Save Santa!

As if Hurricane Sandy wasn't bad enough, now the planet's changing, climate-change-induced weather patterns are threatening Christmas! Yes, Santa's workshop, long known to be located at the North Pole, has collapsed beneath the ice!

This latest consequence of global warming is nothing short of disastrous!  Almost nothing can be salvaged from Santa's shop, and what little can be recovered is virtually impossible to see. Due to the tilt of the Earth's axis, the North Pole is in perpetual darkness, and will remain so until just before the Spring Equinox. Salvage teams and rescue parties with high-powered search lights have been able to find nothing so far.

A small hint of this potential disaster was experienced two years ago when Comet's reindeer paddock collapsed through the ice. Comet, a conservative who has long opposed the idea of global warming, still maintains that event was due to a freak warm water current.

More might have been done to prevent this disaster had preventative measures been put into place. The Elvish Engineering Corp (EEC) had strongly recommended putting flotation devices beneath the entire compound to keep it afloat in the event of an ice collapse. Unfortunately, Santa's workshop has simply been too overwhelmed by recent scandals and financial woes to be able to afford this kind of pre-planning. Last year, as many may recall, Rudolph's career was destroyed due to the scandalous discovery that he was doping and using RGH (reindeer growth hormone, see last year's blog post). His seven Tempyte de Noel trophies have been retroactively stripped from him. Numerous other reindeer scandals, including Vixen's highly-publicized sexual affair with Reindeer-General David Parbrayus, have further given the Santa administration fits. Over the last several years, the Kringle financial holdings in Zurich, Switzerland, have had to commit vast resources to the defense of the Elvish Workers Union against labor-breaking incursions by Wal-Mart and other retail giants. As such, the resources needed to transform Santa's North Pole Base into a floating city simply weren't there.

To help deal with the disaster, a number of international groups have come to the rescue. Newly re-elected President Barack Obama has asked New Jersey Governor Chris Christie to fill the role of Santa during peak times, and he has accepted. The Red Cross, International Monetary Fund and other organizations are committed to help. Donations and volunteers are badly needed.

Save Santa!


Eric

*

What Is A "Mandate?"

Eight years ago, when left-leaning centrists like myself were still smarting over John Kerry having been swift-boated, I said repeatedly to anyone who would listen that I didn't think that 51% constituted a "mandate." In fact, I was quite adamant about that, and anytime Dick Cheney uttered the word, I wanted to knock that smug, stoic block of his right off its mortar. Now, the shoe is on the other foot, and I must submit myself to the same standard which I set back then. 51%, by itself, does not comprise a "mandate." Not for Bush, and not for Obama.

Yet Our Trophy President (X2!) is claiming that he has a mandate on raising taxes on the wealthiest upper 2%, and I'm quite certain that conservatives must feel about that much the same as I felt back in 2008. In a word, furious! Am I about to say that Obama does not have a mandate on the tax issue?

Nice try, but no. You see, in 2008, 60% of Americans disapproved of the war in Iraq. Hence, a 51% election victory did not constitute a mandate on said war, something which I felt was beyond obvious back in 2008. But Bush said he did anyway. That was wrong.

And now?

Now, polls show that 60% of Americans approve of raising taxes on the wealthiest upper 2%. Obama's 51% came largely from those same people. There you go. Now that's a mandate!

Wealthy interests, combined with superpacs, out-raised and out-spent an incumbent president by nearly double, unprecedented in history, shattering all previous records by nearly triple any previous dollar amount, all to convince citizens that holding their ground on the tax rate for the very wealthiest was a necessary thing. It still failed. Now that's a mandate!

An entire media empire brought its full force to bear on the message of "taxing the rich bad... taxing the rich bad... taxing the rich bad..." and it still lost. Now that's a mandate!

And finally, the president stumped, and stumped, and stumped on the issue of asking the rich to pay a little bit more so that we can balance our budget. His opponent was not forthcoming, at all, about how he would balance the budget by "closing loopholes," or which loopholes would be cut. In other words, the blunt truth won bluntly. Now that's a mandate!

There's all kinds of other stuff that one can say that Barack Obama's 51% does not give him a mandate on: Social Security, Medicare, foreign policy, "family values," etc. But taxes? That's the one area where public opinion is simply too crystal clear to claim anything other than a mandate.


Eric

*

What Is Socialism?

What is socialism?

Oh, we all know the answer to that one. Socialism is whatever Barack Obama is doing to America, right?

Well, no. The real definition of socialism is quite different.

Wikipedia says:
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and co-operative management of the economy, and a political philosophy advocating such a system.

Dictionary.com says:
1.) a theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole. 2.) procedure or practice in accordance with this theory.

And Merriam-Webster says:
1.) any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods.

So the definition is fairly straight-forward. Socialism is what you call it when the government owns and runs the farm, factory or store. Simple. It might also be a smaller collective management system of some sort, such as a cooperative company (a “co-op,” such as Woodman’s Groceries) or a religious movement where its members forfeit all their earthly possessions to be managed by religious leaders (such as pre-Constantine Christianity. Yep. Jesus-Freaks were the first socialists! Read the book of Acts).

But let’s concern ourselves only with socialism as applied by government. Sometimes, a government is socialist outright, controlling the means of production centrally. We’ll call that classic socialism. Other times, government might act a little socialistic in controlling certain things in a limited way, but leaves the overall capitalistic structure alone. We see this more in Europe than in the U.S., but since all capitalism has done this to some degree or another, we’ll call that classic capitalism. Finally, we’ll compare this with government letting needed services die, or outright giving the store away to wealthy interests. We’ll call this crony capitalism.

We can all agree, classic capitalism is a good thing. Those semi-socialistic elements are what gives us roads and bridges. They're what built Hoover Dam and the Tennessee Valley Authority. They gave us U.S. highways. They created the Alaska pipeline. (By the way, if you're wealthy, "you didn't build that!") They're what provides us with military protection. (Say what you will about the military, but it is totally government controlled, no matter what else you may call it.) So classic capitalism = good. Classic socialism and crony capitalism = bad. With me?

So, according to these definitions:

Only one business exists, which is the government: Classic Socialism.
Many businesses, small and large, exist, with the largest paying higher tax rates: Classic Capitalism.
Government defines “small business” as having employees with high six-figure salaries but under 500 employees in the entity, thus allowing them to duck a higher tax rate: Crony Capitalism.

All revenues are government revenues: Classic Socialism.
Government taxes those who aren't poor a little bit, and taxes progressively more as people get wealthier: Classic Capitalism.
Government taxes the middle class at a higher percentage rate than the extremely rich: Crony Capitalism.

Government owns and runs all hospitals, compensating all doctors with pre-set allotments: Classic Socialism.
Government centrally pays for healthcare, with doctors, hospitals and other medical services existing as free enterprises: Classic Capitalism. (Technically, this is referred to as a monopsony, the opposite of a monopoly.)
Government requires citizens to buy insurance or else pay a penalty fee: Crony Capitalism. (Unbelievably so!)

Government takes over a major industry: Classic Socialism.
Government rescues a major industry, like General Motors, buy buying up a major interest and then selling that ownership interest off later when the industry has gotten back on its feet: Classic Capitalism.
Government lets a major industry die so that vultures can swoop in and sell it off in pieces: Crony Capitalism.

All business profits go to the government bank: Classic Socialism.
Taxing the rich at a higher rate is applied as a reasonable counterbalance to the luck and privilege which got them there, allowing greater equality of opportunity and a more sustainable economy: Classic Capitalism.
Taxing the rich at a higher rate is decried as “punishing the successful”: Crony Capitalism.

Catch my drift? Something can be socialistic without necessarily being socialism outright, and capitalism is still capitalism, even if it has a few socialistic elements, provided that the bulk of the economy, particularly wages and prices, remains free-market.

But socialism applied as a nation’s overall government structure (that is, Communism) is all but dead, and has been since 1991. That experiment was tried, and it failed. Want to hear a fact that will make you feel really old? The babies that were born after the Berlin Wall came down are now over 21 years of age! The only communist hold-outs that are left are China, North Korea, Cuba, and a couple of insignificant nuisances, such as Laos, Cambodia, and Myanmar (Burma). China is not a true socialist country because it tolerates capitalism within it as a primary economic structure. So does Cuba. Baby Boomers and all who came after were taught to demonize communism and all its variants from a very young age, despite not really being taught what it is (because that would be subversive), and besides that, it’s now nearly extinct on top of it all. So socialism is something virtually unknown to two, and now almost three, whole generations!

I guess that explains why so many people have no clue as to what it is.

Giveaways to corporate insurance interests are called “socialist.” Low-interest loans to green-energy start-up businesses are called “socialist.” Even things like gay marriage and abortion are called “socialist!”

No wonder people are confused.

One great example of how people have so thoroughly forgotten the definition of socialism is Thomas Peterffy. You might remember him. He’s the billionaire who spent a huge chunk of his fortune on campaign ads during this most recent election decrying how America is becoming socialist.

“I was born in a socialist country,” he says in the ad. And then proceeds to describe how awful it was, and how he sees America becoming more like it. “Yes, the rich will be poorer, but the poor will also be poorer,” he laments, then effectively pleads with people to please vote Republican.

Well, no. Peterffy is right about socialism making everyone poorer – if applied as a nationwide economic system. But he’s dead wrong when he says that he sees that sort of thing happening in America.

You see, Peterffy hails from Hungary. Fair enough. But America is simply not becoming more like bygone Hungary. It’s becoming more like modern France! Or Germany. Or Holland. Or England, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Switzerland, or any other non-socialist, died-in-the-wool capitalistic European nation which was never part of the Soviet Bloc and has been smart enough to pay for its citizens’ healthcare! They also have a fairer tax system, which is really all Peterffy is truly complaining about!

Wrong nation, Peterffy. Wrong goddamned nation.

He came over from Hungary as a young man and eventually made himself a fortune as he became an old man. Good for him! But he’s just plain mistaken, and all his money doesn't make him any less confused. Tax breaks for the wealthy means that a great many other young, ambitious men won't be able to pursue the same path to wealth that he did, because they'll have to pay a higher rate which weighs them down. Talk about kicking down the ladder after you've reached the top!

What this guy, and all his friends, are really pissed about is (gasp!) their capital gains tax rates will go up to the same percentage that the rest of us pay on our meager paychecks! Oh horror, the fairness of it all! But look at how much money that Peterffy and his ilk have paid, funding their own TV ads and contributing pre-bundled millions to the Romney campaign.

Do the math: Add up all the money the rich have paid trying to defeat Obama’s plan to let the Bush tax cuts expire on them. Subtract from this the extra money they would have paid in taxes. The difference is the billions they could have saved, if only they hadn't made such a big stink about it!

It was far, far cheaper just to shut up and deal with it.

Well, they’ll know better next time. So will we. Now that we finally know the definition of socialism, that is.


Eric

*

Wherefore Goeth Republicans From Here?

Now that it’s official that the conservative movement is forever in the minority, the party of said movement, the G.O.P., must now restructure itself so that it can win future elections. It simply has no other choice. That means that one of the planks in its platform has got to go. But which one?

Taxes? Forget it. Oh, they’ll have no choice regarding letting the Bush tax cuts for the 2% expire. If they do nothing, they expire anyway, so they simply don’t have the leverage. But you can bet they’ll go right back to being pit-bulls on this one. It’s their most defining characteristic.

Free trade? Not a chance. There's nothing wrong with free trade, it's the backbone of our economy. But extremism of deregulation is simply too ingrained in the Republican psyche. Besides, the rich donate generously to the Republican cause primarily because they hope to become robber-barons once again. If this one shifts, there go the campaign donations, and Hollywood simply won’t be willing to fill the void.

How about shunning the Christian Right? Certainly, embracing religious loony-tunes has cost the G.O.P. time and time again, but Christianity is still the primary religion of the U.S. Secularists, by contrast, are 20% of the nation. That means that the non-religious, while too big to have its rights pissed on anymore, are not yet big enough to be openly courted – even by Democrats. (Yet the Jewish vote, comprising only 1.5% of the population, does get courted. Go figure!)

Family values? Well, let’s be blunt, here. By “family values,” what’s really meant is opposition to abortion and gay marriage. Certainly, Republicans got cremated on this one, and always will so long as women keep the right to vote. But they've certainly seen the numbers shift on the gay rights issue, and so might choose to quietly let that one drop, much like they dropped the issue of divorce (as well as let the secret collusion with southern Democrats on enforcing segregation quietly die). But abortion? Well, as I've been pointing out on this blog for some time now, fetal brain development defines the true onset of a being. But while I’m busily beating on that drum, I recognize that I’m only one tom-tom in a very large and raucous drum orchestra. It will be some time before anyone begins marching to my beat. Still, if they do, Republicans might find their ticket to winning back the female vote. Highly unlikely, however.

What about the drug war? Ah, here’s one that might just work! A collaboration with the Libertarian party on this one would win back the youth vote, big time! We may even see a Libertarian/Republican alliance! But old dogs hate new tricks, and the G.O.P. has some very old dogs. This one could happen, and if it did some – including me – might be willing to vote Republican again. But I would be highly surprised if it were to happen.

That leaves only one issue left: Immigration. The Hispanic vote is kicking Republican ass, and the projected population numbers indicate that it will only get worse for them. Eventually, most Americans will be Hispanic, and if conservatives don’t make inroads there, they will be shut out of the decision making process forever. So, this is where I predict they will make their big change. They will abandon their xenophobia, buy a wide-brimmed sombrero, raise their piñata, and throw a fiesta! Republicans will now advocate tearing down the wall between Mexico and the U.S. They will begin advocating easier paths to citizenship. Don’t be surprised if many of the stations owned by Clearchannel suddenly flip to a Spanish-language format. Watch how existing Spanish-language channels get bought out by wealthy corporate interests. It’s happening already, as Mundo Fox is no accident! Conservative Latinos who are willing to go on the radio will suddenly find that they have a lucrative career. Look out! Here come the Hispanic versions of Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity! And then they will try to blast the Spanish-speaking A.M. airwaves with right-wing rhetoric the way they’ve done with the English-speaking sports networks. Who knows? It might even work! Eventually.

But they burned that bridge long ago, and rebuilding it will take a massive engineering effort, as the river that must be traversed has grown quite wide. It will take decades before they undo all their damage, and they risk alienating the very white voters who comprise their base in the process. The Tea Party will likely turn to the Libertarian party in disgust! If they do, the Libertarians might actually get some people elected. That is, if the Tea-Partiers are willing to embrace homos and Mary Jane. Then again, maybe not. The Constitution Party might suddenly get a lot bigger, yet remain ineffectual.

But who knows? Maybe I’m wrong, and Republicans will begin rockin’ their gonge!


Eric

*

*Ahem!* Liberals, We Suck!

Okay, my fellow centrists, left-of-center centrists, progressives and liberals, the time for gloating and celebrating the victory is over. We suck.

Yes, we do. We got lucky, nothing more. We dodged a bullet, but only because our assailant can't aim.

We let the Tea Party form up and rally, unchallenged. Maybe we were too busy mimicking ostriches with our heads buried in the sands of disbelief, but we should have spanked those spoiled crybabies the moment they started wailing over their lost candy. But, apparently, we don't believe in spanking.

We failed to rally behind a second stimulus after the health care reform law passed. Maybe we thought (as I did) that the new reforms would act as a new stimulus. The truth is, in some areas of the economy, it did, but not universally. A second stimulus was needed, and we flubbed it.

We forgot about Gitmo. We could have created hundreds of jobs in Missouri and Oklahoma by bringing detainees to the U.S., revitalizing unused prisons, and showing the world that even suspected terrorists (let me emphasize that: suspected terrorists!) are innocent until proven guilty. But no, we had to insist that the same death penalty we handed out to Timothy McVeigh wasn't good enough for towel-heads. We would rather fuck the due process of law. We would rather not have to face the potential embarrassment of having punished the few innocents whom we thew in among the guilty herd.

In the short time our representatives actually held a super-majority, after Al Franken was finally sworn in and before Ted Kennedy died six weeks later, we got a bunch of things done. But outside of that, we let super-minority Republicans kick us around for nearly two solid years! All they had to do was whisper the word, "filibuster" and everyone in the Senate would dive for cover like mice hearing a hooting owl! We should have stood up to them! We should have let them filibuster, and fail! We could have strong-armed at least a few Republicans in the House to act cooperatively afterward, but we let them act like brats instead. All we needed was a little bit of a spine to get anything done, anything at all, but between 59 Senators and 255 Congressmen, they hadn't a single vertebrae. And us? Their constituents? We let them act less like legislators and more like inattentive babysitters! Oh, yes, they were jellyfish, but we were asleep at the wheel!

Our president was, and is, a man of high nobility, a bridge-builder rather than a warrior, a tactician rather than a combatant. He wanted to unite a divided playing field rather than deal with the reality of an irreconcilably partisan one. Nothing wrong with that. He values his integrity - a quality most men don't have if they even want to be president in the first place. But that's why those under him had to accept two-party reality. Had Nanci Pelosi been more willing to twist arms, or Harry Reid more willing to stand up to bullies... but no. Everybody had to be so congenial towards the unforgivably vicious.

We caved on letting tax cuts for the upper 2% expire. Of all the budget-saving, deficit-cutting, economy-rescuing things we missed out on, this one was the biggest. It's a drop in the bucket for the wealthy, it never effected "small business" (as defined as your local mom & pop shop), but we let it slip away. We let the sandwich get snatched away from the starving man!

And then, the biggest mistake of all. We let the midterm elections of 2010 slide on by, never going to the polls, never getting up off our asses, thus throwing away our hard-won majority in Congress to a highly pissed-off minority of Tea-Party assholes, convinced that they should protect the rich in the vain hope that they'll get there someday, determined to scorch the earth rather than let their last chance at overturning Roe v. Wade slip away.

Just like that, the four years we had to rebuild was cut down to two. And it was our own, goddamned fault!

If that weren't bad enough, for two solid years the Republicans made their highest priority the destruction of our economy so that Obama could be defeated. And no one called them out on it! (Except, perhaps, Bill Maher and myself.) Not while it was happening, and not during the 2012 presidential election campaign! What the fuck!

Fortunately, the Tea Party and conservative talk radio was its own worst enemy. We lucked out.

Romney was perfectly designed to fail. The darling of the conservative media, he was the originator of the very same healthcare reform at the state level, a one-victory politician who flubbed the tough questions, and a member of the very same vulture capitalism that everyone demonized after the collapse of 2008. But he'd already locked in the big donors. By the time Republicans realized their mistake, the nomination process had already gotten to states which allowed Democrats to cross over their vote to prevent Rick Santorum from winning. They were stuck with the worst possible candidate.

Then, we lucked out in the other candidates. Todd Akin, Richard Mourdock, Linda McMahon, Tom Smith, John Koster... again and again they stuck their feet right into their mouths with inane comments about women and rape, denial of contraception, or outright abortion. How many times do politicians have to get spanked on this issue?

We lucked out with Bill Clinton. Who knows where this nation would be if he hadn't stepped up to the microphone and reminded us that the Democrats have the right economic idea after all?

We lucked out with having someone on the inside willing to put his (or her) ass on the line by videotaping Mitt at one of his high-priced fundraisers, where he let his guard down and let people know what he really thought of the American electorate. That was beyond merely lucky!

And finally, we lucked out when FEMA became a central campaign issue. No, I'm not going to take the absurd position that Hurricane Sandy was a good thing. Nor am I going to say that the storm somehow won Obama the election. Obama was leading polls in swing states before Sandy, and he was leading them in swing states after Sandy. The hurricane was not the factor. No, the real factor was the fact that Mitt just had to open up his big, fat mouth and advocate the cutting of funding to FEMA. All the hurricane did was highlight that fact. Had Mitt not shot off his mouth that way, the storm would have had little or no impact one way or the other. Oh, it reminded us about global warming, but most on the East Coast already accept that. (It's primarily the Midwest jet-stream states that harbor the climate-change deniers.) So the perfect storm was not Hurricane Sandy, it was Hurricane Romney.

I'm like that assistant coach who, after the big championship victory, sits down with the team, goes over the video, and points out how the game really should have been lost. Yeah, you guys will sit on the bench and smirk at my doom-and-gloom attitude about how the victory was achieved, knowing that the trophy still sits on the shelf for all time. But I'm serious, damn it! We should have lost this one! And while it's good the other side was too crazy to win this time, we simply cannot count on the other side's incompetence to safeguard our nation for tomorrow! Sooner or later, they'll wise up, and use tactics that actually work!

Let's bring our "A-game" next time!


Eric

*

A Salute To Conservatism

To all members of the conservative movement in America, I salute you.

Yes, all you demeaning ditto-heads, supply-side sophomores and tea-party terpsichores, I pay you due homage, and give you a well-earned tip of my feathered cap.

You fought well.

In fact, you fought surprisingly well, given that your clothes had no emperor to fight for. With an anti-traditional, non-Christian figurehead, you nevertheless drove your forces all the way to the very gates of government in the name of the very traditions and Christianity your Mormon leader secretly opposed, and insistently beat upon the gates with your battering ram for six solid months. Your siege was a fierce one. Perhaps the fiercest possible outside of outright violence. At times, the gates looked as though they might crack, but they held firm. And now, your leader has sounded the retreat. Bruised and battered, you limp home to lick your wounds and massage your pride.

You have nothing to be ashamed of. You left it all on the field of battle. You spent every drop of blood you had to give, and every dollar you had to spend.

You bought a monopoly of nearly all A.M. radio stations and used it to preach only one political side to blue-collar workers and daily commuters for more than twenty solid years. You have won two out of the last four presidential elections. You have constructed a 24-hour political commentary channel, and pitched it as straight news for much of that same time. You have rallied, marched, screamed yourself hoarse, come out in droves to vote, and given every last penny you had to give in your ceaseless campaign.

And what has it all gotten you? 49%.

Yes, 49%. In spite of passionate turnout on your part, lackluster enthusiasm on your opponents’ part, and efforts to block their right to vote at every turn, you still only achieved 49%. That is all your effort, shouting, never-ending hatred and trillions upon trillions of dollars have bought you.

And you will never, EVER be this strong again.

A.M. radio is giving way to the iPod and the cellphone. Daily commuters no longer have to lazily settle for the radio station that just happened to be on their dial while the sporting event was being broadcast. DVR technology continues to strip political ads of all their power. Podcasts and satellite radio continue to gain popularity, even as they become cheaper to access. The mask of Fox News has been removed. MSNBC counterweights its every move. Your monopoly is broken.

You thought you could win by breaking unions. But they're not dead, yet! And like a hydra, the Latino vote grew in to replace its strength. And this will allow the union head you chopped off to grow back, better, stronger, and with a decent brain this time.

Before this presidential term is out, three Supreme Court justices will be in their nineties. They will almost certainly be replaced with slightly left-leaning moderates, and so will put any hope of taking over the highest court in the land out of reach for at least two generations. Roe v. Wade is out of reach, forever. Citizens’ United is doomed.

You cannot buy your way to power, anymore.

Nor can you pray your way to power. Evangelicals are now only 49% of the population, and the trend line continues downward. Secular atheists and agnostics are now 20% of the population, and the trend line continues upward.

49%. That was your high-watermark, both in your vote, and in your overall influence. Thus, this election has been your Waterloo, your Pickett’s Charge, your last advance of the Light Brigade. You already feel the pull of your weakening influence. Your Christian heroes have fallen. All the champions to your cause were either philanderers or lunatics. So devoid of leadership have you been that you settled upon a Mormon, who couldn’t have been better designed for defeat had Democrats drawn him up on a blackboard, all because he was the only monogamous person left with any money.

And who is left now that he's gone? Dubya’s weakling kid brother, a crass, fat loudmouth from Jersey, a loser whose very name is synonymous with homosexual anal ooze, and maybe the beefcake ex-senator whose clock got cleaned by Elizabeth Warren. What a rag-tag group of misanthropic malcontents! Add to this the fact that the Alaskan Malamute is toothless, and the one-time veep candidate from Wisconsin is a malfunctioning robot with a bad Micky-Mouse haircut, and you have nobody left. The raft they cling to has no rudder, and no captain.

Oh, you may think that you will regroup, and "take back the nation" (as if you'd ever lost it), but this WAS your regroup. THIS was your counter-offensive. This was your last chance. And you blew it!

The holes in Milton Friedman’s supply-side economics have been exposed. Deregulation of banking is universally rejected, even on Fox News. The new free-market capitalism – not socialism, damn it, free market capitalism! – is a modern synthesis of only those economic ideas which have been proven to work. Elements of the New Deal, Clinton-esque fiscal responsibility, yes, even Reaganomics, are all part of Obama's plan. With a nucleus of free trade, banks will be fully regulated, and the lucky rich will have to part with a little bit more of their winnings from the rigged-roulette-wheel of life.

What's that, you say? Fiscal cliff? Relax, it will never happen. Boehner has to cave, and you all know it.

Oh, you conservatives will still be passionate, filled with vitriol and hate, but all it will ever get you from now on is, perhaps, a mid-term election or two. The presidency is lost to you for at least twelve years. Barack today, Hillary tomorrow, and you can bet that they both will groom a new candidate who will win easily for two terms after that.

You are mostly old. The Liberals are mostly young. And unlike your own naïve, hippie-youthful liberalism, which was based on little more than sex, pot, and opposition to the war in Vietnam, theirs is based on logic, compassion, and reason. You cannot brow-beat them the way you allowed your elders to brow-beat you. And their legacy will be much more meaningful than merely Viagra, Minoxodil and Androgel 1.62%.

If a given segment votes with a certain party three presidential races in a row, it is effectively set for life. The Millennium Generation has now voted for Kerry, and Obama twice. It's lost, forever. And the Latino vote has now voted the same way. So has the black vote. They are gone, permanently, and with them goes any chance you will ever get your majority status back. The "angry white male" has fallen!

Colorado and Washington have now joined the ranks of marijuana-legal states! You can bet that more will soon follow, as neighboring states will have no choice if they want to protect their interstate commerce. With that change will come even more hippie, granola-crunching liberalism.

It's so over. The Tea Party is done. We dumped your tea into the Boston Harbor. The culture war is finally at an end. We win!

Say hello to the New America! It is a land where freedom truly reigns. It is a land where you cannot dictate to homosexuals how they are to live their lives anymore, but it is also a land where your traditional heterosexual marriage is equally protected. It is a land where you cannot hijack the government to preach your religion anymore, but it is also a land where you may practice your Christian beliefs in peace and safety without hindrance. Say hello again to true religious freedom as the bricks of the wall separating Church and State are solidly replaced, for good this time! It is a land where marijuana will be completely legalized and assault weapons severely regulated, but it is also a land of sobriety where citizens can defend themselves with private firearms. And, of course, it is a land where the development of the fetal brain defines the onset of a being, not conception. As a direct result, stem cells will make life better, healthier, more youthful for all. No longer will we insist on funding tanks with nothing to roll over, planes with nothing to fly over, and missiles with nothing to aim at. Inner city schools will no longer need to be funded with bake-sales.

This is an America that both you and I can be proud to call home! Truly, completely, the Land of the Free! You conservatives nearly, stupidly, threw it all away. But you failed!

In your ineptitude, you accidentally saved us all! Conservatives, I salute you!


Eric

*

Rules For Voting - Revisited

Sometime during 2008, I posted a message to Facebook about certain rules for undecided voters.  That Facebook posting has since been relegated to the digital round-file in the sky, but I felt that it was a good idea to resurrect my posting, and give it a little bit of a modern-times flavoring.  I'm quite certain that there are almost no undecided voters left out there, but one or two might still be holed up in a commercial-free bunker somewhere completely off the grid. (Which means they'll never read this blog post. Ah, well.)  Here they are (as best as I can remember, since I'm doing this solely from memory).

Rule #1: All things being equal, vote against the incumbent. [Note: I, of course, argue that, in the case of 2012, all things are not equal, and that the case against Rubberman Romney is a slam-dunk. But, this is rule #1, and I must report it faithfully.]

Rule #2: All things being equal, vote for the female. If there is no female running, go back to rule #1. If the female happens to be an incumbent, proceed to Rule #3.

Rule #3: When still in doubt, find the biggest moron you know and ask who he's voting for. Then vote the other way. [Note: All the biggest morons I know are voting for Romney. These include, but are not limited to, Glenn Beck, Pat Robertson and Donald Trump. Even Homer Simpson voted for Romney.]

Rule #4: Conversely, if you're still undecided after all that, find the smartest person you know and ask who she's voting for. Then vote the same way.

Rule #5: If, after all that, you're still not sure, stay home. You're too much of a moron yourself to vote.

Rule #6: Vote third party if you happen to live in a non-swing state. If you live in a clearly decided state, such as New York, Texas or California, voting for a third party lays the groundwork for a less divided and more cooperative legislature in future elections. However, if you do live in a swing state, don't even THINK of voting third party. That way your vote always matters the most no matter what. [Note: This one is new, but it's a good one.]

Those are the voting rules! I welcome feedback on these!


Eric

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P.S. New rule that I just thought of: Always vote against the candidate who is too chicken to appear on late night talk shows! (Three guesses who that might be!)

Short and Sweet

This one's a quickie. Check this out.

I'll bet you've heard this one:
"This is the worst economic recovery since the great depression!"

Here are some similar sayings:
* That's the worst playoff win in the history of football!
* What a disappointing home run!
* It's the lowest Powerball jackpot ever paid out.
* She's the ugliest Miss America yet!
* That was the worst orgasm I ever gave a woman.
* (From a post '82 Superbowl-watching Packer fan) "Yeah, well, the Bears STILL suck!"
* (From a post 2010 Superbowl-watching Bears fan) "Yeah, well, the Packers STILL suck!"

Catch my drift?


Eric

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