Archive for July 9th, 2010
QUESTION: Do you see a tipping point for the Race Industry coming sooner rather than later?
Lately, the antics of our race-baiting Attorney General Eric Holder have convinced us that a tipping/breaking point for the Race Industry in this country is coming…sooner rather than later.
The general public is not aware that Holder ordered the Justice Department to shut down its prosecution of Black Panthers in Philadelphia who intimidated voters at polling places on Election Day in 2008 — to help Obama win the presidency. Testimony from Justice Department officials has revealed a policy under Holder not to prosecute blacks accused of crimes against whites. Black people are not to be prosecuted, and, under Holder, are to be treated by a different set of laws than whites.
The general public was not aware of the importance of Watergate for the longest time either. People we know who actually lived in Washington, DC in the early 1970s said they heard a little about something happening at some hotel, but didn’t pay much attention to it until everything pretty much hit the fan one day. Things built up. Confidence in the White House was shaken. And then, as it was described to us, “it was like a big sinkhole just opened up and swallowed Nixon and everything broke loose”.
We don’t know if the Black Panther case will itself be the sinkhole that takes down this presidency, but something is coming. The Media and this White House have been race-baiting for over two years now. Anyone who does not agree with this “president” is called a RAAACIST. Anyone who criticizes this administration is RAAACIST. This “president” and his administration make absolutely everything, ultimately, about race.
We can’t help thinking this is going to come back to bite them, in a very, very big way.
Just look back to the stupid remark Obama made, off the cuff, when talking about how “stupid” the Cambridge police were for arresting his good friend and fellow race-baiter, Henry Gates. It was a very bad move on Obama’s part, and the White House ran from it as fast as it could because Obama clearly sided with his black friend over the white police officer without knowing a damn thing about the case or what Gates did to deserve his arrest. And it was a MUCH DESERVED arrest, as the facts proved.
SOMETHING like this is going to happen again with Obama, and it could be in a press conference if he’s ever pressed on this Black Panther case or the other things Holder’s been up to in the Obama administration.
Are we alone in thinking this?
It just FEELS like America has had just about enough of this garbage. A tolerant nation with almost inexhaustible patience for the Race Industry, there’s just something in the air after the Duke Lacrosse accusations, the rioting in California this week, and the nonstop antics of the Jesse Jackson/Al Sharpton/Henry Gates pea-brained gallery that make us feel the country has just about had enough of all of these clowns.
Holder seems destined to be part of this breaking point, setting off something that pulls Obama in as well — who will only make it worse, and could finally force a frank and honest examination of the racial hucksters like the Jackson/Sharpton/Gates gang that have held this country hostage with the Race Industry for decades now.
Do you get this vibe too?
RESEARCH: How will Obamacare cripple restaurant franchisees, and how will THAT tank the economy in 2011?
The other day, we caught a blurb on the ESPN Zone restaurant chain going under…with part of the cause being the fact its parent company wanted out of the restaurant business because of Obamacare’s steep tax increases and penalties for employers, some of which starts in 2011.
Here in Boystown, we’ve told you that bar and restaurant owners we personally know are trimming staff to get under the 50-person threshold, so that they will not be subject to Obamacare’s $3,000/employee fees for businesses. That meant not hiring as many new staff this season, and not replacing people when they leave.
We also read an article about the White Castle chain of hamburger restaurants that’s going to be in deep trouble because of Obamacare. White Castle has offered employees health insurance since the 1920s. But, because of Obamacare, it’s going to have to get rid of the program it already has because it’s going to be billed thousands of dollars for each employee no matter what it does. Either it will pay a $2,000 fee per employee if it keeps its current healthcare offering, or it will pay a $3,000 fee if employees opt for the government program when Obamacare descends upon us. But, if employees do that, then the health program White Castle has now will collapse because not enough employees will be in the pool for the company to maintain its current premiums…so ultimately it will just have to pay that $3,000 fee per employee anyway.
Here’s the question we have: do the FRANCHISEES pay that fee, or does that come from corporate?
Our limited experience with restaurants tells us the franchisees will be paying that because we know for a fact franchisees are forced to pay for the physical improvements to their restaurants, have to pay for anything corporate dictates in terms of promotional materials, and are saddled with all the vendor bills and other debts that come with operating the business. Each McDonald’s, Burger King, KFC, etc. is a small (usually) family business that’s renting the name and marketing banners of the corporate chain you know. But, all costs are local to that small business owner.
It sure looks like Obamacare is going to put a lot of people out of business.
Leftists cheer this, because there’s a sickness on the Left that loves to “stick it” to “big companies”. What none of these fools realize, of course, is that the people who are going to bear the brunt of all this are the poor people who work at these businesses.
The business owners will shut down, sell-off, and retire.
But, what happens to all those employees…who are more likely than not Democrat voters, who voted into office the people who are ultimately responsible for them losing their jobs?
Will these people ever see the reality of what Democrats are doing to this economy…and to their jobs?
No one is connecting the dots on all of this yet, but we see disaster coming. It’s a running meme in this country to be hard on McDonald’s since Supersize Me hit theaters, but we’ve worked with McDonald’s corporate in Oak Brook and they are a joy to deal with — every last McDonald’s exec we’ve known has been wonderful, kind, and aware of the opportunities McDonald’s gives people in poor neighborhoods where there just aren’t any better jobs around.
A McDonald’s in a neighborhood means it’s not a complete lost cause. People see the arches. They notice the well-maintained grounds. They see a safe oasis in the chaos for them to get something to eat where they know they won’t be bothered and harassed, because McDonald’s stands for civilization and pushback against the thugocracy that might otherwise rule that part of town.
When a McDonald’s closes, a neighborhood is in deep, deep, irredeemable trouble.
Just imagine the impact if Obamacare forces the closure of franchise restaurants across the country because the franchisees cannot afford to shell out the $3,000/employee Obamacare fee that’s going to be imposed. We’d guess each McDonald’s franchise has about 60 people working there, maybe 80-100 if it’s a 24/hour restaurant. That could be as much as $300,000 a year a franchisee will have to pay, out of pocket, to the government because of Obamacare. If a franchise is just breaking even in this economy, as a lot of restaurants and bars we know are, then Obamacare will put these people out of business.
That’s now somewhere between 60-100 people per franchise who are relatively unskilled, who’ve been living and working in bad parts of town where better jobs aren’t available, who now have no job at all and join the rest of the people in their neighborhood on the streets, unemployed, getting up to who knows what to survive.
Thank you Leftists. We can only imagine the increase in crime this will bring, and all the chaos and destruction that will come with that.
Help us fill in the blanks with this and get into the bigger picture of how Obamacare will detrimentally impact small businesses. We know the Senate didn’t read the bill, understand it, or contemplate its ramifications before it rammed the thing through to passage on Christmas Eve of last year. So, we’re really doing the job these fool Senators should have done last year.
Our gut instinct is that an unprecedented disaster is coming…and the fast food industry is going to be one of the things most immediately effected by the Obamacare fees. We need help understanding exactly how franchisees will be impacted by Obamacare, and if our gut take on this is correct. Because, if we’re right about what’s going to happen, and places like McDonalds have to start closing because of the new taxes and penalties Democrats have conjured…we are all in for a world of hurt unlike anything this country has ever seen before.
The craziest and most wonderful thing we have read in a while: Dan Gilbert's Open Letter to Cleveland
Open Letter to Fans from Cavaliers Majority Owner Dan Gilbert
We have absolutely no opinion on Lebron James, as a person, a basketball player, or as a Clevelander.
However, we do have an opinion on all of the hero-worship lavished upon James and those who put him up on a pedestal for want of anything better to do with their lives. We left Cleveland just as this “King James” worship was beginning, and we’re thrilled we didn’t move to Chicago until this town’s own sick obsession with Michael Jordan had abated. James, Jordan, Tiger Woods, and other athletes should not be put on pedestals and deified. Sports are not that important. If you are a grown-ass man, and you claim to be straight, you should not have posters of other men on your walls. After the age of 16, you should not have any posters, period. Grow up. And start admitting you’re gay if all you want to do is watch men you’ve never met and don’t know run back and forth across the floor for hours bouncing their balls. It’s not healthy, normal, or good for anyone.
As much as we love Cleveland, we’re not about to let Clevelanders play the martyr card today. That was appropriate when Art Model screwed the city over and stole the Browns away, transforming them into the Baltimore Ravens in the 90s. THAT was a horrible thing to happen to a city — DEVASTATING — and quite frankly Model really does deserve his place in Hell for that. The Browns, whether you loved them or wrote them off years ago, were a part of Cleveland’s SOUL the way the Bears and Cubs are here in Chicago. Taking the Browns away, and leaving Cleveland without a team for several years, was like bombing Wrigley Field to the ground or moving the Statue of Liberty to Ft. Lauderdale. It was a massive, psychological slap to a city that stole a landmark institution and caused Clevelanders immense emotional harm. Not being football fans (or even guys who are able to stand more than fifteen minutes of a game before falling asleep), even we were FURIOUS at Model for taking the Browns away from a city that didn’t just love that team — but needed it to exist. Cleveland was never the same after Model did that, and we hope the entire Model family for generations to come suffers from debilitating halitosis and uncontrollable flatulence as curse for what the Models did to Cleveland.
This whole Lebron James business is NOT in the same league as what the Models did to Cleveland.
James owes Cleveland nothing. The city birthed him. Cleveland lavished praise upon him and made him its “King”. If James is foolish enough to give up his “kingdom” for Miami, then let him go. It is truly his loss, because James had going for him in Cleveland the same city-wide worship that Michael Jordan enjoyed in Chicago back in his day. No amount of money can buy this sort of thing. He’ll continue to make millions in the NBA, and will have massive endorsement contracts, but that city-wide, phenomenon-grade idolization is nontransferable to Miami.
It’s a very stupid move on his part, long-term, because he was set for life in Cleveland.
After he’s finished playing basketball, Cleveland would have made him Mayor if he wanted it. Ohio would have made him Governor or Senator, easily. With that much love pumping out of Cleveland for him, he could have written his own ticket. If not politics, then he could have opened any sort of business he wanted in the Cleveland area and would have been able to do anything he pleased — all the while driving around town being told by thousands of people how wonderful he is. Like he was actual royalty. Clevelanders have very long memories and employ them against those they love and hate equally.
The Model family will be hated as long as there is a Cleveland. James could have been loved for just as long. It’s the nature of the city. As sick and twisted as that is, it’s true.
James might hate Cleveland and could be thrilled to finally cash out for a better climate and more cosmopolitan city. He certainly has every right as an American to go where he pleases and work where he chooses (even if “work” in his case is playing a children’s game for an obscene amount of money…to titillate and delight other grown men who pay money to watch him play). But, Great Merciful Zeus, was he ever stupid to leave a town that thought he was a living god.
Someone in the White House should be watching Cleveland’s reaction to James’ move very closely.
The Cult of Lebron James had a long run in Cleveland…and his cultists sang his praises loud and proud. Even louder than Obama’s cultists sang his back in 2008. What we are seeing in Cleveland right now is the end of the cult, and the morphing of the faithful, dedicated, committed cultists into an angry mob lashing out at their tarnished idol.
It’s not pretty. It’s going to get worse. It’s what always happens when insane people as a large group wake up one day and decide they’ve been duped and betrayed by the person or thing they pinned all of their hopes and dreams to.
Just read how INSANE the owner of the Cavaliers appears in the Open Letter he wrote to Cleveland…and know that Clevelanders at large are feeling the same way. Now, imagine how bad things will get for the current occupants of the White House when the Hope & Change thug cult Democrats have created collapses like the Cult of King James has in Cleveland:
Why we love Cleveland: it's charming even when it embarrasses itself, like with that "Please Stay Lebron" video
(Click here for video: the record company keeps yanking it for copyright infringement, but this one still works)
Sometimes, we forget how absurd Cleveland is…until it does something to remind us. And then we are forced to realize just how much of our humor and cultural DNA was shaped by Northeast Ohio. There must be something in the flaming, brown water of the Cuyahoga.
In May, local Cleveland “celebrities” got together to sing a parody of “We Are the World” called “Please Stay Lebron”. The production values were terrible. The lyrics are dreadful. No one bothered to think about copyrights on the original song, so every time the parody is posted on YouTube, it’s yanked, and the whole point of the endeavor’s defeated (the only version of the song that’s up with any reliability is a parody of it on funnyordie…but it’s mean-spirited and vulgar, which the song Cleveland put together is not). Cleveland’s the Charlie Brown of cities always running to kick the football, never thinking Lucy will snatch it away — again — for the millionth time.
But, what most of you out there DON’T seem to get about Cleveland is that the sweet absurdity of constantly running to kick that ball, without caring how ridiculous the city looks to others, is why we love the place so damn much.
There’s nothing else like this in the entire world, and we will forever be proud of being Clevelanders because this absurdity is in our DNA. Most of the city looks like a Scooby Doo ghost town, and hopes for a “comeback” and economic recovery forever hinge on some hair-brained scheme (The Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame! A new stadium! Another new stadium! Tearing up the streets with endless construction! A Medical Mart!). We’re truly stunned Cleveland has never decided to build a monorail. Now THAT would make everything better, we’re sure.
Probably our favorite thing about Cleveland is the concept of “local celebrity”, which is something that doesn’t exist in Chicago.
There are news anchors and reporters here in Chicago, and nationally famous people live here, but no one really cares about any of them. We see these people all the time out and about in the Loop, but Chicagoans don’t bother them. In Cleveland, if you are on a local TV or radio station, even just once in your life, you are a “local celebrity”. People will stop you on the street, invite you over for dinner, demand your autograph, and insist on staring at you to make sure you are real. Then, they will call everyone in their phone to tell them that they saw you, and remark how nice you are in person. It won’t stop there, either, because all the people that were called will call everyone they know to tell them that someone they know met you, and those people will call all of their friends to tell them that someone they know knows someone who met you. This could go on for days.
We forgot about all of this, until we watched the “Please Stay Lebron” video.
It’s chocked full of “local celebrities”.
There’s “Big Chuck”, who was 1/2 of the Big Chuck and Lil’ John comedy duo in Cleveland on the CBS affiliate station in the 70s and 80s. ”Lil’” is also a very Cleveland thing, like saying “lookit”. ”Lookit Lil’ John! Go see if it’s really him and I’ll get a picture of you two so we can show everyone”. All of us here say “lookit”, and we indeed use “lil’” when referring to anyone who is small in stature or a child, even when that child grows up and is no longer, technically, a child, since we first knew that person as a child he’ll always be “Lil’ Remy” or “Lil’ TJ” or whomever. If you are fat, and there’s someone else out there who has the same name as you, then you have to be “Big Debbie” or “Big Byron” or whatever. ”Big Chuck”, confusingly, isn’t “Big” because he’s fat or unusually tall, but just because he was partnered with Lil’ John and was only “Big” by comparison. There might have, at one time, been another “Chuck” working at the station who was younger than this Chuck…so that’s also how he could have become “Big”, because “Big” also means older in Cleveland.
"Big Chuck" Schdowski, local celebrity
The video also has Dick Goddard, Cleveland’s top weatherologist, who is also an expert on Wooly Bears — which are a kind of brown and orange mythical caterpillar people in Northeast Ohio are obsessed with (Central Ohio, too, because these are the caterpillars that Robby’s mother and her friends organize the annual Wooly Bear Festival in Mineral City for). A few years ago, the NBC affiliate in Cleveland ambushed Goddard at his house and embarrassed him, because his wife had been beating him. It was sweeps, and Goddard is a CBS affiliate personality, so the NBC station thought it would be ratings gold…but it just confirmed to everyone in Cleveland what asshats those clowns at WKYC are.
Dick Goddard, weatherologist
Governor Ted Strickland with Dick Goddard. Honor roll students are behind them.
The person who calls himself “Big Dawg” and wears an uncomfortable, unsettling rubber dog mask to Browns games is in the video. In Cleveland, doing this makes you a “local celebrity”. People who see you will shout, “Lookit! There’s Big Dawg! Go stand by him and I’ll take your picture!”.
The man who is in TV commercials really late at night selling used furniture is in the video, because he is a “local celebrity”.
Random black elected officials who few people can identify are sandwiched in, for diversity. They are all very nice, we’re sure, but there’s no excitement attached to any of them.
We really miss Stephanie Tubbs Jones, quite often in life, but at moments like these because she would have been front and center in this parody. We were all blessed to have known Tubbs Jones and to have seen her in action on more than one occasion…and she would have been the STAR of this “Please Stay Lebron” thing. Man alive, we miss that woman. R.I.P. Cleveland’s firecracker.
Governor Strickland makes an appearance, and no matter what stupid things he does as Governor we will always like the man for all the support he gave Hillary Clinton during her 2008 campaign. Either he or Evan Bayh would be Vice President today if she had been the Democrats’ nominee.
For some reason, Sherrod Brown couldn’t be at the taping of the video in person, so the jackass videotaped himself singing in what looks to be the bathroom of a bus station and sent that in to be edited into the rest of the footage. Classy.
Couldn't this jackass come back to Cleveland for a few hours and sing with everyone else?
There are, of course, dozens of random school children filling out the chorus. These are all “honor roll” students wearing Cleveland sports tee shirts. They appear in everything that’s made by anyone connected to local media or political figures, which is something that doesn’t really happen here in Chicago. Here, they’d hire real singers, or at least would get a school’s glee club or show choir. In Cleveland, they just call up random schools and ask principals for some “honor roll” students and no one especially thinks about whether or not these kids are sufficiently talented or photogenic enough to be singing on camera. Which is sweet, and absurd, and we love that.
Carl Monday is also in the video. He’s a local reporter who dresses up like a sleuth, in a trenchcoat and crime-busting mustache. People call him up, like he’s Batman, and ask him to solve local mysteries or to drive away the Gypsies that come to Cleveland in the summer and trick gullible Parma residents into paying up front to have their roofs re-shingled (where the Gypsies promise to come back on Tuesday to do the work, but never show up).
If you have a mystery in Cleveland, Carl Monday will try to solve it. In his trenchcoat. With his mustache.
We love the sweetness in the faces of the people in this video. Everyone’s just so happy to be in front of a camera, knowing they will be on TV. Even the people, like Monday and Goddard, who work in television and are on TV almost every day. They still think it’s just so cool to be on television. It never gets old.
We really miss Cleveland sometimes.
There are no jobs there. It’s an unfunny, sick joke the 2014 Gay Games are going to be held in Cleveland, because it was a nightmare growing up gay in Northeast Ohio and it is an absolute drag (and not in the fabulous way) being gay there as adults today, we imagine. The Democrats who control the state are corrupt, but in a softer, quainter, funnier way than they are here in Illinois. The Republicans are more bumbling and weirder-looking than the national average. Cleveland is rundown and falling apart at the seams…and there’s no realistic chance of it ever “bouncing back” to whatever it’s always trying to “bounce back” to.
But, we love the place.
Honestly, truly, endearingly.
Love it.
We don’t give a damn about Lebron James, or basketball itself, but we’re sad today that Clevelanders didn’t get what they wanted this time. In the past, stunts like this video have worked well for the city. That’s how Cleveland got the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame, with the entire city banding together to send nonstop postcards to the deciding committee in New York City when the Hall was being planned and a location was being chosen. TV and radio personalities joined with local politicians to urge every Clevelander to harass that committee with pleas on Cleveland’s behalf until they buckled and gave us the Rock Hall. We were amongst the honor roll school kids writing twenty postcards a day in Catholic school under the direction of nuns complying with the civic directive to Save Our City back then.
It’s weird seeing echoes of all this in just about everything we do today. Even though we’re so far from Cleveland, geographically. But, in a weird, maudlin way, Cleveland’s never that far from us at all…since we’re tearing up a little watching all the “local celebrities” in this video, and feeling a little guilty that we haven’t done more for our hometown in a while.
Because it's considered RAACIST to use Chief Wahoo as the Indians' mascot, they instead use this purple monster-thing.
Is that what it says on his business cards?
Lookit how happy everyone is to be on the TV.
Seriously. Lookit. How happy everyone is. People are like this EVERY DAY in Cleveland. If you have never been there, you need to go. Hotel rooms and food are cheap. There's a handful of things to do. You will more likely than not bump into local celebrities and/or people who know us. GO TO CLEVELAND AND YOU MIGHT BE ON TV TOO!
There was a time when we would have thought this man was crazy…but now we agree with every damn word
Wow.
Scary stuff.
He’s right: you have to wake up and decide what’s really important for you and your families. You need to take a look in the mirror and start figuring out how you can wake up your friends and neighbors and energize them to take back this country from the socialists.
QUESTION: How do we activate regular, non-political Americans and rev them up to decimate Democrats in the fall?
Today, another article appeared in the Wall Street Journal talking about Democrats’ Doomsday plans to ram through all manner of economy-killing legislation in a lame duck session of Congress after the November elections, but before the next Congress (which will be Republican-controlled) takes office in January.
Regular Americans, the sort who do not read political sites and who are not aware of what Democrats are planning, need to be activated and mobilized to stop this. But, how do we do that?
It’s something Republicans have never managed to do — but we think it’s something that can be done. Anyone out there who believes Republicans will wake up today, tomorrow, or sometime next week and start taking full advantage of situations and expertly manipulating public opinion has to realize The Party of Stupid is pretty much stuck that way.
It’s a realization that offers zero comfort, because it means we’re truly on our own. That’s the root of the Tea Party phenomenon, really — this realization that the GOP is not going to save the country, because it’s as inept as the Democrat party is corrupt. As much as we like him on a personal level and think he is a nice man, we have no faith in Michael Steele or anyone else in GOP leadership. For America to be saved, Americans need to go rogue and find a way to convince millions of others out there who’ve never considered themselves political to come along for the ride…and make some noise of their own.
Between now and November, a few things really need to happen…but we don’t know how to get there, yet.
(1) Life needs to be made an absolute living Hell for every Democrat in office, with emphasis put on what will happen to these people once they leave office if they decide to use that lame duck session to ram through economy-killing legislation. If you read the Wall Street Journal piece above, the gist of it is that Democrats who are going to lose their seats will have nothing to lose, in their minds, once defeated and will go along with whatever the White House and Nancy Pelosi plan to do in her last days as Speaker. Many of these crooks are looking forward to big jobs as lobbyists, union executives, or Democrat consultants after they’re booted from Congress. How can the American public throw a wrench in their retirement plans — how can Americans change the dynamic here, and bedevil these people to the point where they will be too terrified of the general public to dare pull any lame duck shenanigans?
(2) Pursuant to the above, SOMETHING needs to emerge on the American political scene to break the hold Nancy Pelosi and the White House maintains on these legislators — people who vote against the best interests of their constituents because they are promised rich prizes for doing so in their lives post-Congress. Senator Ben Nelson is actually a marvelous example of someone who has received a small taste of what he deserves in this regard. He voted for Obamacare when he knew his constituents did not want him to, because he was bribed by Harry Reid and Congressional Democrats. Since that corrupt bargain, wherever he goes in Nebraska regular Americans holler at him, call him a “slut”, spit at him, and generally make his life very unpleasant. There’s the remarkable night he went out for pizza with his family and the public harassed and hounded him the entire time, the way people used to shout “murderer!” at OJ Simpson whenever he tried to go to dinner, see a movie, or shop for groceries. Simpson got away with killing his wife and her friend, and was acquitted by a jury of fools in Los Angeles in a case presided over by a clown, but the public didn’t let Simpson get away with it…and he will always be a cautionary tale for those who think they can get away with murder. Ben Nelson is already such a cautionary tale for Senators who think they can pork it up and accept bribes without the public noticing. Nelson’s political career is over and his reputation is ruined. That needs to happen to every Democrat who voted for Obamacare, quite frankly. Everyone in Congress needs to be terrified of this happening to him or her should they follow through with Democrat threats to use the lame duck session to nuke the country with radical legislation. These people need to fear the public so much that no matter what Pelosi and the White House promise them after they leave Congress they will not want to become an OJ Simpson or Ben Nelson for the rest of their lives, with random citizens coming up to them in restaurants shouting things and telling them how terrible they are.
(3) There has to be some way to get people in supermarkets, laundromats, on the buses and trains, and in waiting rooms talking about what Democrats are doing to the country and how Democrats’ agenda is tanking the economy. Everyone who is struggling financially right now needs to see that Democrats are responsible for the problems they are facing. Everyone without a job, or underemployed, needs to see that Obama’s assault on business and his zeal for new taxes is to blame for their situation. These are more likely than not people who have been blind-voting Democrat their entire lives because that’s how their parents voted, and that’s how they were taught to vote in public school. These are people who do not read political sites, do not pay much attention to the news, and don’t think about what it really means to be a Democrat today. If we can get them to question how they vote, and really think about what’s best for themselves this time around, there’s a once-in-a-generation chance to break the ties binding millions of voters to the Democrat party.
We’re already there.
The Democrat Party lost us permanently on Christmas Eve of last year when it rammed through Obamacare in the dead of night, through secret sessions, without any of the Senators voting for it actually reading the bill. We just can’t support a party that behaves that recklessly. That was a permanent, psychic break in party identity that pushed us to political independence.
We’ll never be Republicans, because, frankly, we think the Republican Party is too wimpy and lets Democrats get away with so much because Republicans in office don’t want to see all of their perks and pork-gravy trains ended either. Republicans, by and large, are too comfortable being the Washington Generals — they see themselves as the lovable losers who get to go to cocktail parties and wear Brooks Brothers and never break a sweat or put up much of a fight. As long as they have leather chairs and fancy offices and can mumble about this or that on TV, they’re happy. Eric Cantor, Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, and Michael Steele are great examples of this. They ostensibly oppose what Democrats are doing, but they don’t really stop them. They never mobilize Americans to stop them. They never tap into the theatricality and stagecraft readily available to pull the sort of stunts needed to get Americans riled up enough at Democrats to really shake the system and put an end to what’s happening.
Maybe these men truly don’t know how to do that…but we think it’s more like the Washington Generals knowing they have a pretty good racket losing basketball games to the Globetrotters, so why start working harder and winning when the script their all following says they need to lose in the end (if they want to keep their cushy existence as the lovable losers).
The reason both Republicans and Democrats loathe the Tea Party groundswell is because this is part of a sea change that needs to happen in this country.
Millions of Americans have been waiting for the Republican Party to summon them into action to shout Democrats down, but the Republicans never issued that call, so people got tired of waiting and answered THEIR OWN call. Add to the mix people like us, former Democrats, who are so disgusted by the corruption and socialist agenda of our former party that we can’t sit quietly and allow these lunatics to destroy the country without a fight. There are millions more out there who are sick to their stomachs at the thought of Democrats using a lame duck session to ram Cap & Tax and Card Check through Congress…but they feel helpless and don’t see a clear path to do anything to stop that.
Democrats have done their level best to keep these people from tapping into the Tea Party groundswell by labeling the Tea Party RAAACIST, denigrating it, belittling it, and villifying it. Democrats are terrified — TERRIFIED — of the American people coming together like this. Republicans, to be honest, are terrified as well. For too long the Republican Party has just been “Democrat-Lite”, and has operated under the assumption that anyone not a Democrat must default over to being a Republican. People are easier to manage and control if they think this way…and the Republican Party doesn’t have to work as hard, because it assumes whenever Americans are mad at Democrats, then Republicans win, and then they can have cocktail parties.
Neither party wants the American public to wake up and take a long, hard look at how government operates and how it really affects all of our lives.
But, this needs to happen.
We don’t know how to make it happen.
But, we need to try.
Friday Open Thread: July 9th, 2010
What’s on your minds this Friday?
What are people talking about in your part of the country?
