Tag Archives: Republicans

Observed

Reconquista 2012

 

    The current GOP doesn’t envy Mexico much of anything, but doubtlessly its more avaricious hierarchy dreams about becoming an Anglo version of the PRI. The PRI, or as it’s known in English, the Institutional Revolutionary Party, has been called “the perfect dictatorship.”

    An electoral process gives the organization a sheen of legitimacy. Think of an oil slick upon water. See it as pay-for-play democracy. Isn’t this the system the Republican Party prays someday burdens the United States?

    Ideally, doesn’t the GOP hope to import and infect America with this Mexican model? Through it “freedom” and “justice” mean “shackled to rank ideology and life-draining consumer indebtedness” while “scandal” gets erased altogether from civic discourse because almost every transaction, even the most mundane — especially the most mundane ones! — requires “a little something extra.” A taste. Some beak wetting.

    There. Privatization of public services in a nutshell. Continue reading Reconquista 2012 →

Observed

The Exalted and the Excluded


    When did women’s health become a men’s moral issue?

    These last several weeks of governing and campaigning in America have been more absurd than illuminating, but most of all revealing. Sadly much to the detriment of right-wing men.

    The paternalism exposed across these past weeks is a throwback. It harkens to an era when women were belittled as the fairer sex, were denied property rights, the vote, even personhood. No. Real live personhood, not any angels on a pin pointlessness about whether sperm entering ovum confers sentience. Why not ask if zygotes should be counted during census years?

    Naturally men’s misplaced consternation focuses on women’s reproductive systems. Particularly contraception. Even the most ardent abstainers finally agreed stopping results better than fixing them. Don’t believe it? Not long ago retailers stored condoms out of sight behind counters. Buying them required something between bravado and a speakeasy password. Today they’re sold as openly as sweet-laden snacks.

    That’s progress. Especially for horny youths with sugar rushes hindered by shyness. Continue reading The Exalted and the Excluded →

Observed

Crossing Off the Crossroads of the World


    Our holidays were so desultory, all we lacked were a revolver and remorse to have made it a complete Camus Christmas. Being between jobs let me skip New Year’s Eve festivities. Just as well. I would’ve been ringing out 2011 anger and ringing in 2012 anxiety.

    The whole stretch of cold-weather holidays from Thanksgiving until St. Valentine’s Day darkens my outlook. An extensive slough of despond.

    If it were possible, I’d enter hibernation the day after Halloween and awake on St. Patrick’s Day. Early on St. Patrick’s Day. Was there ever a man less deserving of enduring the enforced spikes of autumnal and winter jollity?

    Yes. The above is an exaggeration. Thanks to the American labor movement my present unemployment is bothersome, not troublesome. The safety net so many Republicans yearn to shred keeps the wolf at bay. Unlike GOP governors, each a mouthpiece for America’s Mr. Potters, I’m quite appreciative of past labor agitators who organized and fought for workplace dignity, be they have been Wobblies, Socialists, or — shudder! — even Commies. Continue reading Crossing Off the Crossroads of the World →

Agitprop/Propaganda

Making Hash

    Strange. The fiscal shenanigans across these weeks involving the federal budget and stock market have silenced the usual yammering about privatizing social security. 

    Right now you’d need Sherpas, guide dogs, map, compass, and Diogenes to find one Jim Jones favored Kool-Aid drinker who’d demand plumping the stock market with social security money. 

    I wonder where they’ve all gone. Maybe gravity scared them away. 

    Given the market’s seemingly unceasing rise, I guess they’d forgotten a basic physics tenet as applied to economics: what goes up must come down. 

    August’s thud and splat must’ve been one harsh remedial lesson. Continue reading Making Hash →

Agitprop/Propaganda

Funhouse Mirrors

　

    Miss crushing deadlines as I do, there is one benefit being a newspaper racket casualty. No need to fake objectivity. I can now voice opinions without caring who’s offended.

    I didn’t grovel before and I’ll damn well clean clocks now.

    During March, too many journalists have jumped on the Libyan War bandwagon. Somehow the United States’ North African involvement constitutes our third conflict with a Muslim country.

    Has it come to that? Dropping ordnance and enforcing internationally recognized sanctions against a rogue nation count as war? It’s an intervention. Libyans themselves are doing the real fighting and killing. American press misinterpretation crosses between lax writing and lazy thinking.

    Since President Obama’s installation, there’s been way too much brain-dead, knee-jerk, pack-following. Compare Libya and Kosovo, and see Barack Obama as a darker, cooler Bill Clinton and the word “war” never enters circulation.

    Unsurprisingly, I support this administration. Adults are in charge and they’re behaving in a conscientious manner. Americans haven’t enjoyed such high-level contemplation since the Eisenhower and Kennedy Administrations. Continue reading Funhouse Mirrors →

Uncategorized

We Stand Together or Fall Apart

    A few years before the stock market tanked, I inherited a piece of money. The low six figures bequeathed only sparked the dimmest Champagne dreams. Fortunately, I’ve never had caviar tastes.

    After taking prudent steps by settling with everyone I owed, and yielding oh-so-slightly to one impulse — traveling — I invested the remaining chunk. 

    During the money part, the banker handling the funds transfer asked my plans. Beyond depositing that money in my accounts I had none. Until the sudden jolt in tax brackets, I lacked personal financial foresight.

    The bank guy saw a pigeon. He talked a good line. If I’d been younger and insecure, I likely would’ve swallowed his suggestions whole and entrusted him and his institution with my pile. Instead, the smoothness of his patter raised suspicions. Mine. Me and my cash left shortly thereafter. Continue reading We Stand Together or Fall Apart →