“The healthy man does not torture others—it is the tortured who turn into torturers.”
–Carl Jung
“I was a big supporter of waterboarding.”
–Dick Cheney
So America tortures now, and nobody seems to care. Oh, we don’t call it torture. Calling it torture makes us feel icky, like we’re a bunch of torturers or something. No, torture is wrong; what we do is called “enhanced interrogation techniques.” Which sounds nice, doesn’t it? Enhanced interrogation techniques.
“Oh it’s enhanced? . . . Are you going to put on some mood music and a little track lighting?”
“No, we’re going to hook your balls up to a car battery and then drown you.”
“Oh, I’ll just take the regular interrogation then, don’t make a fuss over me.”
The people who ordered torture say it really works! In fact, it works so well they waterboarded one guy 183 times. Now if it really works so well, why do you have to repeatedly waterboard this guy? Wouldn’t he give up all his info in the first few torture sessions? What are the questions you are still asking on the 183rd waterboard?
“Do these pants make me look fat? Have you seen my keys?”
Yeah, so we illegally invaded another country, killed a bunch of their people, tortured a bunch more, and nobody goes to jail. Not that the government doesn’t like putting people in jail in America . . . We love it! In fact, the United States leads the world in locking up its own citizens. We lock up even more people than China. America is Number One! Suck it.
But we don’t lock up all the citizens. For instance, not the rich white guys who invade countries illegally and order war crimes. No, those guys get a pass, but a poor black kid with a roach in his pocket gets the full force of the law.
Just to blow your mind for a minute before I get back to torture, think about this:
Approximately half of all drug arrests are for marijuana. That’s one marijuana arrest every 42 seconds for something most Americans don’t think should even be a crime.
The Louisiana Supreme Court overturned a sentence of five years because they considered it too lenient for a fourth possession of marijuana. They ordered the person to a sentence of 13 years. In Louisiana, you could get up to six months in jail for your first marijuana conviction, up to five years for a second conviction, and up to twenty years in prison for a third. If you ask me, that doesn’t seem like the Mardi Gras spirit.
So it’s not a war on drugs or crime, but a war on the American people. Okay, keep that in mind, now back to torture.
Barack Obama gave the order to not prosecute any of the people involved with ordering or carrying out those war crimes. The president rationalized not prosecuting them by saying all those crimes happened in the past, and President Obama is looking toward the future!
When I heard that, I felt a lot better. Because all the crimes I’ve committed are in the past, too. Glad we aren’t prosecuting those anymore! I bet all those people in prison are pissed off they committed their crimes in the future. Stupid criminals.
So what is my point? I guess my point is that I can’t figure out why everyone isn’t screaming at the top of their lungs every day about this shit.
It is now official American policy to turn a blind eye to the worst crimes possible, but hammer the poor for next to nothing. Yes, America would rather put you in jail for “mellowing out” than for lying your nation into an illegal invasion and ordering war crimes. Your country is just not that into you!
SPIES LIKE US
“The way in which the NSA is spying on American citizens is in violation of the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution, as well as in excess of the limitations imposed by the statute, the FISA Amendments Act of 2008. In other words, what the NSA is doing is both unconstitutional and illegal.”
—Glenn Greenwald, actual journalist
So the American people are being spied on by their own government.
Turns out they are tapping our phones and reading our emails without a warrant.
And that’s not a big deal unless . . . well, unless you read the Constitution, and who has time for that? I’m not an egghead or something.
But I do know some people who have read the Constitution, and they say that the government tapping our phones and reading our emails . . . is pretty fucked up.
And why are they doing this? Well, because the government says the terrorists hate our freedom, and they want to take it!
So to fight those terrorists, the government is gonna take our freedom first!
That’ll show those Al Qaeda bastards. Oh, how I’d like to see the look on their stupid-terrorist-faces when they get here. I can hear them now:
Terrorist: “Where is your freedom that I hate?!”
Me: “Got rid of it . . . psyche!!!”
So just to re-cap, the government is taking our freedoms in order to preserve our freedoms. Wow, you know what they say about that, right? Well, they say that when “fascism” comes to America it will look like “antifascism.”
And you know what I say? I say, “What does fascism mean?”
It’s the biggest story of government lying and breaking the law since Watergate and the Pentagon papers.
Now the person who brought all of this to our attention is whistleblower Edward Snowden, who worked for a private contractor doing work for the National Security Agency. He then sold it to Russia and China for millions of dollars cuz he is a horrible traitor.
Oh wait, that’s not what he did, that is just how they make it seem like in the media. What he actually did was pass that information to a responsible journalist at a responsible newspaper, Glenn Greenwald at the Guardian, and ask him to reveal what he thought was vital for the American people to know.
Snowden’s an old-fashioned kinda guy. He didn’t post the information willy nilly on a website, or sell it to a foreign power for huge sums of money. No, he gave the information about illegal activity to a news organization, exactly what a responsible citizen should do, in the same manner that important past whistleblowers like Daniel Ellsberg and Deep Throat did.
So Glenn Greenwald goes on Meet the Press to tell us all about it, but what ended up happening was a lesson in bad journalism via David “Mr. Handsome Say Stuff To Camera” Gregory.
Having invited an actual journalist on his show, a journalist who actually broke a huge story of illegality inside the government, and David immediately sensed something was wrong . . .
“To the extent that you have aided and abetted Snowden, even in his current movements, why shouldn’t you, Mr. Greenwald, be charged with a crime?”
—David Gregory, shitty journalist
Yes, David thinks he oughta be put in jail for his efforts. Of course, that’s why Gregory never does any real journalism . . . he thinks it’s illegal!
Greenwald then gives one of the all-time dressing-downs I have ever seen on television.
“I think it’s pretty extraordinary that anyone who would call themselves a journalist would publicly muse about whether or not other journalists should be charged with felonies. The assumption in your question David is completely without evidence, the idea that I’ve aided and abetted him in any way.
“The scandal that arose in Washington before our stories began was about the fact that the Obama administration is trying to criminalize investigative journalism, by going through the emails and phone records of AP journalists, accusing a Fox News journalist of the theory that you just embraced—being a co-conspirator in felonies for working with sources.
“If you want to embrace that theory, that means that every investigative journalist in the United States that works with their sources, who receives classified information, is a criminal. And it is precisely those theories and precisely that climate that has become so menacing in the United States; it’s why in the New Yorker, Jane Mayer said that investigative journalism has ground to a standstill.”
—Glenn Greenwald
Okay, Mr. Greenwald, isn’t that all a fancy way of saying you admire a guy who gave up a six-figure job and cushy life in Hawaii to announce that the government lies about shit?
So after getting his ass handed to him for furthering government talking points, Gregory responds with:
“Well the question of ‘who is a journalist’ may be up to a debate in regards to what you are doing. Anybody who is watching this understands I was asking a question, that question has been raised by lawmakers as well; I’m not embracing anything.”
Yeah, the question of “who’s a journalist” is definitely up for debate, especially on your show. And you weren’t embracing bullshit government talking points, you were just repeating them on your show in the first person instead of debunking them! Now back to that “who’s a fucking journalist” debate . . .
The ridiculous question of whether his investigative journalism should land him in jail kind of pissed Greenwald off, and after the show he tweeted:
“Who needs the government to try and criminalize journalism when you have David Gregory around?”
To which Captain Corporate Tool responded:
“This is the problem from somebody who claims that he’s a journalist, who would object to a journalist raising questions, which is not actually embracing any particular point of view. . . . rather than going after the questioner, he could take on the issues.”
Funny how Gregory can ask the guy doing real journalism if he should go to jail for it, but when Greenwald questions your “journalism,” you whine that he’s shooting the messenger. It’s about time network journalists started cracking down on actual journalists.
TAKE A PEW
After denying that the government was spying on its citizens, Obama recently made promises to reform the NSA’s data collecting. As this book goes to print, the details are hazy, but the gist is that instead of the government bulk collecting your phone data, the phone companies will do it for them. This will free up time for the NSA to read your emails. It’s amazing we got to this point, because looking at PEW polling data after Snowden’s revelations, the public didn’t seem very bothered.
Turns out YOU just aren’t that into you either.
So it’s interesting that most people don’t believe the government when they say they are not listening to our calls or reading our emails.
AND YET:
YES! Half the people are still cool with it!!!!
WTF?
Imagine how shitty the Constitution would be if they had to write it today?
So 70% think the government is violating our Constitutional rights, but maybe that’s one of their Constitutional rights.
So I guess what most people are thinking is that, “Yes, we know the NSA is completely full of shit . . . but they must have a perfectly good reason!”
It’s like an abusive relationship. Sure, the government’s lying to us, but deep down we deserve it.
That’s what’s great about having a Bill of Rights—you don’t have to use any of them if you don’t feel like it.
MEET MY META
“You listen to a lot of the coverage, and you would think we had literally millions and millions of FBI agents listening to every single call that every single American makes; that simply is not true. And I think having this conversation with the American people is an important thing to do.”
—Robert Gibbs, previous White House spokesman, lying about spying
So, the White House thinks having that discussion with the American people is an important thing to do? Too bad you weren’t for having it before Edward Snowden blew the whistle on you guys. Weird how that works.
Our grandparents had NASA—we got NSA. Princeton computer science professor Edward Felten has written about why the government collecting its citizens’ metadata is so invasive. The more metadata you collect, the more powerful it becomes.
For example, let’s imagine that metadata reveals a call to an illegal bookie; now the NSA knows that a person made an illegal bet with that bookie. And what’s more, "analysis of metadata over time could reveal that the target has a gambling problem, particularly if the call records also reveal a number of calls made to payday loan services."
“Consider the following hypothetical example: A young woman calls her gynecologist; then immediately calls her mother; then a man who, during the past few months, she had repeatedly spoken to on the telephone after 11pm; followed by a call to a family planning center that also offers abortions. A likely storyline emerges that would not be as evident by examining the record of a single telephone call.”
The storyline is that she’s easy, and now the government knows it.
So this is how the government, by knowing who you’re calling, gathers information that violates our privacy. And to all those people saying, “It’s just metadata,” I say, “You’re a porn addict, your son harasses girls on Facebook, and your wife is cheating on you.”
By the way, do you know who else consistently uses this kind of data? Private industry. This is why the private contractors involved in the data gathering scare me silly. Let’s say there’s a land developer who wants to drive out a bunch of residents in a particular area. Imagine he had access to the e-mails and call records of those residents. Now imagine that private information getting easily exploited because the firewall of security around that data has been extinguished, thanks to the water hose of clearances given to private companies.
You don’t have to imagine the last part because it’s true. I hear some people respond that those thousands of private contractors wouldn’t have been given high security clearance if they were apt to leak that information . . . except that Edward Snowden was one of those people, and he did. Even though he did it for good reasons, what’s to stop Joe Nitwit with gambling debts from doing the same thing, only this time with something we do want secret and to someone we’d rather not have those secrets.
In the years after 9/11, the world of intelligence grew like mold. The NSA and CIA hired of outside firms to help gather and analyze data. Among the many reasons why this is a problem is the inefficiency. There is a high rate of redundancy in the system and far too many cooks in the kitchen. With this, we get worrying situations where the company Snowden worked for, Booz Allen Hamilton, is owned by the Carlyle Group, an investment company with strong ties to Saudi Arabian oligarchs. However, it was the Republican wet dream
• Privatizing a traditionally public trust? How could that possibly go wrong?
• Introducing a hefty profit motive into threat assessment? There’s no way that could lead us down a garden path.
• Giving multi-national corporations with various business interests access to the entire world’s private communications. Perfect!
This expansion has created a huge multi-headed beast which of course will seek to perpetuate itself while ignoring any and all fiduciary duties it might have to the public. Of course, this beast sought to grow in power and scope, if only to consolidate its own power.
One of the many side-effects of this growing beast was an explosion in the number and speed of Top Secret or higher clearances issued. Which is clearly dangerous.
The more people know a secret, the less likely it’ll remain a secret. Whether you believe in these programs or not, this represents sheer recklessness on the part of policy-makers, for the sake of giving private industry a piece of the action. “We're trying to gather and keep secrets, and we're pretty sure the best way to do that is by telling these secrets to 300% more people.”
Edward Snowden is a hero. There is no doubt about that. We should all be grateful that Snowden had access to this information, and at great risk to himself, exposed these programs to the American public. But I can be grateful to Snowden, while at the same time recognizing that his access to this information is, itself, problematic. Maybe that’s a paradox, but I’ll happily live with the headache of trying to sort it out.
“A secretive U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration unit is funneling information from [NSA] intelligence intercepts, wiretaps, informants and a massive database of telephone records to authorities across the nation to help them launch criminal investigations of Americans . . .”
—Reuters
So it’s way worse than anyone thought. They are lying at every step. They are listening to your calls, they are collecting your data, and if they find anything illegal at all, even if it has ZERO to do with terrorism, they will alert local law enforcement. Feel safer?
But come on, everybody knows you can’t make an omelet without violating the Constitution.
I know it sounds bad, but if you don’t give cops the tools they need to fight crime, they’ll have to go back to planting drugs on people.
Although it got very little attention in the mainstream press when it was reported, Reuters did, in fact, report that tips derived from NSA surveillance are being provided to domestic law enforcement for lots of non-terrorist crimes, like selling pot to your friends. It’s worth reading that again:
“A secretive [DEA] unit is funneling information from [NSA] intelligence intercepts . . . to authorities across the nation to help them launch criminal investigations of Americans.”
—Reuters
I have to keep repeating this information because I can hardly believe it myself.
This is the part of the Law and Order episode when the judge throws out the evidence because it arose from an illegal search. And then the lesser character actor playing the defense attorney says, “Mr. McCoy wants to go on a fishing expedition!” Unfortunately for us, this is the part where it turns out there is a bigger conspiracy to subvert the law, usually led by someone who had a film career in the late eighties—let’s say it’s Rick Moranis in this week’s episode.
Here’s the deal: No agent of law enforcement can execute any search or surveillance of a person who has a reasonable expectation of privacy. So, for instance, if you hear your neighbor through the wall conspiring to steal cable, you can go and tell the police, and they can use that information to obtain a warrant to build a case. Now, to be fair, if you did this, you’d be a total narc, and no one will sit with you at lunch, and you’d better get used to being a virgin, you tattletale.
On the other hand, an agent of any intelligence or police agency that got that Information—that’s a no-no. Even if the local dog catcher happened to be using a parabolic microphone to sweep your building because he’s a total perv, this information is not usable by the Cable Police (yeah, sure, that’s a thing).
What’s even worse here is a criminal conspiracy to subvert the law. It would be like Briscoe and Logan illegally obtained information, then told the SVU detectives about it, but said it should sound like it came from a unnamed confidential informant. Then Ice-T comes in and gives some piece of information, and you’re all like, “How the fuck does that guy have a job as an actor, because seriously . . . ”
So your worst fears about government spying are true, they are listening in on your phone conversations and then ILLEGALLY using that info to prosecute you for regular, everyday “run-of-the-mill” crimes that nobody should care about unless you run in mills.
Could it get worse? Yes, it’s the government, it always gets worse.
After the NSA provides the information to the DEA who then provides it to local law enforcement, they are then instructed to scrub where they got the evidence from. Agents are instructed to then use “normal investigative techniques to recreate the information provided by the Special Operations Division.”
So, just to review: Illegally obtained information which, because of its illegality, cannot be used as evidence later, nor can any other evidence which may arise from this information. AND a massive 100% criminal conspiracy on the part of the CIA, NSA, FBI, DEA, DHS, SOD, HBO etc. . . . to subvert the Fourth Amendment. Got it?
You’re not paranoid, they really are out to get you—and they’re bad at it, too.
But that’s what really makes this the greatest country in the world; they don’t tell us they’re violating our civil liberties.
And remember, it’s not like we’re China . . . we have two political parties spying on us.
GUNS ‘R’ US
So the Dems are gonna try and regulate guns, but they really love guns, really. God forbid there is a person who wants to regulate guns that actually hates them. Here is Harry Reid giving his “I love guns” speech, but it gets a little weird:
“I had guns from the time I was a little boy . . . I keep them for sentimental reasons. My dad killed himself, shot himself with a gun, committed suicide, so I know a lot about guns.”
—Harry Reid
Um, Harry, is there a better story to illustrate why you love guns than the one where your dad uses one to kill himself? Cuz that seems a little fucked up . . . . “See that bottle of Celebrex? My uncle was killed by a stroke caused by Vioxx, so I keep that bottle around, kind of sentimental about it.”
Seriously, where are you going with this, Harry? Cuz I’m starting to think this is just you waxing poetic about guns.
In about ten seconds, this is going to turn into scene from Spinal Tap, and Nigel Tufnel is gonna take a guitar tour of Harry Reid’s awesome gun collection. “On this one, if you listen closely, you can still hear the bang from when my dad blew his head off. And this gun goes to eleven . . .”
BANG! BANG! YOU’RE DEAD INSIDE
Newt Gingrich says secularism led to mass shooting. Media reacts by having him as respected guest on every TV news show. Tennessee considers training its teachers to use guns in classrooms. They have yet to train teachers to use books in classrooms.
“We ask, ‘Why there is violence in our schools?’ when we’ve systematically removed God from our schools.”
—Mike Huckabee immediately after the Newtown massacre of 20 children ages 6 and 7 with a rifle.
“Where was God? God is not going to go where he is not wanted . . . we’ve kicked God out of our schools . . .”
—Bryan Fischer, host of Focal Point, another religious asshole
Pesky God, always needs to be ASKED to save 6-year-olds from getting slaughtered. Does God ever take the initiative on something like this? Cuz it seems like he should, even if it’s breaking a rule or something, don’t you think?
I mean if God intervenes on math tests and puppy rescues, maybe he sticks his chin out and protects some kids from a nutcase with a rifle?
And no matter how many times these people have to be told that what they are saying is stupid and offensive, it just doesn’t seem to sink in. And no matter how many times you tell them about separation of church and state, they still think that, in a secular society, the place to teach God is public school.
Here is a grown man who was governor of a state, and he thinks 20 kids got blown away cuz God got mad. Maybe he thinks it was God’s way to show us that we should have put “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance . . . wait, we did!
Mike Huckabee asks, “Why did God let this happen?” and his answer is that God really hates when you stop talking about him. And since Huckabee is dead set against gun control laws, we all better start praying.
“If we are going to change things, it is going to take a wave of Americans . . . standing up saying ‘enough’ on behalf of our kids.”
—Barack Obama takes tough stand on overwhelmingly popular gun bill
Yes, it is going to take a stream of Americans because we’ve got a steady stream of gutless politicians who cower in fear of the NRA.
Right, that’s how you change things, you wait until EVERYBODY IN THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD thinks the same way, then we try and pass sensible gun legislation.
What is it going to take to pass gun legislation?
“It will take commitment and compromise, and most of all it will take courage.”
—Prez Obama
Great, so that assures it won’t get done.
“I’m not so sure I wouldn’t want one person in a school armed and ready for this kind of thing.”
—William Bennett, degenerate gambler and author of The Book of Virtues.
Seriously, how much longer can we tolerate elementary schools without their own militia?
To Bill Bennett, the lesson of Newtown is that we need more principals and school psychologists packing heat. And the school nurse should carry a hunting knife.
And of course, he’s all for doing whatever we can to prevent this kind of tragedy from happening again, except for changing gun laws.
YOUR RIGHT TO WORK . . . AT WAL-MART WAGES
“Right to work . . . is about being pro-workers, giving workers the choice; if anything, this should encourage unions to be more responsive to workers.”
—Rick Snyder, Governor of Michigan, speaking with a straight face
Yeah, right to work gives the workers a choice . . . take it or leave it.
I don’t know how close you are following Michigan, but they passed anti-union legislation, aka “Right to Work,” and check out the governor, Mr. Straight Face over here:
“It’s about economic development. We will get more and better jobs coming to Michigan, because we’re going to be more competitive.”
—Gov. Snyder, again straight-facing it
Michigan will get all kinds of jobs, like they have in China, and for the same wages. Anyway, it’ll all work out because, once the unions are crushed, nobody will ever have to pay dues ever again.
Hey, come on, let’s be realistic, does everybody need a living wage, really?
The Republicans don’t hate the workers . . . they’re just nostalgic for labor conditions during the Taft administration. And what nobody’s mentioned is, this law goes a long way toward protecting the rights of scabs.
LABORED
Okay, it’s fun to watch Gov. Snyder straight-face his laughable lie about helping workers, but what is the real reason Republicans kill unions?
“You keep having a half a million people leave the labor movement every year, and pretty soon you start having a crimp in the political budgets of these unions; it has a direct effect on the presidential race.”
—Karl Rove, revealing the real reason for “right to work” legislation—to accumulate political power
So you’re saying that “more and better jobs” horseshit was just a political smokescreen? Okay, just checking. A power grab that lowers the wages of working people. Hmm, I wonder why you guys are worried you don’t connect with the public more.
At that same moment, thousands of supporters showed up outside the Michigan State Capitol to protest the stripping of union rights. Steve Crowder, an ass-hat “investigative reporter” for Fox News, sees a chance to get some action-packed video, so he starts to get in the face of protesters. One of the protesters described him as “a guy who wasn’t going home until he got punched.” And guess what? The instigative reporter eventually got punched, much to his delight. An edited video made the rounds, and the creepy Crowder unsuccessfully tried to act like a naïve innocent.
Then we move on to Morning Joe, and he is baffled at why a union member would take a swing at a mouthpiece for the plutocrats in the middle of an all-out assault on working families:
“I don’t understand the video at all. That doesn’t justify people punching people because they feel threatened economically. If conservatives go around punching people like that, it would’ve been the lead on every newscast in America, I just worry about the double standard.”
—Joe Scarborough
Nothing outrages Joe Scarborough more than the suffering of another white man.
When is somebody going to stand up for a conservative’s right to crush labor unions?
Can you believe those union thugs—when their job security’s taken away, they actually get pissed off about it?
If a liberal had gotten punched, it would’ve been the lead in every news story in the country—you mean like how this one was the lead on your news story? Or like when that woman was beaten up at the Rand Paul rally and got her head stomped? OK, bad example.
My question is, why did it take so long to start punching reporters from Fox News?
On the other hand, Joe Scarborough practically begs to get punched in the face every morning, and it never happens once.
“If conservatives go around punching people like that, it would’ve been the lead on every newscast in America; I just worry about the double standard.”
Oh PLEASE, does he mean a DOUBLE STANDARD that doesn’t work in rich guys’ favor in America?
Cops brutalized Occupy Wall Street protesters, maced pregnant women, students, and senior citizens, yet we heard none of this same outrage from Joe.
Suck a dick with your self-pity for the party of the put-upon white man. Oh, the media is so biased against conservatives that, if I don’t agree with conservative republican Joe Scarborough, I have the option of turning on the liberal morning talk show that doesn’t exist.
Once again, Scarborough displays the moral courage needed to stand up for the wealthy and powerful.
“What is wrong with the state allowing an American to work wherever he wants to work without being compelled to pay union dues?”
—Joe Scarborough
Because it spells the END of unions and FOR COLLECTIVE BARGAINING RIGHTS of workers.
If we don’t have collective bargaining, then we have everybody working at Wal-Mart and McDonald’s wages, and our economy goes in the shitter because money is now concentrated in fewer hands, which slows down the economy.
A study by economist Lonnie K. Stevans of Hofstra University found that states that have enacted such laws reported no increase in business start-ups or rates of employment. Wages and personal income are lower in those states than in those without such laws, though the proprietor incomes are higher; in short, right-to-work laws simply redistribute income from the workers to the owners.
We keep treating these problems like they are individual problems, when they are societal problems.
“Am I anti-union for saying, ‘I should be able to work where I want to work and pay union dues if I want to pay union dues,’ is that an anti-union position or is it just supporting freedom?”
—Joe “Holy Shit” Scarborough
In response to Scarborough’s simulated outrage, Harold Ford springs into action with apologetic mumbling and then says:
“I think it’s supporting freedom.”
Fearing retribution from Boss Man Scarborough, Harold Ford folds like a lawn chair. Maybe if there was a union for talk show guests, he could’ve spoken his mind.
MEDICARE MEDDLING
“We can play the political game, or we can actually be absolutely honest with the American people on Medicare.”
—Senator Tom Coburn, Washington game player, right before lying about Medicare
I’ve learned that whenever somebody says, “I’m not a racist, but . . .” that it is a sign that I should get ready for some racist shit right away. Same thing when someone feels the need to say, “to be honest.” When I hear that, I get ready for a stream of heartfelt, overly sincere, complete bullshit. If he were going to be honest, he would say that he’s getting ready to screw poor and middle class people again while continuing to give government handouts to his corporate overlords.
Whenever someone says Medicare is going bankrupt (or anything in the government is going bankrupt), that’s how you know they are full of shit. Medicare, like all government programs, doesn’t go bankrupt; we either choose to fund them or we don’t choose to fund them, period.
It’s funny how only the programs that actually work and help people are the ones always going bankrupt. Why doesn’t anyone ever talk about how the Pentagon is going bankrupt? Are they still turning a profit over at the Pentagon? Afghan war still in the black, is it?
Another surefire way a politician is full of shit is if he proposes to fix a problem that isn’t going to happen for 25 years. Social Security is solvent until 2037, and with very minor fixes is solvent until 2080. I have never heard of a politician wanting to solve a problem that isn’t going to happen until he’s long gone from office and even dead.
So when a politician says, “We have to fix Social Security from going bankrupt,” ask him what other problems that won’t happen for 25 years does he think we need to fix right now? I’ve never heard of a politician wanting to fix a problem that is 25 years out.
And let’s remember the problem with Medicare is the problem with healthcare; our healthcare costs are twice as high as those of the rest of the industrialized world. Medicare costs aren’t driving up healthcare costs; healthcare costs are driving up our Medicare costs. So you can’t fix Medicare without fixing healthcare costs, which nobody has any interest in doing.
One of my favorite things is when a real phony asshole tells us we have to “shoot straight” and then blatantly lies. A comedic rule of thumb is “lying is always funny,” and for my money, there are few “funnier” than Tom Coburn.
Not only does he tell us that he’s gonna shoot straight and then blatantly lie, but he goes the extra mile and uses Orwellian language to cover up what he is really planning on doing, as witnessed in his use of the term “individual participation” in the following quote.
“We have to stop playing the game; you can’t continue to lie to the American people. . . . The way to fix [Medicare] is to control the cost, and the way to control the cost is to have more individual participation . . . and yes, everybody in this country will have to participate in some discomfort if we are to get out of this mess.”
—Senator Tom Coburn, selling bullshit as a “harsh truth”
Let me explain: “Individual participation” is a technical term which means “elderly people get to choose between food or medicine.” It means that old people with no income have to pay more out of their already empty pockets. That’s what “increased participation” means; it means old people participate in paying more.
But don’t worry, because as the overly earnest-sounding senator just told us, everybody will have to participate in some discomfort—except, of course, for the people who don’t really need Medicare.
In 2011 alone, out-of-pocket medical expenses pushed over 10 million people into poverty, and the senior poverty rate would be cut in half if not for their out-of-pocket medical expenses.
And Senator Tom “Straight Shooter” Coburn’s solution is to make those senior citizens pay more! That’s just common sense; if we’re going to get out of this hole, we’re going to have to throw a lot of poor people into it. Or to put it another way, we are going to have to re-adjust the safety net so it has a hole big enough for all the poor people to fall through.
So it’s nice to see that Senator Coburn isn’t willing to play the political game, and instead is just going to demagogue the issue and scare the shit out of us so he can once again shift the tax burden from the wealthy to the needy.
Sure Senator, there are a lot of ways to fix Medicare; for example, come up with terms like “individual participation,” which sound a lot better than “thinning the herd.”
THE MEDICARE DEBATE Á LA DAVID GREGORY
“But don’t we also have an obligation in government . . . to say to the citizens: ‘You have to understand reality. Even though we’ve made a promise, there is a fiscal reality to this program [Medicare and Social Security] that can’t be sustained.”
—David Gregory, corporate tool, forwarding Republican talking points in question form
Even high on airplane glue, I can think of three things wrong with that question.
First of all, if the government has a responsibility to explain complex issues to its citizens, then that’s great—but I’m pretty sure that this would be the first time they actually did it. Also, I’m pretty sure that network news outlets—such as Meet the Press, you know, “your show”—have already done a pretty good job telling us all we’re about to get the shaft. So the government can sit this one out.
Oh, and David, the fiscal reality actually is that Medicare is sustainable; what’s not sustainable is the necessary political will, because corrupt lunatics have taken over the Republican party, and Democrats are a disorganized pack of nerds that keep bringing words to a gun fight.
What Gregory is suggesting is that we tell seniors, “Hey, you paid into this program your entire life—but, er, sorry.” How would that be different than the U.S. defaulting on its debt? How would that be different from the U.S. failing to deliver goods and services for which payment was already received? How would that be different from the U.S. government saying, “Hey, you know that money you gave us for your doctor bills? Um, we spent it on tax cuts for the wealthy, a war in Iraq, a bank bail out . . . so, er . . . good fucking luck, man!”
AND BY THE WAY—has it not dawned on David Gregory or any of these other dimwits: What insurance company would insure today’s elderly Americans, the most expensive patients in the history of the world? The fiscal reality, David, is that the Paul Ryan plan would end up taking healthcare away from seniors altogether, because the Healthcare Allowance would have nowhere to go.
Seniors without appropriate health insurance would end up wiping out huge amounts of wealth in the middle class. The estate tax would cease to be an issue—cuz there wouldn’t be anyone leaving behind $2-million estates.
I don’t know if the government has an obligation to say Medicare can’t be fiscally sustained, but I know journalists have an obligation not to ask loaded questions based on obviously false assumptions.
ENDLESS WAR FOR ENDLESS PEACE
Q: “In how many countries are we involved in a shooting war?”
A: “That’s a good question, hahahahahaha, I’ll have to stop and think, hahahahaha!”
—Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, giggling through war
Like most defense secretaries, Leon Panetta lives by the credo, “If you can’t enjoy invading other countries, why even get up in the morning?”
He meant no disrespect, but let’s face it, explosions are funny.
You gotta see the looks on these Al Qaeda guys’ faces just before the drone missile hits their SUV.
Listen, I’m not blaming Panetta for laughing—the question is incredibly simple, and the answer is ridiculously complex, like asking, “Hey, what’s up Eric Cantor’s ass?” There are so many things up Eric Cantor’s ass. But first, Panetta might want to apologize for laughing—what with the death and whatnot. Second, it’s probably a bad sign when the secretary of defense organically laughs at the question, “How many wars are we currently fighting in?”
Honestly, after his laugh, I almost expected Leon Panetta to say, “You know, now that you put it that way—I’m thinking we might have a problem.”
Am I the only one that finds that fucked up? Hey, wanna have a good laugh? Think about how many countries we are fighting in while firing teachers at home? HILARIOUS!
OILY
“And I’ve said all along, the reason Dick Cheney wanted this war, it had nothing to do with WMDs or Al Qaeda or freedom and democracy, and everything to do with oil.”
—Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, USAF, Colin Powell’s chief of staff
Remember how everyone dismissed anyone who questioned the Official version of what happened on 9/11? Some crazy kooks, the people O’Reilly calls “loons,” actually thought that the two oil men running the country just might be so oil- and money-crazy that they would start an illegal war to get more of it.
Yeah, right, I am so sick of these hippies and conspiracy nuts saying George Bush and Dick Cheney intentionally misled us into war, sure sure, nice tinfoil hats ya got there.
Well, here is Lawrence Wilkerson, retired U.S. Army colonel, and former chief of staff to U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, answering the question, “Just what did we get out of the Iraq war?”
“We’re pretty sure there’s 200 billion barrels of oil [in Iraq], maybe 300 billion. Malaki himself plans to be at 13 million barrels per day production capacity in seven years, he is already signing twenty-year contracts with Chinese and the Malaysians, covering such companies such as ExxonMobil, Chevron, Total, Elf, Royal Dutch, Shell, and others. He’s moving out. And if these projections . . . are anything like what the geologists are telling us, this is going to be the new Saudi Arabia. So if we got anything out of this, it was the opening up of this new Saudi Arabia for the world oil markets. And I’ve said all along, the reason Dick Cheney wanted this war, it had nothing to do with WMDs, or Al Qaeda, or freedom and democracy, and everything to do with oil.”
The last time I checked, Colonel Wilkerson was completely bald, but now he sounds like he’s been growing his hair and playing hacky sack.
Here’s how you start or expand a business: You develop a business plan, then you borrow money, either from a bank or from the public in the form of stocks and/or bonds.
Here’s how you start the Iraq war: Sketch out a plan on a napkin, then issue as many federal bonds as you’ve got paper to print them on. Then lose the napkin. And, as any good business owner knows, it’s fairly important to sit down and check your profit and loss reports.
Did you cover your expenses? Can you pay back your creditors? Have you built value in the business? And in the case of the Iraq war, well, let’s just say, if the war was a dry cleaners, several years ago, you would have burned down that dry cleaners for the insurance money and fled the country under the alias Francisco De La I’ve-never-owned-a-dry-cleaners Diego.
So, now that our business in Iraq is concluding, what did the American people get for over two trillion dollars of debt?
“. . . right now, we’re pretty sure there’s 200 billion barrels of oil there, maybe 300 billion. Malaki himself plans to be at 13 million barrels per day production capacity in seven years. . . .”
Sweet, sweet oil! Well that’s totally worth it—just in terms of sheer market value, that might be better than a ten-to-one profit. Sure, you want to account for four or five thousand dead Americans, and over one hundred thousand dead Iraqis—but still, I mean we are way ahead. That’s like cocaine-level profits. I bet all those assholes wouldn’t have chanted “no blood for oil” if they knew just how much oil we would get back per unit of blood.
By the way, if you’ve seen Lawrence Wilkerson’s résumé, you’ll know his opinion in these matters is authoritative. If I had done just one of the things this guy has done, I would be talking about it constantly to impress girls. Back to the petroleum . . .
“He’s already signing twenty-year contracts with the Chinese and Malaysians, covering such companies as ExxonMobil, Chevron . . . ”
Wait, Chevron?! I pump my gas there! This is going to be awesome!
“ . . . Total, Elf, Royal Dutch, Shell, and others. He’s moving out. And if these projections, and I’m sure they will be, are anything like what the geologists are telling us, this is going to be the new Saudi Arabia.”
A NEW Saudi Arabia?! Holy cow, I mean that relationship has been nothing but easy. A new Saudi Arabia is like saying a new Disneyland (where women aren’t allowed to drive and most of the 9/11 hijackers were recruited).
“ . . . So, if we got anything out of this, it was the opening-up of this new Saudi Arabia for the world’s oil markets.”
Excellent! So the oil companies will pay off America and Britain’s war debt and compensate the families of all those killed in Iraq? Oh, they won’t? Too bad. I just thought that would have been a nice thing to do.
“. . . And I’ve said all along, the reason Dick Cheney wanted this war—it had nothing to do with WMDs, or Al Qaeda, or freedom and democracy, and everything to do with oil.”
Uh, excuse me, but I think you meant President George W. Bush when you said Dick Cheney . . . you didn’t? You meant Dick Cheney was the principal architect of the Iraq war? Well that doesn’t make sense. I mean, we didn’t elect that heart patient president of the United States.
The thing that slays me is here’s the chief of staff to U.S. secretary of state, and he just told us in no uncertain terms that the president of the United States was cold-blooded enough to lie to his own country into starting a war, and commit multiple war crimes to accomplish it.
So, let me get this straight, these guys are rotten enough to send thousands of our sons and daughters to die in an unnecessary and illegal war, and morally bankrupt enough to use an American tragedy for monetary gain and to line the pockets of their oil buddies (and yet you’re surprised when people start believing that you’d be willing to blow up two buildings in New York in the process).
So, to sum up. Next time some hippie asks you what we got for eight years, over two trillion dollars, and thousands of lives in Iraq—you say, “Oil, magical oil! What, do you think your flower bus runs on, hopes and dreams?!! No, it runs on the magic of light sweet crude—now go hide in Canada, you long-haired freak!”
LIBERTARIANS
Most people who claim to “not believe in the power of government” tend to completely rely on government all the time, but like to repeat what they hear from the corporate tool on the TV and AM radio.
If you don’t believe in the power of government, then I guess you never use the water that comes out of your faucet? Or do you have a private company that takes care of that?
And you never drive on a highway, right? Or the road in front of your house? Or are you one of those rotten deadbeats who relies on the government to build roads for them?
And I bet you never flush your toilet either, right? Or are you one of those freeloaders who uses the government’s sewers?
And you never throw garbage out either, right? You burn it in your backyard, correct? Or do you rely on the government to come and take all of your garbage away every day?
And I bet when the guy from the government shows up at your door every day with mail, you tell him to “Get lost!” cuz you are a rugged individualist who doesn’t need welfare; you can deliver your own mail! That’s what you say, right?
And I bet you never use the police, either. Only people who need the government to protect them call the police; the rest of us call Mannix!
Same thing when your house catches fire—you’re not gonna sit around and wait for the government to show up and put it out with their filthy government firemen, are you? Of course not, you get your garden hose out that is hooked up to your own private water source and put it out by yourself, right?
And you never eat food from the grocery store either, right? Cuz the government makes sure that the food we eat isn’t poisoned and safe to eat, but you don’t eat that food, right?
And I bet you never got educated at a public school, right? Or went to a public university? Cuz that is socialism. You don’t need the government to educate you, leave that up to the corporations; they will tell us everything we need to know.
And you probably have never taken a trip on an airplane, right? Or a train? Or been to a public park? Or a public library? Or taken a prescription drug?
Now how ‘bout my favorite, say it with me: “Keep your government hands off my Medicare!”
What’s really happening with this type of person is they imagine the government is helping someone else, who might even be a different race from themselves. They resent the taxes they pay that might help people who are worse off than themselves. They live in a Social Darwinist fantasy where they succeeded in life separate from the society they live in, looking down with contempt on their fellow citizens.
It is very disheartening to see that, in the middle of getting the biggest reaming ever from Wall Street and the military industrial complex, some people still reserve the bulk of their scorn and anger for the poorest in society. Yeah, it’s the people with no money and no power who crashed our economy, laid off our teachers, and kicked people out of their houses. That’s it. Let’s get those greedy bastards at the bottom! Ugh.
THE SURVEILLANCE STATE: IT’S FOR YOUR OWN GOOD
“I’m not for profiling people on the color of their skin or their religion, but I would have to take into account where they’ve been traveling, and perhaps you might have to indirectly take into account whether or not they’ve been going to radical political speeches by religious leaders, but it wouldn’t be that they are Islamic. But if someone is attending speeches from someone who is promoting the violent overthrow of our government, that’s really an offense we should be going after; they should be deported or put in prison.”
—Rand Paul, scaring the shit out of me
Did you catch that? He’s not for profiling Muslims necessarily, but if you are around someone who is saying some bad stuff, you can go to jail. So I guess he’s all for free speech, just not free listening.
When students and pregnant women were being pepper sprayed at Occupy Wall Street protests, TV talking heads were falling over themselves to defend these attacks. These were the same pundits that defended gun brandishing Teabaggers who were basically protesting the president being black.
PRE-OCCUPIED
Do you remember the Occupy Wall Street demonstration at UC Davis back in November of 2011? It stirred up the press everywhere but their conscience.
“A video has gone viral of peaceful students being pepper sprayed on the UC Davis campus is raising the question: Is law enforcement going over the line in dealing with protests?”
—Ed Schultz, MSNBC
Next question: “Cancer, is it really that bad for you?”
PEPPER IS FOOD
When students and pregnant women were being pepper-sprayed at Occupy Wall Street protests, TV talking heads were falling over themselves to defend those attacks. These were the same pundits that defended gun-brandishing Teabaggers who were basically protesting the president being black. Bill O’Reilly and Megyn Blonde WOWman confer:
Bilbo: “First of all, pepper spray just burns your eyes, right?”
Blonde: “It’s a derivative of actual pepper; it’s a food product, essentially.”
Yes, and lead bullets are really just fat pencils, essentially. And billy clubs are really just tickle sticks.
Over at Fox Business News, someone advocates for peace:
“Reminder to those who disagree with those they find disagreeable—hear ‘em, don’t gas ‘em, because every time you do you cede the advantage to them . . .”
—Neil Cavuto
Yeah, don’t beat the protesters. Not cuz it is horrible and goes against everything we claim to believe in in America. Don’t beat them cuz, when we do, we lose the support of people we can usually trick into supporting us. You have to read between the lines, but yes, he is still being a douchebag.
What Neil is telling his fellow free-speech-hating conservatives is they’ve made this mistake before, when police overreacted with fire hoses and guns, and the result was black people got to eat at the same restaurants as whites. And he wants to make sure something like that never happens again.
Remember, the goal is always ignore the people protesting, unless they’re protesting against Obamacare.
“A lot of these folks who think that somehow money grows on trees and they’re entitled to it and they don’t understand how wealth is produced in this country.”
—Senator Jon Kyl, on Occupy Wall Street
See these OWS types don’t know how to produce wealth; they think you work hard and save and then you have a good life. These people are idiots living in a fantasyland known as “the past.”
Today, anyone with half a brain knows that the way you produce wealth is through outsourcing jobs to slave labor to cut costs and raise profits, and also through crony capitalism funded by trillions in taxpayer-funded subsidies from a corrupt, bought government.
“What have we seen here: violence, rape, arson, destruction of property, sex in public, masturbation in public, naked people, drugs, drug paraphernalia, anti-Americanism, anti-Semitism, anti-capitalism.”
—Sean Hannity, on OWS
Um Sean, you forgot to add . . . nope, you got ‘em all.
One question: Is that his complaints about the OWS or just the list of the stuff Sean jerked off to today?
But of course Hannity makes Occupy Wall Street seem like a lot more fun than it really is.
I guess what he’s saying is that there’s nothing more disgusting than a bunch of dirty, degenerate protesters making a completely valid point.
“It starts with a premise that we all owe them everything; they take over a public park they didn’t pay for, to go nearby to use bathrooms they didn’t pay for, to beg for food from places they don’t want to pay for, to obstruct those who are going to work to pay the taxes to sustain the bathrooms and the park . . . . You need to reassert something as simple as saying to them, ‘Go get a job right after you take a bath.’”
—Newt Gingrich, on OWS
To the people unable to find employment in a depression, Wall Street lobbyist and crack-up Newt Gingrich says, “Get a job.” Oh boy Newt, that is a funny one, seeing as your job was making sure that the people who ruined the economy and rigged the game so that they received taxpayer-funded welfare when they went bankrupt, and everyone else lost their jobs, houses, and retirement. Hella funny, Newt!
Not quite as hilarious as the time you punk’d your wife by serving her divorce papers in front of your kids in the hospital room where she was recovering from cancer surgery. Not that funny, but still right up there.
All his experience in Congress, and it turns out that Newt has the same understanding of our economy as Herman Cain.
What the protesters want is basic fairness in our economy, but Newt decides to smear them and say that these protesters want everything for nothing, and he’s gonna make sure they’re not gonna get it, mostly because we already gave it to the banks.
I guess I see his point; these people need to pick themselves up by their bootstraps, roll up their sleeves, and become lobbyists. I mean, why are we listening to the economic complaints of a bunch of people who don’t even have jobs? And why don’t they have jobs? Because these protesters are so lazy, they’ve stopped looking for jobs, just because there aren’t any.
And let’s not forget the worst thing about these hippies; they don’t even pay taxes! Who do they think they are, General Electric?
Their mistake is asking for a living wage instead of a billion-dollar parachute.
Lou Dobbs has a show on the Fox Business channel. Who knew? You mean, besides the over two dozen regular viewers, I’ve heard estimates that almost half of all the people working at Fox Business channel know.
Well here he is, talking with political strategist Dick Morris. Let’s remember that Morris was the advisor who helped President Clinton make the difficult transition from Democrat to Republican. He was born Richard Morris, yet freely chose the name Dick. And to prove that he is, Dick made the following comparison:
“When you get a leftist movement like this going on that goes way over, it puts the president in a very, very difficult situation. Just think of the flip side, if you had a large Klan movement in the United States with a Republican president.”
—Dick Morris, right wing pollster/horrible person
“Just think if we had a large Klan movement with a Republican president?”
Don’t we always?
First: Occupy Wall Street = the Klan? WTF? Sure, that works, because demonstrating against corporate greed and corruption is equivalent to racism.
Second: What the fuck? So, apparently, the rich were brought over here in trust fund boats 400 years ago to slave in our nation’s investment firm belt? Separated from their Krugerands. Families torn apart. One brother forced to sell derivatives at Goldman Sachs, the other cheating senior citizens at Lehman Brothers. Heartbreaking. Then after the “War Between the Banks,” the OWS movement forms, ushering in a series of repressive anti-Ponzi laws. And for over 100 years, poor bankers all over the country live in mini-apartheids, wondering where their next opportunity to siphon some retiree’s pension fund will come from. They must be terror-stricken.
Third: Lou Dobbs has to start drinking again.
Fourth: There is a large Klan movement, it’s called the Tea Party.
“I understand the frustrations that are being expressed in those protests; in some ways, they’re not that much different from some of the protests we saw coming from the Tea Party, both on the Left and the Right, people feel separated from their government, that their institutions aren’t looking out for them.”
—President Obama, on OWS
Oh yeah, he’s down with OWS, and they’re totally just like the Tea Party, you know, except for the fact that they are informed, right on the issues and not being co-opted by puppets of the very institutions they are protesting against. Except for that, they are a lot alike. The OWS protestors and the Tea Party are exactly alike, except the OWS protestor votes correctly, and the Tea Party has not only been duped into voting against their own interests, but this time they are also protesting and organizing against their own interests, too. So, yeah, except for that, they are a lot alike.
“So the Occupy Wall Street movement is dead, finished as a legitimate political force in this country, and that’s a good thing.”
—Bill O’Reilly, on OWS
So that’s good, and I guess everything’s settled now. Next!
THOSE BLOODSUCKING TEACHERS
“What we need to be talking about is not hiring more teachers but hiring better teachers, and getting rid of the ones that don’t teach. When 50% of the kids in Chicago aren’t even graduating, we need to be talking about improving education, not use increasing the number of public employees, who in Chicago get over $100,000 in salary.”
—Rev. Mike Huckabee, demonizing teachers
We need to shit on teachers and pay them less because Chicago has a 50% dropout rate? How is a 50% dropout rate the fault of the teachers?
Half the kids don’t show up to school, and it’s the teacher’s fault for not teaching them?
If most people in a neighborhood have dirty cars because they don’t take their cars in to get washed, it’s not the fault of the guys who work at the car wash, is it?
How do we hire better-quality teachers when you don’t want to pay them and want to make it less attractive to be a teacher in the first place?
Chicago teachers earn $74,000 a year. So Huckabee throws out the $100,000 number to get other working people angry at teachers.
Of course George Snuffleupagus isn’t aware of the pertinent facts of the situation, nor does he seem familiar with the bogus talking points of the corporate mouthpiece Mike Huckabee.
If Chicago public school teachers made $100,000 a year, there would be a line all the way to Florida for people applying to teaching schools.
Nobody brings up class size. Huckabee says we don’t need to hire more teachers, but class size makes a big difference in student achievement.
Tennessee’s Project STAR (Student Teacher Achievement Ratio) found that smaller class sizes had positive effects at every grade level across all locations, from rural to urban. It also was superior on every achievement measure and for all subjects, from reading to mathematics to the sciences. Students in early grades assigned to small classes of 15 or so, graduate on schedule at higher rates (76%) compared to students from regular classes of over 24 (64%). These same students complete school with honors and drop out of school less often compared to those who go to regular classes.
“Teachers and firefighters aren’t private sector jobs; they don’t contribute to economic growth.”
—Rush Limbaugh
So according to our favorite college dropout/economist, teachers aren’t real workers, and they are not a part of the economy.
Let me get this straight: When a teacher gets paid, they spend that money in an alternate universe, not in the communities and cities where they live, but somewhere else where the money doesn’t go into the economy.
Again, this is why you don’t take lessons on how the economy works from a college dropout.
When you’re a supposed liberal that works for Fox News, it does not speak well of you, both as a liberal and as a human being. Cuz Fox News hires two kinds of liberals, either:
A) Alan Colmes—a weenie who makes liberal positions look weeniesh; or
B) Bob Beckel—a guy who’s basically not a liberal.
“I’m a strong union supporter, and a strong supporter of the teachers unions. However, having said that . . . ”
—Bob Beckel, feeble liberal
See, now this is the kind of preamble that is precisely akin to people who say they are not racist just before they say something incredibly racist.
FYI: If you’re such a strong supporter of the unions, maybe you should try, just a little, to see things from their point of view. Like when they say means testing is not working, and they’re willing to go out on strike over it, maybe you ask why.
Here’s an idea: Why not have a teacher on your little show to explain their point of view? Just saying, “news” is in the title of your network, and not “bloviating idiot giving his opinion about stuff he doesn’t really understand.”
“For a long time I’ve supported means testing for teachers.”
What?! A means test is a test of how much money a dude has—to see if he’s poor enough to get some dough. Are we gonna do that with teachers? Cuz according to the Republican machine, teachers have sacks and sacks of jewels and cash. They’re not going to qualify.
I’m pretty sure what he meant to say was some sort of standardized performance testing for teachers. Yeah, in the unbelievably complex and humanly flawed quest to teach an ever-changing population of children from drastically different regions of the country—how could a standardized test go awry?
“They want these people who’ve been let go of the school system to automatically come back.”
Outrageous! The teachers unions want people who were laid off for financial reasons to be the first reinstated? What the fuck? I mean, you’d think that was how a layoff works or something.
“The reason they’re out is because they weren’t good teachers.”
I have no reason to believe this is actually why they were retired, but I’m gonna say it anyway, cuz that’s just how I roll.
“So the idea that they should be the first in line to get teaching jobs is crazy.”
And even though the premise of this conclusion is a house of cards, I’m pretty sure the conclusion is totally solid.
“And by the way, the 35%—they moved immediately off of that. It wasn’t about the pay increase, cuz they knew they weren’t gonna get that much—”
Just thought I’d totally gloss over that fact—that the teachers are not striking about money, like the greedy fat cats Fox News would have you believe they are.
“But they’re holding up on this issue about teachers should be rated on what their kids do on these standardized tests. Why not?”
Good question, why don’t you actually ask someone who actually works in education? Is it because they might actually have a reason that makes sense? Yes, that would drag your whole show to a screeching halt, wouldn’t it?
By the way, I’m not a highly paid political pundit and professor of politics at a major university like Bob here, but it turns out there’s this thing called Google, where you can actually look up the arguments against national standardized testing and evaluating teachers based on that testing. It seems, and this is crazy if you ask me, their main objection is that it doesn’t work.