Friday, April 30, 2010

Mrs. Betty Bowers Explains Constitutional Awareness


TO: Furious Teabaggers Throughout America

FROM: Mrs. Betty Bowers, America’s Best Christian

RE: Are you doing your part to pretend to care about the US Constitution?

Why pretend to care about that Constitution all of a sudden?M

Because yelling, "I'm fixing to fire off a few rounds 'cause a damned Colored is in the White House!" lacks a certain charm and seems to rile the Socialists® who care about other people's feelings in the Lamestream™ media. HELPFUL HINT: Also sidestep expressly mentioning sedition, regicide or anything involving live ammunition, as these more candid remarks may result in your family’s Christian prayers for the violent deaths of Democrats being rudely interrupted by the busybodies at the Secret Service.

Does pretending to care about the Constitution entitle me to do more fun, Timothy-McVeigh-style antics than when I pretend to care about other stuff like, say, our troops -- or reality?

I'm glad you asked! The Constitution is as close to the Bible as the secular world gets: Full of persnickety rules, but without the gusty encouragements to murder people. As such, any time you purport to protect the Constitution, even your most crass, selfish remark is miraculously cloaked in civic selflessness. As any Christian (or Muslim) fundamentalists can tell you: The higher the calling you can claim, the lower the tactics you can use! Telling people you are compelled by the Constitution (or the Fatherland or the one True Faith®), leaves you free to ignore laws that get in your way -- or pesky elections that didn’t go your way! Glory!

Which parts of the Constitution should I pretend to care about most?

Frankly, the very question reeks of Intellectual Elite™ curiosity and its nefarious liberal-lovin’ cousin: facts. Let’s just say this: not the parts George W. Bush violated for 8 years (e.g., Search and Seizure, Fourth Amendment, and Habeas Corpus, Article One, Section 9) without even a decaf chamomile teabag being flung. If pressed, simply employ a time-tested GOP response to any inconvenient inquiry: Obfuscation by accusation! Try this: “You’re not familiar enough with the Constitution to IMMEDIATELY know what dang parts I’m out here screeching about instead of more candidly (and pettily) carping about losing an election? You ain’t no Real American™ -- libtard!” Pepper the sky with spittle bullets if the nosy liberal dares to ask a follow-up question.

Which parts of the Constitution should I not bother pretending to care about?

Ignoring articles and amendments to the Constitution is an enormous time-saver to the teabagger on the go! Since most Americans have never read the document (and most often confuse it with the Declaration of Independence or any number of bromides slapped on bumpers or needlepointed on pillows), you will enjoy great leeway in this regard. But every Sarah-Palin-loving, catchphrase-spouting True Christian™ will want to make a point of ignoring these really inconvenient parts:
Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.
This thoroughly annoying passage “technically” prohibits Congress from requiring every man, woman and child in the land to flatter Jesus, as the poor, insecure thing has quite shamelessly demanded. As a constitutional scholar at Bob Jones University told me, “Unless it's the Second Amendment, where the Founding Fathers told us to take assault rifles to the movie theater, only an activist judge would enforce the Constitution, a pile of secular bullcrap written by a pack of Jesus-denying Theists! Betty, did you know that Thomas Jefferson called the Bible a 'dung hill'?” Honestly, if any clause of the Constitution calls out for a loud and hearty “la la la la la la I CAN’T HEAR YOU!,” it’s this one!

The Equal Protection Clause
The Fourteenth Amendment, rammed down America’s throat in fleeting post-war guilt over the alleged nuisance of having to be a slave, is now providing a toehold for pushy, rights-obsessed homosexuals to slip their expensive Italian shoes through the carefully guarded door to equal rights. Remember: When folks we don't like want the same rights we enjoy, we call them "special rights" -- because we are so darn special. Gals, save a few la-las for this Amendment!

“No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States” Article VI, Section 3.
Of course, asking “You ain’t no Muslamic are you, boy?” before administering an oath of office isn’t a test; it’s simply a pointed inquiry.

The appalling fact that Jesus isn’t mentioned in the entire Constitution -- not even once!
But, frankly, what do you expect from “men” who wrote books, wore wigs and enjoyed sliding on silk stockings? They can't all be Sean Hannity!

Sixteenth Amendment
The most anti-Tea Party garbage in the whole Constitution, this amendment allows Congress (technically, the "Representation" part in "No Taxation Without Representation!") to levy an income tax without apportioning it among the states or basing it on Census results. This Amendment is completely inconsistent with almost every Tea Party sign and, ispo facto, void. Give thanks for the miracles that are possible when you aren't fettered by so-called reality! Praise the Lord and pass the bullhorn!

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Reform Kabuki, Act II: Finance

Don't be fooled again, please. Hopeful Obamanauts and loyal Dims are all atwitter on the blogs and FB today with tales of the kick-ass that Chris Dodd is said to have administered to Miss Chinless, 1960, Mitch McConnell.

Democrats Batter Mitch McConnell For Standing With Wall Street
proclaims a strident hed on Huffpost.

But of course, it's all political kabuki. Dodd's bill is crap, and is mostly a giveaway to the banksters. But if it looks like the Pukes oppose it, that gives Dodd--and the banksters-- some cover. And with this tri9ck, they're pulling the exact same scam as they did last year with so-called "health care reform" issue.

I LOVES me some Nomi Prins, and I figgers if you liked health care reform performance, you're gonna go apeshit bananas for financial regulation reform:
" Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd's financial "reform" proposal (Barney Frank's wasn't much better) won't change the nature of anything Wall Street does. Dodd's needless watering down of a proposal to create a new Consumer Financial Protection Agency has been well-documented, so here is a list of 10 other problems Dodd's bill will not fix:"
It's a pretty extensive list, and should provide a decent check-list if an observer were to chart the unfolding of the thing. The list starts on p.2 of the piece, and includes:
1) It won't make the biggest most "systemically important" banks (read: systemically destructive) any smaller...
2) It won't reduce the economic danger from rampant, overleveraged trading activities...
3) It won't change the nature, transparency, size, complexity or usage of the most heinous derivatives...
4) It won't prevent the creation of new toxic assets...
5) It won't contain the risk to the shadow banking system from hedge funds...
6) It won't remove the conflicts of interest between banks that issue securities and rating agencies that rate them, and get paid a fee for doing so...
7) It won't contain systemic risk...
8) It won't wrest control of our economic future from the banks the Fed couldn't regulate over the past decade...
9) It won't constrain the Fed's future bailout operations...(and)
10) It won't prevent bank failures by separating speculative banking from deposit-insured commercial banking a la Glass Steagall, but instead contains plans for resolving them, after the fact.
Now don't say we didn't warn you!

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

TDSWJS: April 5, Segment 1: If you voted for Obama, this Doc won't do your dick

It's in segments like this one where I often part company with Stewart, and where Stewart often also reveals his corpoRat affinities. He knows perfectly why the Health Insurance Parasites have set thousands of cubicle drones to work to find and exploit the many hundreds of loopholes which the CorpoRat AUTHORS of the fucking bill installed for their own convenience while laving Max Baucus' prostate last summer. He'll pick on some dumb schmuck doctor, but the BEEEEG money he leaves studiously alone...

The Daily Show With Jon StewartMon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Inethical Basterds
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full EpisodesPolitical HumorHealth Care Reform

Friday, April 2, 2010

We Owe It All to Eddy*

*Eddy = Edouard Bernays, Freud's favorite nephew and amanuensis during the old man's visits to the States. He coined the phrase "The Manufacture of Consent," which Chomsky/Hermann used to title their (1980s) book...

I have been raving about this for about 25 years. Glad to see it coming to more notice:
Part I:

Part II:


The story of the relationship between Sigmund Freud and his American nephew, Edward Bernays. Bernays invented the public relations profession in the 1920s and was the first person to take Freud's ideas to manipulate the masses. He showed American corporations how they could make people want things they didn't need by systematically linking mass-produced goods to their unconscious desires.

Bernays was one of the main architects of the modern techniques of mass-consumer persuasion, using every trick in the book, from celebrity endorsement and outrageous PR stunts, to eroticising the motorcar.

His most notorious coup was breaking the taboo on women smoking by persuading them that cigarettes were a symbol of independence and freedom. But Bernays was convinced that this was more than just a way of selling consumer goods. It was a new political idea of how to control the masses. By satisfying the inner irrational desires that his uncle had identified, people could be made happy and thus docile.

It was the start of the all-consuming self which has come to dominate today's world.