Happy New Year: Of Cliffs and Kardashians

Is this the only blog to feature pictures of John Boehner and
Kim Kardashian in the same post?
Probably not, but it might get me more hits.

 
We are now officially falling off the fiscal cliff, but Orange Man John Boehner can stop the fall. The Senate passed a compromise bill late last night (sometime after Kathy Griffin pretended to give Anderson Cooper oral on CNN), now it's in the House and Boehner is desperately attempting to wrangle enough non-Tea Party votes to get it to pass. After the Plan B debacle, his skin tone will change from orange to green if he can't cut the mustard.

As far as the bill goes, I am not one of these purist Democrats who demand the $250K threshold on higher taxes. The new bill goes higher ($400K for individuals and $450K for couples) and I can live with that. You have to give the Republicans something, that's called negotiating, as we learned in the current Lincoln movie, there are all kinds of tricky deals that go on behind the scenes. If you don't horse trade, nothing gets done. You have your principles and idealism in tact, but no legislation gets passed. That's what these Tea Party true believers haven't learned. What will probably happen is the Tea Baggers will vote no and have protection from primary challenges and Boehner will allow the more moderate members of his party to vote yes. Pelosi, who has better control of her people than Boehner, will let one or two extreme liberals to vote no because they're unhappy with the $450K threshold, but the Dems will go for it. Now the real fight over spending cuts is kicked down the road to March.

The really big New Year's news is that skank Kim Kardashian is preggers with Kayne West's baby. Is she the one who married the basketball player for like ten minutes after their multi-million dollar wedding? How long have they been dating? How long do you think they'll stay married after E! gives the Kardashian family another couple of million dollars to cover the nuptials? Ah, the sanctity of heterosexual unions.

Thoughts on Mayan Apocalypse, Guns, and the Fiscal Cliff

So my partner Jerry and I woke up yesterday morning in our Upstate NY house glad that the world hadn't come to an end. The Mayan calendar had predicted either human civilization would cease or there would be a major change starting at 6:11 AM on Dec. 21, 2012. We were laying in bed at about 9 AM and thinking, "I guess those Mayans were wrong" when suddenly the power went out. It was as if those Mayans or God or someone was saying, "Don't be so sure!" So we had to spend the next 24 hours in darkness, warming the house with a fire in the fireplace, and going out to eat since the stove is electric. We went to sleep in a cold, totally dark house with the only illumination provided by the light of my Kindle as I read about the relationship between President James Madison and his slave-valet Paul Jennings.

Power was restored this morning and we are back to normal. But maybe the Mayans were right in a way. Perhaps there is a major change in our world. We seemed to be moving towards more reasonable gun laws. The New York Post, usually a bastion of right-wing ideology, labelled Wayne LaPierre, the VP of the NRA, a "gun nut." While the NY Daily News called him "the Craziest Man on Earth." LaPierre gave a press conference yesterday in response to the horrendous mass murders in Newtown, CT. The NRA exec called for an armed police officer in every school in the country and blamed the killings on a culture of violence proliferated by video games and movies. Hello, isn't his organization contributing to that culture by glorifying guns--even military-style assault weapons--and lobbying to make sure everybody has one.

Some states are even passing laws to require all teachers, administrators, and yes even janitors to be fully armed in schools. That's a step further than LaPierre's position and I believe would definitely lead to more violence, accidents, and deaths. If every faculty member was packing heat, kids would find a way to get a hold of those weapons and somebody will get hurt.

In the Newtown case, it's impossible to tell what might have happened if we had strong gun control laws, or if there were at least one armed guard at the school, or if the violent video games the shooter played were not available. His mother bought the guns and I suppose she went through a background check. But if she hadn't been able to buy the assault weapon, would her son have killed as many people? You can drive yourself crazy with such guessing games. But banning assault weapons for civilian purchases isn't going to hurt anybody, except the gunmakers.

Another world changing development happened yesterday--Speaker John Boehner was not able to get enough votes for his futile Plan B budget to make it to the floor of the House. The bill was a symbolic one anyway since Harry Reid vowed it would not pass the Senate and Obama said he would veto it. I believe Boehner wanted to put it to a vote so he could say to the Tea-Party nutbags, "See I tried to compromise, I tried to get something done, but the Democrats stopped me." Now he can't even say that because the radicals in his party refuse to raise taxes on anyone, even if it's just those that earn $1million and over. I just don't get it. If we are in such a bad way financially and the tea-partiers want to fix it as much as they say, shouldn't the sacrifice be shared among those who depend on Social Security and Medicare and those who are rich (and yes, one million a year is rich!)

The change is the Republican party is split and the two pieces are falling apart. This latest fiasco demonstrates their failure to come to grips with reality. They lost the last election and are now desperately clinging to power by refusing to compromise with the President on the budget. BTW, the President has moved to their side more than halfway and the Repubs STILL won't move an inch.

Are we in a new world? Will assault weapons be banned? Will the GOP split and created two weaker halves? We can only hope.

The Republican War on Recreational Sex

The economy is getting better, so Republicans must shift the focus to contraception. What a brilliant move! Let's alienate women, more than half of the voting population. Actually it's just working out this way, I don't honestly think the RNC is meeting to determine talking points on birth control pills and vaginal probes. But, what is happening is incredibly damaging to the Republican brand. Under the guise of "religious freedom," the party is fighting a war that has been decided decades ago--women have a right to use birth control without shame. I grant the Reps are not trying to take that away, but they are trying to restrict it where they can and whittle down abortion rights until they are non-existant.

Attack 1--some Republican-controlled state legistlatures are forcing women who want an abortion to have unnecessary sonograms so that they will regret their decision. In Virginia they even tried to get an invasive probing signed into law. The idiot governor said he didn't realize that's what the probe would do and now has blown his chance to be considered for VP.

Attack 2--Catholic-affliated organizations seek to deny contraception in their health coverage. You know the details of this brouhaha and I still don't understand the objection to contraception. If you want to prevent abortions, why stop contraception? It just doesn't make sense. Oh, you want to stop all recreational sex, OK, now I see.

Attack 3--Defame the opposition and haul out the slut word. Rush, the real spokesman of the party, called Sanrda Fluke a slut and a prostitute for daring to suggest Georgetown University, a Catholic university, cover birth control. He based this ridiculous claim on a false premise: that Fluke was advocating the government pay for her insurance and therefore, in Limbaugh's twisted mind, pay for her to have sex. Forget that she was saying some women need to take birth control pills for health reasons (a friend lost an ovary because she couldn't afford the pills), Fluke never said she thought the taxpayer should pick up the tab. That seems to be invented by Rush--and also picked up by Bill O'Reilly who defended his fellow blowhard on his Fox propaganda hour. Limbaugh claims he's Jonathan Swift or something and didn't really literally mean what he said. He's just a satirist, just like Bill Maher, oh BTW, he goes on to say, Maher called Sarah Palin the c word and you liberals didn't get your panties in twist. How come Bill gets a pass and you're all over me like a ton of bricks? See how he tries to avoid the issue and doesn't answer the charge that he basically went too far. Yes, Maher was extreme, but unlike Fluke, Palin is a major political figure and Maher is a comedian, unlike Limbuagh who is a commentator. Maher was making a joke and saying in nasty language that Palin is a jerk and Limbaugh was making a wildly ridiculous claim based on incorrect data. (He ain't Jonathan Swift.)

Anyway, Orange Man Speaker Boehner called Limbaugh's remarks "inappropriate"--OOOO! How brave. George Will, with whom I usually disagree, said eating with the wrong fork is inappropriate. Limbaugh is reprehensible. And Rick Santorum called Limbaugh "absurb" and an "entertainer." Sidenote: Santorum gets sick over JFK's affirmation of the separation between church and state, but Rush is just absurd. Ricky also says he views the separation of the two entities as meaning the government does not get to tell the church what to do. But he didn't finish the analogy--namely the church doesn't get to the tell the government what to do either. He left that part out, maybe because he thinks the church SHOULD tell the state what to do.

I've wandered off topic. The upshot--Limbaugh was forced to apologize to Fluke after several advertisers pulled out of his radio show. The apology read like he had dictated it through gritted teeth. We'll see if this damages his standing as much as the anti-sex war is damaging the Republicans.