Unbelievable

Tim McVeigh stalagmites hate Democracy and America so violently they seek to overturn a massive landslide election by force. Teahadist's in Oklahoma are in serious conversation with wackjob local politicians to form a local armed militia to defend Oklahoma from the will of the people.

Teabag suckler and GOP wannabe for Governor, Randy Brogdon, R-Owasso, thinks armed hooligans running amok promoting armed coups is a swell idea.

The founding fathers "were not referring to a turkey shoot or a quail hunt. They really weren't even talking about us having the ability to protect ourselves against each other," Brogdon said. "The Second Amendment deals directly with the right of an individual to keep and bear arms to protect themselves from an overreaching federal government."

Double dip nut sucker state Rep. Charles Key, R-Oklahoma City, said he believes there's a good chance of introducing legislation for a state-authorized militia next year.

Yes, as I write this, we rest a week shy of the 15th anniversary and in the waning shadows of the survival tree, where an anti-government fanatic blew up the Afred P. Murrah building, killing 168 Americans.

And now, we have a bunch of losers, who hate losing so much that they are willing to get a gun to show how unpatriotic and un-American they are by imposing their will by bullets instead of the ballot. Fucking worthless cocksuckers. And they are conspiring with a few cowardly politicians, desperate for some votes, willing to fellate these worthless pieces of shit.

Turning Fifty

So, as I turn the corner to approach the back nine, I guess it's time to reflect on the past 50 years. A big, huge, gigantic thank you must be paid right up front to Dr. Seuss, and Green Eggs and Ham. And my mom for buying the book. And my big brother for relentlessly reading it to me.

You see, this is how I learned to read, and I learned to read before my first day at school.

Thanks Mom, bro, and Doc.

And my little sister. Until she showed up, girls were just dumb girls. Then she looked up to me. She admired me. I was admirable. I had never before been admirable, not even by myself. And my sister was a girl. I began to view girls differently.

Thank you, sister.

I was a football player and gymnast in high school and could run the 100 yard dash in 10 seconds flat and graduated a year early. Sort of an over-achiever.

I got married and raised a family. Three kids, none of which is in jail or on the pipe. Perhaps some may think this is a low bar, but hey.

After the Oil bust in the early eighties, I went back to school and entered corporate life. Two cell phones, plus a pager. Conducted leadership and sales seminars, herded politicians to ribbon cuttings as a photo-journalist and aided in numerous political campaigns.

The crowd I ran with crowed about stress pimples as though they were shrapnel wounds.

After years of creating, implementing and selling just about everything, sometimes in the multi-million dollar range, I burned out and went into business for myself.

I was not a good boss, because if I had five dollars in my pocket, hell, that was enough for bait and I was going fishing.

Someone bought me some work boots--the classified section rolled up inside one of them with some ads circled.

Back into the oilfields I went.

I am confident as I look forward to the next 50 years that I have the ability to do anything I want--as long as a chair is involved.

Thanks for the many good wishes on my facebook page. You know who you are.

Rightards

I got nuthin'.

h/t Watertiger

Don Blankenship: Hoist By His Own Petard

Sad news out of West Virginia. A mine exploded, killing every miner inside, save two, one of which is still in intensive care. In the worst mining disaster in over a quarter of a century, 29 miners lost their lives. Hope turned to despair which faded into incredible loss and grief. Soon, this will be replaced with fury and demands of accountability and steely resolve.

So, our attention turns to Don Blankenship, the head cheese for Massey Energy. Now Don, ran the company like a real Don. He was known as a union buster who preferred to run things in a dictator like fashion. Employees did what they were told, or got fired. It was always a simple take-it-or-leave-it proposition with Don Corleone Blankenship.

Over the years Don has stacked up thousands of safety violations. Some fines he would pay, some fines he would fight, but always he would make political contributions in an effort to reign in those pesky regulators and perhaps round of some corners of the regulations.

In short, Don is the poster child for the Republican default position of anti-union, deregulation, open range capitalism.

And now, hanging over him is a cloud of criminally negligent homicide. Multiple counts. Depraved indifference due to the well-documented history of safety violations. Perhaps his legal team and political contributions will enable Don to avoid criminal prosecutions, but his civil liabilities will be unavoidable and enormous.

But the point is all of Don's struggles against unions and regulation, which he felt impeded the ability to run coal, and coal is what pays the bills, are the very things that would have prevented the Montcoal disaster and avoided what is in store for Don Blankenship.

At some point unions and regulations should be seen as a benefit and not a hinderance for industry Titans such as Don. It is my hope that Mr. Blankenship is totally ruined forever by this unfortunate and preventable disaster. Safe mines do not explode. Powerless employees either go home or go in. Organized labor have options that Don fought tooth and nail to prevent.

Because coal is what pays Don's bills. Hey Don, how much coal are you running now?

Cross posted at The Seminal.

Monochromatic

The National Review Online, a wingnut welfare operation, heard rumors that discrimination may play a role in higher minority unemployment in today's Great Recession. So, NRO rounded up a posse of ex-spurts (has been drips under pressure) to discuss and conclude. Here is a photo of the folks heading up NRO's "symposium."

What's wrong with this picture?

After a thorough discussion, they concluded "Discrimination is an insufficient explanation for black unemployment." Well, that sort of misses the point.

Gravity, is an insufficient explanation for my epic fail triple somersault. Note I didn't say gravity doesn't exist, because it does, and like discrimination, it sucks.

But to the larger point, it is sort of tone deaf to deliver color commentary with a monochromatic panel.

h/t Think Progress

Republicans Defend Their Base

Watching the Republican party and their vast right wing wurlitzer defend the behavior of the looney teabagging base, in a brick-throwing, spittle-flecked, slur-hurling id-like tantrum, is akin to the defense of a dog bite. First, says the lawyer, my client doesn't own a dog. Second, if he did own a dog, he certainly wouldn't bite anyone. Third, if he did bite someone, he must have been provoked.

Point number three is also known as the abusive husband defense. See, his wife makes him beat her.

For 30 years Republicans have carefully cobbled together this coalition, nourished them with the fell meats of rancid distrust and bootstrappilosophy. "Getting government off our backs," was a useful dog-whistle slogan against tax collectors for a welfare state. The base new what this meant to them--don't take my hard earned money and give to some lay-about colored.

But what it really meant to the boys who ran the store was giving private corporations free reign to rape, pillage and plunder. It was a win-win for Republicans.

Then something happened. The Fairness Doctrine, which kept some sort of harness on the media, was killed during the Clinton Administration. Deep pockets began purchasing radio stations all across the land, pockets friendly to Republicans, and the steady encephalitic drip, drip, drip of right-wing ideologues like Rush began to seep into the next generation.

And market success began to overtake electoral victory.

Stars and multimillionaires were created out of this vast right-wing media conglomeration, and its audience became a movement who demand absolute rigidity in not only abstract political philosophy, but also in policy itself.

The result was that any and all Democrats must be hated. If they agreed with any Republican policies, then the policy must be flawed. No compromise ever on anything--compromise is like "date rape."

The moderates have been pushed out of the Republican party by the purists, and heated primaries to decide who have the wing-nut bonafides results in a treasure trove of Democratic ads to run in the general election. This will concern the "mushy middle" the swing voters, that are so precious in deciding elections.

The teabaggers are now in control of the Republican party, and every candidate actively and gleefully seek their approval. But there are only so many angry white folks to go around, and not enough to be more than an impediment to progress.

And this will only make them angrier. Sigh.