This blog is dedicated to logical Reasoning, political consciousness, religious dialogue, intelligent thoughts, uncommon wisdom, current events, and humor.
When I was in college, my circle of friends consisted of a bunch of immature guys who were fantastically adept at insulting each other. Not a day went by that someone didn’t come up with a new joke that started with:
your mamma is so fat . . .
your sister is so ugly . . .
your girlfriend is so dumb . . .
‘Your wife’ jokes were particularly exercised because none of us were married and, hence, none of us took any offense to them.
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who I believe is one of the biggest gifts to comedians because of his choice of words and phrases (see his tits comment), is also very adept at such jokes. During a Senate budget committee hearing, he had a friendly exchange with Sen. Kent Conrad (D-North Dakota):
Conrad to Grassley: Oh, you are good.
Grassley in response: Your wife said the same thing.
In all fairness, the full context of this event is that Sen. Conrad’s wife had introduced Grassley in a speech earlier and had given him a nice introduction.
Don’t ask me how I came across this bit of news. I don’t even remember. But you’ll love this display of unbelievable lack of education, culture, and common sense.
State of Florida is working on legislation to make bestiality illegal. OK, good! I’m all for that! It”s perhaps a little too late, but better late than never.
The language of this proposal was carefully chosen to target those who derived or helped others derive “sexual gratification” from an animal. The amendment specified that conventional dog-judging contests and animal-husbandry practices are permissible.
The vote on the amendment was temporarily held up by Senator Larcenia Bullard (D, FL) who had a few unanswered questions: “People are taking these animals as their husbands? What’s husbandry?” → source
Even after it was explained to her that husbandry was the rearing and caring of animals, she still didn’t quite get it. She asked: “So that maybe have been the reason the lady was so upset about that monkey?” She was, of course, referring to a recent horrific incident in New York where a woman’s pet chimpanzee viciously attacked another person.
These are the politicians that we, the people, elect to Congress.
Seems like Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue.
It all began on Monday when Sen. Grassley was steamed about AIG bonuses. He suggested that AIG executives should resign or “commit suicide.” Not surprisingly, he apologized the next day by claiming that he didn’t mean suicide literally. → source
So, how can Grassley redeem himself? Easy! He throws himself a press event and utters the following sentence: “From my standpoint, it’s irresponsible for corporations to give bonuses at this time when they’re sucking the tit of the taxpayer.”
One thing is not quite clear to me. Does the sucking tit part come before committing suicide or as a result of it?
To say that Newt Gingrich, former Congressman and potential 2012 Presidential candidate, has lots of ideas for America is a monumental understatement.
Some of Newt’s ideas are refreshingly radical and yet suspiciously alarming at the same time. He would like to require exercise for school children, extend tax breaks to grocery stores that open in the inner city, give bonuses to food stamp recipients who buy fruits and vegetables, make students walk to school if they live close enough, and lots more. → source
Wow, for a die-hard Republican, he certainly walks a thin tight rope of socialism. Government mandates? Really? I wonder what Boss Limbaugh thinks of all this. Gee, I sure hope Newt doesn’t have to apologize!
Anyway, Newt has a fabulously unbelievable – and to some extent deliciously unthinkable – idea for reforming health care. He believes it’s time to consider paying teenage girls not to get pregnant. → same source as above
Yes, you read right! Pay teenagers to not get pregnant. Ironically, his plan does not include paying teenagers to not have sex. That would be too logical – and admittedly difficult to verify without a chastity belt. Just pay them for not getting pregnant . . . while they inevitably engage in sex.
Forgive my ignorance, but isn’t that what Republicans typify as socialism? Isn’t it an example of government hand-out? Can it not be construed as a type of affirmative action? Doesn’t it circumvent personal responsibility without incentivising by the government? Will it require a bail-out at the end?
Newt also believes that states should consider paying teenage girls who become pregnant to take prenatal vitamins to forestall paying additional health expenses for neonatal care down the road. → same source as above
Pay careful attention to the above paragraph: states should consider . . . Some one please leave me a comment and explain conservatism idea of less government to me. How do we the people end up with less government in our lives if, at the end, we shift regulations and mandates from the federal government to the states?
I admit it. I did not listen to or watch President Obama’s speech on Tuesday addressing the joint sessions of Congress. I did, however, watch the Republican response by Bobby Jindal. I always listen to the opposition response (Democrat or Republican). That’s where I learn more detail, and I use that as my measuring stick. I had no intention of blogging about Jindal’s response. It’s already been blogged to death. But what the heck . . .
Where did Republicans find this guy? He’s as charismatic on camera as John Kerry. His uncomfortable reading of the tele-prompter was as non-engaging as watching Mr. Rogers anchor the nightly news. Mr. Jindal, didn’t anyone inform you that a story about your immigrant parents is now cliche? It’s been doen already by Obama – and masterfully. If you keep talking about it, the Republicans may begin investigating the authenticity of your birth certificate too. The only portion of Jindal’s speech that I could get into was the last few minutes when he spoke about what conservative values mean.
Rachael Maddow’s views are too far to the left for me, but I got a chuckle out of her reaction to Jindal’s rebuttal. She’s really funny sometimes.
But watch out everyone. Rush Limbaugh is mad and he’s not going to take it anymore. During his radio show on Wednesday, 2/25/09, he gave a stern warning to conservatives:
“Because if you think people on our side, I’m talking to you, those of you who think Jindal was horrible, in fact, I don’t want to hear from you ever again if you think that what Bobby Jindal said was bad or what he said was wrong or not said well, because, folks, style is not going to take our country back.”
No Rush. You’re wrong. Style counts. Reagan’s success was not accidental. He had style. He had charisma. He brought people to his side. He spoke elegantly. He didn’t fumble through his speeches. And, more importantly, he fully comprehended the concept and importance of being popular.
By the way, here’s a nice article about 10 things you probably don’t know about Bobby Jindal.
If you haven’t already heard or seen Rick Santelli’s rant on CNBC, check out the video below. If you have, then you probably have already made up your mind about whether he’s right or not. I hope to challenge you if you’re on his side.
Background: Santelli is a CNBC reporter (and a former derivatives trader). Last week, he went on an unintelligible rant on Chicago’s trading-floor about the $75 billion stimulus package. Among other things, he said that “the government is promoting bad behavior” by bailing out “the losers” who took out irresponsible mortgages. He went on to ask “how many of you people want to pay for your neighbor’s mortgage that has an extra bathroom and can’t pay their bill, raise their hands.” Cheers were shouted by floor traders.
I will not address here whether or not the stimulus package is good for our long term prosperity. That topic is irrelevant. Instead, I want to address Santelli’s idea that bailing out “the losers” who took out irresponsible mortgages promotes bad behavior.
We live in America. It’s the land that has most famously coined the phrase “government of the people, by the people, for the people” by a famous Republican at Gettysburg. In other words, the government is instituted to protect the people of this country – not the corporations, not the banks. The operative word here is the people.
Yes, many “losers” bought houses they could not afford. Many “losers” lied about their income on their mortgage applications. Many “losers” did not consider the inevitable consequences of signing up for unaffordable and incomprehensible mortgages. Those “losers” deserve to lose their homes. Those “losers” are partially to blame.
But then you should also consider that those “losers” would not have qualified for mortgages if the banks and mortgage companies had not made it possible. In fact, by many accounts, they down-right encouraged the practice of lending money to those who had no hope of repayment. Mr. Santelli didn’t mention anything about promoting bad behavior by bailing out those banks and mortgage companies, did he? Not once did Mr. Santelli condemn the banks for fraudulent practices, did he? Where’s your outrage, Mr. Santelli, about keeping zombie banks such as Bank of America alive? Aren’t failed banks “losers” too? Oh, I see! The banks are too big to fail, but the people are dispensable.
I strongly believe in a free market economy. But the concept of free market does not imply screwing thepeople for the benefit of corporations. The government’s focus should be to protect the people (rather than corporations) with reasonable regulations.
Please don’t tell me, my conservative friends, that you are for less government. I consider myself more conservative than liberal. But what does less government mean? It does not (and should not) mean lack of protection for the people. Do you truly believe that less regulation is always necessarily better? Do you? Do you believe that toy companies, in absence of meaningful and reasonable regulation, would have alerted you that your child is licking Chinese toys painted with lead? Free market competition would not have helped in this case if there was no mandated testing of toys. No one, including the competition, would have known about the lead paint.
I can cite many other examples, but this is not the post for it. Most conservatives I know seem to think free market implies less government regulation, but no one I speak with seems to be able to quantify what that means or how that would affect their families and daily lives.
So, Mr. Santelli, how about some respect for the people. If you rant about ”losers” who purchased houses they cannot afford, then you should go on an even bigger rant about corporations that made it all possible and encouraged the practice. If it’s OK to bail out the banks, then we should bail out the people. In my opinion, neither the people nor the banks should have been bailed out.
Rant of the year? I’m calling BS on this one. Your rant was down right irresponsible. You wouldn’t have a day job, Mr. Santelli, would you?
So, the mortgage meltdown was caused by the Republicans and on their watch, right? No so fast!
As early as April of 2001, the Bush administration, while working on its 2002 budget, called the size of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac a “potential problem” that could “cause strong repercussions in the financial markets.” In 2003, John Snow, the then Treasury Secretary, lobbied Congress to create a new federal agency to effectively regulate the two mortgage giants. At that time, Barney Frank, a ranking member of the House Financial Services Committee, was adamantly arguing that “Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are not in a crisis.”
Barney Frank: “The more people, in my judgement, exaggerate a threat of safety and soundness, the more people conjure up the possibility of serious financial losses to the treasury, which I do not see. I think we see entities that are fundamentally sound financially, and withstand some of the disaster scenarios, and even if there were problems, the federal government doesn’t bail them out.”
Even Alan Greenspan, during a House Financial Services Committee Hearing in 2005, argued for regulating Fannie and Freddie.
John McCain added his concerned voice in 2006 during a speech on the Senate Floor: ” . . . and the sheer magnitude of these companies and the role they play in the housing market . . . the GSEs need to be reformed without delay.”
This entire situation is laced with irony. Here we have Republicans arguing for more regulation while key Democrats arguing that the system is working just fine – mostly in the name of providing affordable housing to all.
I am fully aware that current financial and mortgage disasters were caused by a series of fairly complicated events. Clearly what’s presented here does not fully explain everything, but it is certainly something to think about.
We have certainly kicked off the new year with a wave of Op-Ed articles that have completely different tones than in the past 8 years.
On January 4, the New York Times published an Op-Ed article written by John Bolton (former ambassador to the UN) and John Yoo (law professor and former deputy assistant attorney general) titled “Restore the Senate’s Treaty Power”. In it, they argued that the Senate must exercise its constitutional power to prevent the President from taking unilateral international actions. Mr. Bolton and Mr. Yoo are worried that President Obama will push through a Kyoto style treaty agenda.
Like past presidents, Mr. Obama will likely be tempted to avoid the requirement that treaties must be approved by two-thirds of the Senate. The usual methods around this constitutional constraint are executive agreements or a majority vote in the House and Senate to pass a treaty as a simple law (known as a Congressional-executive agreement).
No kidding? How convenient! Now that a Democrat is about to become President, it is apparently of the utmost importance to ensure that Congress’ power is in place. The Constitution has been around for a couple of hundred years. Where the hell were you guys in the past 8 years? Oh, that’s right! With a conservative administration in power, there was no Constitution to worry about, was there?
The article went on:
The framers of the Constitution designed the treaty process with a bias against “entangling alliances,” as Thomas Jefferson described them in his first inaugural address. They designated the Senate as the body responsible to protect the interests of the states from being bargained away by the president in deals with foreign nations. The framers required a supermajority to ensure that treaties would reflect a broad consensus and careful, mature decision-making.
What is truly sad about all this is that I completely agree with the Op-Ed. Senate’s treaty power must be enacted and exercised. But it should have been enacted 8 years ago. I ask again, where the hell were you gentlemen during Bush’s Presidency? Was your computer broken? Could you not have written this Op-Ed 8 years ago?
Even by their own admission, Mr. Bolton and Mr. Yoo conceded that President Bush did not seek a supermajority in the Senate during his years in office.
President George W. Bush resisted many efforts at global governance. But his administration still sometimes fell into the temptation to flout the constitutional requirement of a two-thirds majority in the Senate.
You guys (Bolton & Yoo) are pathetic. You are correct in your view, but pathetic in your timing and execution. Don’t you know that until you demonstrate you are willing to drink your own Kool-aid, no one other than members of your own base will hold you and your opinions in high regard?
I am so sick of Joe the Plumber. He’s everywhere. I’m saddened by how Republicans are eating up his every word and coughing up money for his pathetic book. He’s gone from a plumber to a conservative analyst and a role model. Wake up people. He’s just a plumber. He doesn’t know any better than you, me or anyone else. Trust me on this.
There seems to be no end to his appearances on mostly conservative shows. And boy, you know we are in trouble when Joe the nobody Plumber is more in touch with current events than media personalities such as Glenn Beck. On second thought, we are talking about Glenn Beck, so I recant my earlier statement.
On December 9 (yes, it’s old news, but interesting never the less), Glenn Beck hosted Joe on his radio show. Among other things, they talked about Hillary becoming Secretary of State. Here’s an excerpt of the transcript of that show from Glenn Beck’s own website:
JOE: “. . . Hillary Clinton, the whole deal with her as far as becoming Secretary of State. You know, it’s kind of against – well, it’s not kind of. It’s against the Constitution right now where it stands. But they’re talking about getting around it. You know, seems like every time they want to do something, if something’s in the way, they will get around it. What are we teaching our children? What are we teaching people, just even ourselves? You know, if something’s in the way, we’re going to get around it.”
The educated and the informed among us knew exactly what Joe was referring to. Hillary could not constitutionally accept the job of Secretary of State because, in effect, she (as a Senator) approved a salary increase for it.
GLENN: “Well, I think you are right on the money. I will tell you this in talking to one of my guys who’s deep in the Constitution, he’s saying that she can’t have two offices. That’s the problem. She can’t occupy the two offices and then two different branches, but it’s kind of iffy on that. It’s not really clear. And if she gets rid of her office, then it should be fine. But she couldn’t be a senator and Secretary of State. That’s the real problem there.”
No, Mr. Beck. The problem is not that Hillary wants to be a Senator and Secretary of State at the same time. And you don’t need one of your “guys who’s deep in the Constitution” to tell you that. You are clearly not staying current with political news and events. How in the world did you get a radio and TV show?
Perhaps the Mayans were right all along in their belief that 2012 marks the end of the world as we know it. Numerous recent signs point to troubling, unexplained and unprecedented events.
Obama’s victory was unprecedented. The global financial meltdown is troubling. President Bush coming to the aid of the auto industry, UAW praising Bush, and a Democratically led Congress defeating a bailout package for the big three are all unexplained.
I am not an economist by any mean, but I do exhibit (most of the time) common sense and do employ (ditto) logic in my views. In the case of auto industry bailout, I’m not afraid to admit that I don’t know what the right answer is. I said so in a previous post ”Auto Industry Bail Out – What To Do, What To Do“.
First, what bothers me more than anything else about this bailout is that President Bush and VP Cheney are fierce supporters of it. That makes me skeptical beyond explanation. It is the same healthy skepticism I have of Al Gore’s intentions. Whether global warming is real or not is irrelevant to me as compared to the unbelievable profit he has made from preaching it. Gore owns a carbon trading company. He makes about $10M per year and has an estimated worth of about $100M. Google it if you don’t believe me.
Second, I reject Congress’ grilling of auto CEOs with respect to their private jets. That was just silly. It was time ill-spent. GM claims that it requires $4B to survive the next few weeks. Even if the total monthly cost of ownership and operational maintenance of GM’s private jets is $4M (and that is an uncharacteristically high number, I’ve researched it), that represents a mere one tenth of one percent of GM’s $4B deficit. In other words, who cares? I promise you, the auto industry’s problems are not because of owning and operating corporate jets.
Perhaps it was the symbolism of riding in private jets while asking for a bailout (or loan depending on your point of view). Should the CEOs have demonstrated sound judgement and left their corporate jets back in Detroit? Of Course. But let’s be realistic and not waste time on irrelevant issues.
Finally, the entire idea of CEOs working for $1 a year is also merely more symbolic than useful. Again, I promise you, that solves nothing. Their salaries are mere pocket change compared to their debts. Why $1? Who’s idea was that? Why not $0? Why not ask the CEOs to work for nothing AND give back 5% of their company stocks to be reinvested in their own company? That would make much more sense.
Posted by jmjorat 
Don’t ask me how I came across this bit of news. I don’t even remember. But you’ll love this display of unbelievable lack of education, culture, and common sense.
Seems like Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue.
To say that Newt Gingrich, former Congressman and potential 2012 Presidential candidate, has lots of ideas for America is a monumental understatement.
I admit it. I did not listen to or watch President Obama’s speech on Tuesday addressing the joint sessions of Congress. I did, however, watch the Republican response by Bobby Jindal. I always listen to the opposition response (Democrat or Republican). That’s where I learn more detail, and I use that as my measuring stick. I had no intention of blogging about Jindal’s response. It’s already been blogged to death. But what the heck . . .
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