Tag Archives: Paul Ryan

Class Warfare, My Ass

In 1793, the French people executed King Louis XVI, by guillotine.  Over the next couple of years, they executed between 16 and 40,000 people, mostly for the crime of being greedy rich fuckers, having nice houses and servants and stuff like that when most people were struggling

What I can't figure out is why that dead guy in the foreground isn't wearing any pants

to survive.

16 to 40,000, that’s how bad they lost count.  They were just loppin’ off heads like crazy.  Now, that’s class warfare.  When Barack Obama says he’s going to let the taxes on the rich go back up to the same level they were when Bill Clinton was president, when he proposes a rule that says that rich people should have to pay at least the same tax rate that middle class people say (the Buffett rule, named after the actual rich person who proposed it), when he says he’ll veto any proposal that says we’ll reduce medicare or social security without at least making the rich pay something, some token amount, that’s not class warfare.  It doesn’t matter what Eric Cantor and Paul Ryan and John Boehner (America’s saddest cross between a bassett  hound and an Oompah-Loompah), say.

It’s just simple math.  This class warfare meme is an absurd accusation, it belongs right up there with secret muslim, born in Kenya, FEMA death camps  and oh so many others.

I object to it in this particular case because I hate teabaggers, neocons and whatever else they are calling right wingers these days, but I also object, in general, to the use of the word “war” for things that are not actually wars.  It trivializes war and makes it sound so acceptable.  When they talk about “The War on Drugs,” or Lyndon Johnson’s “War on Poverty” what they really meant was “a very serious effort.”  Unfortunately, some people took the “war on drugs” far too literally, guns got involved and now northern Mexico has, indeed, come to resemble a war zone.  Words have consequences.

So, Mr. Boehner (pronounced boner – at least I pronounce it boner), unless you actually want us to bring out the guillotines I’d suggest that you and your buddies STFU with the class warfare talk.

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Pink is Not Always Cute

As is often the case, there are numerous nominees this week for the Richard, the weekly award we award every Wednesday to the evillest, most callous hearted Republican of the week, someone who has shown such total disdain for the most basic norms of Western civilization and, in fact, humanity that they have managed to sink even below the abysmal depths to which that once noble (well, O.K. 150 years ago) party has already sunk.

Arizona State Senator Lori Klein (R-of course)

I decided to call it the Richard, not necessarily after Richard Nixon, who established the principal that whatever the president of the United States does is legal, or at least pardoned, nor after ghoulish puppetmaster Richard “the dark one” Cheney, who spent his time in the vice presidency scowling and shooting people in the face, but just because it always goes to the biggest Dick.  This week, interestingly enough, the biggest Dick is a lady.  First, however, the nominees:

Presidential candidates Michele Bachman and Rick Santorum are nominated for signing that weird marriage vow, which says they will always fight against gay rights and appoint only judges who hate gay rights, but the original language also had that one really weird line about how African American babies who were born into slavery had so much of a better chance at a good life than babies today.  The line has since been removed,  in a clear move to CTPA but neither Bachman or Santorum ever actually denounced it.

However, we’re going to be hearing about Bachman and Santorum plenty for the next year or so, and they are both so easily mockable that I want to give some lesser knowns a chance, and also I, like most sports fans, despise a tie.

Then there’s Paul Ryan, who was caught red handed drinking bottles of $350 dollar wine at a posh D.C. restaurant.  Although it’s quite Marie Antoinettish of him, he probably didn’t do anything  illegal.  There’s his little financial issue, though, the way he stands to profit if the U.S. economy tanks, but he’ll probably evade prosecution on that, too, blind trusts, yadda yadda yadda.  If they couldn’t prosecute Cheney for his connections to Halliburton, this will probably come to nothing.

Our winner, however is Arizona state senator Lori Klein who, while explaining her view of gun rights to  reporter Richard Ruelas from the Arizona Republic , pulled her little pink gun from her purse and pointed the red beam of her laser sight right at his chest.

“Oh, it’s so cute,” she said.  The safety was not on because that particular gun does not actually have one but, Klein says  “I just didn’t have my hand on the trigger, god.”

Guns are not cute, not even if they are pink.  They are, even at their best, instruments of death.  Klein could have killed the reporter.  Nothing cute about it.

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