Mr. Scorpio
Mr. Scorpio's JournalWhen you negotiate, don't you have to present your own conditions, opposed to the other side's?
The President presented his side, now where are the Republicans?
The GOP isn't taking this seriously at all, are they?
My Congresscritter, Candice Miller, has been made Chairlady of The Taking Out The Trash Cmte.
If the people in this district had elected the Democrat, Chuck Stadler instead and the rest of the country had elected MORE Democrats to Congress in order to retake the majority, we here in Michigan's 10th Congressional District would been saved from this embarrassment.
But noooooo, Miller was reelected with 2/3rds of the vote. Thanks, Gerrymandering!
I live ACTUALLY across the street from a Democratic held district, the 12th with Rep Sander Levin. I can throw a rock and hit his district.
This part of the district is made up mostly of working class Democratic voters, while the far reaches of the north gave the district back to the Lunch Lady.
God damned Republicans.
Republicans cannot understand what reality is and what it isn't
This the only conclusion that I can arrive at after observing them.
This is more than just differences of opinion, like Macs are better than PCs or vice versa, but whether or not certain fundamental truths even exist for them, like evolution, basic math and civil rights for all citizens.
They invented a Barack Obama that didn't exist and ran against this fictional character, while an all too real Obama organized a campaign that ran circles around them to eventual victory.
These are people who can't even cope with the fact that, not only did they lose the last election, they lost it by wide margins and it wasn't a secret that it was going to happen that way at all. They should have known, but all they did was live in a delusional fugue state until the results came in to their incredulous surprise.
Today they're debating with themselves about the prospect of a shrinking voter base by, of all things, doubling down on same behaviors and policies that lost them this last election.
They're having the hardest time in coping with the fact that the Bush tax cuts for the rich are going to expire.
What is clear is that they have absolutely NO idea how to talk about the real world. They're used to being coddled by people who gave credence to the fantasies, as if their nonsense is equilateral with the reality based world. Now that much of that coddling has evaporated after the election, they're lost, confused and disorganized.
Much of their message discipline is gone. There's no real guidance from the GOP leadership, which has been widely discredited after their poor performance in the election.
These are not people whose minds are currently operating in the real world right now.
This is a perfect opportunity to exploit their delusional and confused state of mind. Simply cease patronizing them.
They'll figure out that the world has changed eventually and sustained exposure to REALITY is the best way to make it stick.
Stevie Wonder - Don't You Worry 'Bout A Thing (Live)
The FedEx Candidates Commercial
You got two guys, Pearce on the left and Taylor on the right. I'm not sure if that says anything about each of their political leanings, but anyway, I have some questions:
Which one do you think is a Democrat and which one is the Republican?
Which one would YOU vote for?
Which one do you think won?
Is that town fucked because these are to only two assholes that the electorate had to choose from?
There is no mandate for compromise with the Republicans
Those assholes lost, even if they are loathe to admit it.
Their ideas were rejected by voters, we shouldn't stand idly by and watch their failed ideas get reanimated by politicians.
Look, Republicans have been wrong about just about EVERYTHING. Sifting through their positions in search of workable ideas is like sifting through manure in search for some jelly donuts.
Even if you found one in that pile you wouldn't want to eat it.
If the Republican Party worked with The Prez instead of against him, they'd get better ratings
Look at Chris Christie, his ratings are through the roof after working with President Obama, while just about every single governor wh has worked against the President will be lucky to be reelected.
Congress itself has such a low opinion, why? Because the only thing that they've been up to of the past two years is trying to make the President's life miserable.
The election itself was huge spanking for the GOP because they went up against this President.
They're a declining party now… All they have to do is get on President Obama's bandwagon… It'll turn that thing way around.
Republicans oppose President Obama today at their peril… In four years, opposing Hillary Clinton won't do them any more favors.
Marinate the Rich with higher taxes
But if they won't go for it, then it'll be more enjoyable to eat them that way.
My wife and I moved into a new place last week
The place is newer and the rent is cheaper, so it's all good, plus she's happy with the new digs. If MrsScorpio is happy then I'm happy. You all know how it is. We're still in the process of settling in… There really is nothing more than I hate than packing and unpacking, but it's all part of the deal when you move.
I called Two Men and a Truck and they quoted me a price that was over two hundred dollars more than the bottom line of renting a UHaul truck and doing it myself. Friends and family helped with the big stuff, but especially with my back issues, I'm still recovering as we speak.
With all that's happened I've had a few observations that I'd like to share. In the last few years we bought some inexpensive Chinese made furniture. Well, a lot that shit was so flimsy that it didn't survive the move. I actually tore the broken pieces down by hand and left them in boxes for garbage pickup, while the 20+ year old American made stuff that we bought right after we got married made it. A few nicks and scratches as it were, but intact.
I filed that fact in the back of mind just in time to see something on PBS that connected some dots for me. Hopefully you've all had the chance to see that episode of Frontline on childhood poverty in around the Illinois/Iowa border region.
Many of the people living there fell into poverty during the last ten years when jobs and factories packed up and were moved overseas to places like China, where my cheaply made furniture was manufactured. Good paying jobs lost by Americans doing high quality work, making things that last. Those jobs afforded local investment, tax revenues, stronger communities of people who paid their mortgages and car notes for new cars.
Instead, vulture capitalists sent those jobs away. Now they're obscenely rich from destroying American livelihoods, causing the deterioration of America communities, all while exploiting cheap labor outside of America.
But that's not the only thing: There's the aftermath of Sandy, which exposes the raw nerve of our antiquated infrastructure. We have a power grid that's falling apart and expensive to maintain, we're not investing in modern technology, as is Western Europe.
All of this speaks to this country's failure to make proper priorities. Much of that power grid that I spoke of before is in decline by design. Not enough skilled workers are hired to even maintain the system in good times, much less to recover from a major disaster like Sandy. Where Europe is investing heavily in new wind and solar systems, we're still relying mainly on fossil fuel powered plants. We should be training and hiring more energy workers, building and installing wind, solar and geo-thermal systems, investing in renewable energy sources, modernizing and burying power lines.
We should be upgrading our entire telecom systems. Since I've been here in my new place, I couldn't help but notice the frequent outages while we've been having some bad weather this week. Internet speeds in the US pale behind higher and more reliable service in Asian and European countries.
We need to invest in rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure. So many bridges, roads, sewer systems, water treatment plants, levies, dams and canals that are in need of attention.
What much is apparent is that quality of life in America is regressing. Americans need to take back their lives from the corporations that are destroying our livelihoods with cheap, foreign made goods, the destruction of good paying American jobs, the selling off and speculation of public resources and general divestiture in America.
The frontline of the fight right now is on the picket line walked by Walmart employees, who are rejecting the way that that corporation treats its workers as if they're wage slaves. Earlier this month, America rejected a vulture capitalist who wanted to treat the entire country as he did one of his own companies that he outsourced to place like China, the country in which my cheap and flimsy furniture was made.
We need to put money back into this country. That means fixing the tax code which has facilitated the loss of jobs and the overwhelming upward redistribution of wealth that has destroyed working class families. We need to get back to building higher quality of goods, that we used to build in the past, instead of flooding our own market with stuff that falls apart. We need to put good money into America itself, instead of standing idly by while it crumbles under our feet and over our heads.
We need to reduce the size of our military. Clearly the greatest threat against us is not from foreign sources, but our own lack of action at home, our willingness to sacrifice American workers for cheap labor, our lop-sided upward distribution of wealth, our unwillingness to address poverty and penchant for doing things on the cheap.
We spend billions on "security" and "defense" against hypothetical attackers while things are falling apart from neglect.
We need to turn things around, people. If we don't, there won't be an America to hand down to our successors. All there will be are broken pieces that were made by foreign workers overseas.
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