC students who were all sitting in a line with linked arms as a campus police officer methodically sprayed them all with gobs and gobs of pepper spray?

Those images still come to mind even a year later.

And now we are starting to see the legal fallout of wanton disregard for the health and safety of these people.

To the tune of a cool million.

250 large go to the lawyers to divvy up, and the rest go to the protesters who were pepper sprayed in this incident that we all remember well.

But guess who pays in the end? Ironically it will be the taxpayers that foot this bill. Not the Regents who oversaw and approved, not the Chancellor who ordered in the police, not the police themselves who were the true rioters in this incident.

The taxpayers of the State of California.

The 99%.

Federal Appeals Court: Freedom of Speech is not Freedom to Cahoot

Only in Texas.
 

Only in Texas will we have a bunch of local elected officials band together to get the Texas Open Meetings Act, an act that has well-served the public since 1967, overturned on the basis of the 1^st Amendment.

Freedom of Speech.

That’s right. In a case recently laughed out of the 5^th District Court of Appeals, a three-justice panel affirmed a lower court ruling that the Texas Open Meetings Act does not discriminate against elected officials and their freedom of speech. That is, TOMA puts an undue burden on the ability of elected officials to cahoot in private.

Transparency in government dealings are all about what the Texas Open Meeting Act is about, and prevention of just the sort of chicanery that was being contemplated by the plaintiffs.

In its opinion the court "labeled the officials’ arguments 'nonsensical' and said open meetings laws are intended to promote good government, not thwart free speech."

 "Nonsensical." I like that.

But that in a nutshell is what it’s like to live in Texas sometimes. Sometimes it seems like the whole state is a mental ward and the inmates are in charge.

Actually Mitt, YOU Poll at 47%

Last week we were all abuzz over Mitt Romney's wonderful revelation of his own true self as he talked to an audience of his peers - really rich people - and he made his case for how 47% of Americans will be voting for Barack Obama no matter what.

 

Well it seems the tide has turned a little bit, and now we see that indeed it is Mitt Romney who will command 47 percent of the vote come heck or high water. After everything that we could do to him in the press, it seems that there is now a solid 47 percent who will vote for Mitt Romney - so far.

 

It's in today's poll.

 

So it's time to have a little fun with this. It's time for some comic relief.

 

 

 

But the funniest thing? He was dead serious.



Rosenberg Has an Obama Store In It

Get it? The blog title is a paraphrase of one of the numbers in “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.” “Texas has a Whorehouse In It.”

 

As in, gee, what a surprise.

Rosenberg, Texas is a sleepy little town in the far outskirts of the Houston metro area, and it is known for few things. One of the things that makes Rosenberg near and dear to my heart is the fact that the people in the town vote Democratic for the most part.

They are the 47 Percent.

So they rate a store, sponsored by a local Democratic club that calls itself the Silver Democrats of Fort Bend County, and the current county commissioner of Fort Bend County Precinct 1, Richard Morrison. Here you see a photo of the store front.

 

It is right at the corner of 8^th St. and Avenue H (US 90A) [see map below]. 

Morrison is one of two Democratic county elected officials. Everyone else is from the party of Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan. You know, the Dynamic Duds.

I spent the afternoon there at the Obama Store – they call it the Obama Shop – helping out and shooting the breeze with the occasional party loyalist who happened to walk through the door.

Then something really fun happened. A quartet of Mormon (Latter Day Saints) Elders on their 2 year mission came wandering by. Well, first two arrived on their bikes, and then the other two showed up with the car. That’s right, you heard it here first: Mormon boys on their mission drive cars.

They wanted to have their photograph taken with them standing next to our life-sized cardboard display of Barack Obama. Marsha called me out there to take the shot so I did. Everyone was giggling themselves silly as we all perceived the irony of Mormon elders on their mission having their photo taken with the President, whose opponent in this year’s election is none other than the first Mormon ever to be nominated for president on the Republican side – or any side for that matter.

Then Susan yelled out, ”Hal, get a picture.”

Susan is always a step ahead of me.

So I whipped out my new Droid Razr and took this photo.

 

See? Nice boys. Nice smiles. I snapped it after I asked them to “Say Romney…”

You Can Do a Lot, but You Can’t Do That

Boy did Texas Democratic candidate for State House Matt Stillwell stick his foot in it this time. Stillwell, a native of the area of the west formerly known as Tejas, that is, Albuquerque, New Mexico, sent out a campaign flier solemnly stating that he was a Native Texan.
 

Well, yes, but not in this century.

As originally mapped, Tejas extended west along the east bank of the Rio Grande River, taking with it roughly half of what now constitutes New Mexico, including all of what is now known as the City of Albuquerque.

The city of Stillwell’s birth.

But on Stillwell’s flier for his try at the seat for HD 136 in Williamson County, it clearly stated that he is a Native Texan, when in actual fact, he is a foreigner.

And you know that the 11^th Commandment, the one written on the part of the tablet that dropped off on Moses’ way down from the top of Mount Sinai, reads “Thou shalt not claim to be a Texan when it ain’t true.”

Matt Stillwell broke God’s Law, and he needs to be crucified for his transgression, so says the Republican County Chairman Bill Fairbrother, who quipped:

“How do you mess up your own bio?  I shudder to even think what Matt will miss when it’s time to study the state budget.”

Well ditto, Brother Bill. I even wonder whether this New Mexico native wonders what that big yellow thing is when it comes up in the sky every morning.

I mean, take the state’s budget. Ol’ Matt might just miss the fact that it takes  $20 billion per year to educate Texas’ children, and instead allow only $16 billion. Or that it takes $10 billion to fully fund the states healthcare programs, but he might just decide that $6 billion is all the state’s citizens need.

Oh wait, that already has happened, hasn’t it?

Oh well. Still and all, either Matt Stillwell has made a false claim that he is a Native Texan, and deserves to be bound and quartered for that offense, or he needs to be sent back to the 19^th century from which he came, when Albuquerque was, indeed, a part of Tejas.

Because, space-time continuum notwithstanding, you can do a lot, but you can’t do that.

"Boy, Was I Right"

Rolling on the floor a couple of nights ago as Jon Stewart shared a “Moment of Zen” with his audience as Mitt Romney was concluding a speech back in 2005.

If anyone has to ask where that “47 Percent” comment came from, look no further than this clip.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

 

Pete Olson’s HPD Patch

Oh the humanity! This week over 200,000 Houstonians braved the crowded freeways to get a last glimpse of the last space shuttle to orbit Earth, the Endeavour, which took off from Ellington field last for a final flight leg to California.

Bitter Houstonians. Bitter citizens of “Space City, USA” who have been completely snubbed by the Obama Administration in its doling out of the space shuttle fleet: not one of the orbiters is to make its home in Houston, at the Johnson Space Center, where they have a real live Saturn V rocket on display, nor at Space Center Houston.

Instead, the Endeavour is to make its home in Exposition Park, in Los Angeles, California.

You know, Los Angeles, the nerve center of manned space flight.

Or should I say home of the manned space flight of Luke Skywalker, James T. Kirk, and Commander Krill?

And yes, this snubbing of the Houston area is deliberate. Houston, after all, rated a mock-up and not the real McCoy. And for good reason. Pistol Pete Olson is the congressman whose district includes the Johnson Space Center. Olson is congressman to the astronauts. And as congressman, Pete Olson has done his level best to see that Barack Obama not get a second term by maintaining the status quo in our economic recovery process. By voting against every bill that would help America, and therefore help the chances of Obama’s re-election.

As you sow, so shall ye reap, I think it says in the Holy Bible.

But I’ve mentioned this all before in another blog posting, so what’s new?

New today is the news that the Houston Police Department is mulling over changing its famous uniform patch. You know, the one with the logo of Earth and orbital paths? The one with “Space City, USA ” emblazoned along the lower border?

Houston, according to some in HPD, is no longer “Space City.” They didn’t even get a real live orbiter to show in their front yard. So HPD is taking its marbles and going home. No orbiter, no patch, and no more “Space City.”

Oh, but hey. Houston still has Pete Olson, doesn’t it? Heck, even I, living in an adjacent county, get to have Pete Olson as my congressman still. So why not just alter the patch just a little? Why not replace the logo with an appropriate new icon of the Houston Texas area?

My humble suggestion, should someone care to make the edit, is to change “City USA” to CADET and replace the image of Earth with Pete Olson’s smilin’ face.

Did Chick-Fil-A Cave? Oh Yes They Did

Chick-Fil-A has caved to the pressures of the LGBT community and will no longer support, through its charitable endeavor, the WinShape Foundation, any of the political hate groups that are aligned against equality for gays and lesbians.

 

At last count, Chick-Fil-A has funneled a cool 5 million dollars to WinShape, which in turn has funded such political organizations as Focus on the Family and the National Organization for Marriage.

Both groups are responsible for the work done to promote passage of the Defense of Marriage Act as well as state and local initiatives that are meant to deny basic human rights to gays and lesbians across the nation.

The company’s senior director of real estate signed an internal memo stating that the stated philosophy of WinShape was not to support organizations  “with political agendas” and the group would no longer fund these politically charged hate groups.

This is an astonishing reversal of policy as expounded by the company’s chief operating officer, Dan Cathy.

Even more amazing is the internal memo sent “to franchisees and stakeholders that states that as a company, they will ‘treat every person with honor, dignity and respect-regardless of their beliefs, race, creed, sexual orientation and gender’ and that their ‘intent is not to engage in political or social debates.’”

No word from Mike Huckabee if he will fill the void that WinShape has left, or who will patch the giant hole in the pocket of James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family.

And no, I still will not purchase a Chick-Fil-A product even given the fact that they completely reversed themselves in an argument that they are sure to lose in the polls and at the cash register.

A Chick-Fil-A product still tastes like a snot sandwich to me.

Restore the WHAT?

I admit to occasionally looking in at Zuckerberg’s website from time to time just to see what people are thinking and occasionally have been rewarded with some material for the blog.

Like today.

Today I found this little gem shared.

 

Making me ask myself where in all creation is the Pledge of Allegiance not being recited in public schools? I say the pledge every day with my AP students and was not aware of any current controversy in regard to the pledge.

Not that there haven’t been. Early on, adherents to the Jehovah’s Witnesses  faith objected in that the Pledge was to an oath to a graven image, which it is. JWs are given a pass not to pledge as a result.

More recently, in one court case the pledge was ruled an unconstitutional endorsement of monotheism, a ruling that was overturned later in a ruling that characterized the Pledge as “ceremonial and patriotic.” So there have been  no, repeat no restrictions placed on school districts forbidding them from requiring students to recite the Pledge.

In short, this FB appeal is nothing more than a scam to get people to believe in the onslaught against America by liberal pinkos, a scam recently sprung upon us by none other than Mitt Romney, whose claim at a recent rally convinced listeners that there was a movement afoot to remove the words “In God We Trust” from American currency.

Boy, we pinko liberals certainly are busy sorts, aren’t we?

And then I stopped and thought to myself, why ARE the words “In God We Trust” stamped on our currency? I don’t recall it on any of the other currency I have handled in my lifetime.

The Party’s Over…

Oh boy did Mitt really say all that? Mitt Romney was secretly recorded at a fundraising meeting of wealthy voters, much like Barack Obama was secretly recorded when he unfortunately referred to people not in his base as those who ”cling to their guns and their religion.”

 

To a similar effect.

At Romney’s meeting of wealthy peers he referred to Barack Obama’s base, that is, me, as the 47% of the electorate “who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it."

He said more that you can listen to here:

Hear that?

According to Mitt Romney, I don’t pay income tax, so I could care less about all of his talk of tax cuts.

Tell that to my tax guy who needs to be better at his job. Jeez, here we have Mitt Romney telling me that I don’t have to pay taxes and Bob tells me that I most certainly do have to.

Whom am I to believe?

Mittster is one cooked goose. He is all done, stick a fork in him.

Rampant Voter Fraud in Florida?

Well…no. Actually not. Florida’s Republican governor Rick Scott, seeking to purge potential Democratic voters from the state’s voter rolls, pressured state electoral officials to conduct investigations of voter fraud in their jurisdictions.

From The Globe and Mail:

“Under pressure from the governor, the state’s electoral officials had initially flagged more than 180,000 names (many of them Hispanic-sounding) for checking. All but 2,600 of those initially flagged – some of whom turned out to be not only citizens, but military veterans with service in Afghanistan and Iraq – were quickly determined to be bonafide citizens and restored to the voter rolls.”

So when push came to shove, the rubber barely touched the road and this statewide search nabbed the state one, just one alien resident who has registered to vote, and voted in previous elections:  one Josef Sever, an Austrian national.

Herr Sever illegally registered to vote so that he could then go and vote in at least the ’04 and ’08 presidential elections, and also, by the way, so he could, on four separate occasions, purchase guns and also apply for a conceal carry permit.

After being found guilty of fraud, Herr Sever will be deported back to Canada - back to Canada’s national health care – presumably without his guns.

About a few days after the election, then, Floridians should be on the lookout for fire-sale prices for Herr Sever’s guns on Craig’s List or eBay.

And yes, voter fraud is rampant in the United States, but the fraud is of those who make strident claims that illegal aliens are registering to vote. Why would one go to such a risk when the costs are high, and the rewards are non-existent.

Romney’s Copyright Infringement?

Remember back when John McCain was running for president and he thought that it would be just fine and dandy to play John Mellencamp’s songs “Our Country” and “Pink House” at his political rallies, only to have Mr. Mellencamp take umbrage to that, and request that he stop doing his songs?

 

He was even a little taken aback that McCain, an avowed conservative, would play such songs that glorified labor and the working man.

Labor, it seems was, and still is unpopular with the GOP, and vice versa.

Well while I was diddling with the idea that Mitt Romney had painted his logo over top of U2’s promotion of the movie “Brothers,” about an Afghanistan war hero’s return from the grave I completely missed the fact that Mitt’s wife’s cutesy name for her husband’s luxurious MD-83 conversion was “Hair Force One” but that Mitt was not happy with the name, and was launching a national  campaign to give it a new name.

The winner of the contest would get to ride on it with Beyoncé.

I diddled with the notion of faux outrage that he would paint his logo over U2’s, and missed this story. But now that I notice it, I have to wonder why, after all, change the name? Is it really that Ann Romney’s name is deprecating to the ex-Governor’s coiffure? Is that it?

Or do we have something even darker to hide. Something akin to McCain’s gaffe with rocker John Mellencamp?

Indeed we do. It seems that the name “Hair Force One” is already taken. Taken, ironically, by a heavy metal group. That’s the group’s name: Hair Force One.

Now I haven’t heard whether this band has approached the Romney campaign with a cease and desist order yet, or whether they ever will (but they should – think of the press it would generate for them), but I am guessing that one of the quiz kids on Romney’s campaign staff googled the name and came up with what I did and decided to issue a course correction, and enlist yet another – and more famous – musical artiste to help with the cover-up.

I have not submitted any names because I have no wish to fly on anything remotely close to a GOP campaign plane, but in case there is anyone else out there who wants to try my suggestions, you are welcome to them. Hopefully no one has copyrighted them.

1. Liar’s Flyer
2. Mitt’s Ritz
3. The Bain on the Plane  

Romney Paints His Logo Over Afghan War Memorial

OK, that’s about all I can stand. First the supposed ready-for-prime-time presidential pretender accuses the Obama administration that they apologized for a bad movie on the Prophet Mohammed, something that they did not do, and now I have firm evidence that Romney’s campaign has defiled a memorial to Afghanistan veterans.

Swear it’s so.

Look here. This is a photo of Romney’s new custom campaign jet.

It is an MD-83 leased from a Michigan company that leases jets to businesses, politicos, and all manner of people who can afford the bill. Note the serial number.

Note also the big Romney campaign logo painted on the tail.

Now take a look at a photo of this jet, also an MD-83. It has the exact same serial number.

This is the jet that the rock group U2 leased for their “Winter” tour.

See the “Bro” painted below it? That refers to their song “Brothers” written to be played in the closing credits for the movie of the same name. The movie was a poignant tale of a US marine deployed to Afghanistan whose helicopter is shot down over Afghanistan and his family is told that he is dead.

A war story honoring our war dead.

And the logo for the movie got callously painted over by Mitt Romney, who failed to even mention the war in Afghanistan in his acceptance speech earlier this month.

Are you not outraged? Is this not outrageous?

And yes, this is mock outrage on my part, but this tale is just as ridiculous as the previous controversy that Barack Obama, that Kenyan Muslim, painted his logo over the American flag on the tail of his campaign jet in 2008.

 

The "flag" in this case being the company logo of North American Airlines.

 

 

And no, you won’t find this bit of drivel copied badly and placed in a chain email for the next 5 years like the anti-Obama flag-paint-over tale that keeps being recirculated. You won’t because Democrats know BS when they see it.

That’s why they are Democrats, after all.  

Obama Haters Anonymous

I once held a position in a political action committee. As a PAC we often produced campaign signs, mailers and doorhangers. So I know whereof I speak when I say this.

 

When you put something out there that is politically motivated, whether it is in favor of a candidate or in opposition to one, you cannot do that anonymously. Just as you have the right to free speech, we the people have the right to know who it is that is doing the speaking.

 

I don't recall a single constitutional amendment that guarantees your anonymity when you make a political statement.

 

So recently I keep seeing on Facebook and other places more and more anonymous signs and billboards, signs and billboards that not only attack our president, but also promote his "not-ready-for-prime-time" opponent.

 

There are federal laws that require some attribution when putting out a billboard. When sending out a mailer or doorhanger.

 

The TEA Party faction of the Republican party skip that step.

 

Take a look at these beauties. See any attributions? Or are they all issued by the same organization: Obama Haters Anonymous.