I had planned to write another installment in my series examining political polarization in this country. Specifically how liberals do and say things that alienate them and their message from the right and center of America. Then I saw this video:
That’s former UN Ambassador John Bolton joking about the city of Chicago being destroyed by a nuclear device. His implication that such a thing would make the Obama administration take national security more seriously is the absolute lowest thing that I have heard a politician in any party say. Ever. Bolton is actually making light of terrorism and implies that losing the lives of millions of innocent Americans would be a good thing.
So that shot my whole plan to write that we need to rise above our bitter political climate for the greater good.
To John Bolton and the CPAC crowd who cheered him on, allow me to deliver a message on behalf of Chicago and all of its citizens, and you’ll have to excuse me if I’m not very eloquent.
There hasn’t been much of a political consensus in this country since the Great Society legislation in the 60’s.
Still the same country
Since I’m thinking about writing a book on political polarization, especially pertaining to the blogosphere, I’m going to take a deeper look at the forces behind our deeply divided political culture. The goal in this series of posts will be to examine the rifts within both the conservative and liberal movements, the shortcomings and strengths of both sides, examine my own roll in the polarization of web-based politics, and to search for constructive common ground.
It’s not hard to find evidence of this rift: a news search quickly returns a couple of dozen results filled with stories and statements that are extremely partisan. Here’s one that I found today from House minority speaker, John Boehner:
“From everything I’ve seen, it looks like the era of big government spending is back… My question to my Democratic friends is how are you going to pay for it?”
The question is rhetorical. Boehner isn’t concerned with exactly how the Democrats in Congress and the White House intend to pay for their spending and stimulus projects: he’s only interested in making cheap political points with his base, who oppose all government spending, no matter what it’s for (save the military) or how it is financed.
John Boehner went on to criticize the President’s address to Congress on Tuesday night as being conservative in tone only, because according to Boehner, by definition any spending is anathema to conservatism.
I don’t know if there is a solution to the political polarization in this country, but I do know if it’s going to happen, linguistics will play a big part.
If I were to pick a single word to describe my political ideology, it would most likely be “conservative.” What I mean by that is that I’m interested in conserving human rights, natural resources, and our nation’s economic and political health.
However, in today’s political climate, what conservative has come to mean is an amalgam of social and economic ideas that have no real clear unifying, logical foundation.
Conservatives are opposed to big government spending, but are the most enthusiastic supporters of the military industrial complex. They whine about pork barrel spending projects like a 20 million dollar highway construction deal, but in the same breath call a 67 billion dollar contract for Lockheed Martin to build a new fleet of F-22s an act of unqestionable patriotism.
As they are defined today, Conservatives are loathe to accept any government intervention in private lives. Yet at the same time they oppose drug legalization and don’t see a problem when the executive branch spies on the American people without a warrant.
The Republican Party is primarily to blame for this confusion. Abraham Lincoln envisioned his party to be the supporter of rugged individualism, but today’s GOP would have been more likely to support the South on a basis of property and states rights. Ever since the Republican party went into bed with the interests of big business, their conservative agenda has been fundamentally compromised. Therefore today, even the party leaders such as Republican governors may refuse stimulus money that their states desperately need in the name of sticking to small government, free market principles.
Until conservatives and Republicans start putting the needs of their constituents ahead of their rigid ideologies, they’re going to find themselves lagging in the polls and losing elections for a long time to come.
If I were a member of the Democratic National Committee, I would be wetting myself with glee at this development.
Personally I believe in conserving many things in American culture, among them a right to own handguns, the right to own property, and to worship freely without the government redefining religious institutions, such as marriage. But what’s even more important to me are conserving things like the right of American workers to form a union, the right to reform our laws when they become unjust, and the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, all of which are intrinsically linked to affordable health care.
The only people who seem to be trying to protect and conserve these things today are liberals, and that’s what makes me one of them.
In the next chapter, I will take a look at the hypocrisy and pitfalls of modern liberalism and offer solutions for how today’s progressives can advance their agenda without alienating centrists and conservatives. Matt Miller of the Wall Street Journal offers a very interesting look at President Obama’s attempts to do just that.
In order to discourage similar crimes from taking place in the future, I recommend that we change the laws and penalties regarding ponzi schemes and white collar crime.
Example: if a man decides to bilk hundreds of thousands of investors out of their hard-earned money, he needs to be made to feel the agony of having your life ruined. Instead of sending these individuals to posh white collar prisons for a decade, we should seize all of their funds and then castrate them in a public ceremony.
Let’s start with Bernie Madoff.
The most recent New York magazine depicts Madoff as the Joker: a maniacal criminal mastermind who ruined the lives of hundreds of people. That’s what Bernie Madoff is. The only reason why Madoff is treated differently than the Joker by our legal system is that he is obscenely wealthy, but that doesn’t make him any less of a monster.
If we’re going to seriously deter massive corporate fraud, we need to make more severe and creative punishments, because clearly our current remedies for preventing such practices are incapable of adequately scaring the shit out of would be Ken Lays and Bernie Madoffs.
No prison time.
Larceny this grand deserves a special kind of humiliating and painful punishment.
So the next time that a greedy executive feels tempted to squander the life savings of his employees or the people who have entrusted their money to him, he will think twice when he realizes that his genitals will be forcefully removed by the bluntest metallic instrument available on national television during prime time.
Unfortunately some of these so called “people” actually prefer things like ponzi schemes and playing golf to making love, so they might actually still enjoy themselves so long as they get to keep the money.
That’s why we take every single dime that they and their family own, whether it was ill-gotten or not, and redistribute it evenly among the people who suffered because of their greed.
Want to see an end to these schemes? It’s simple. Change the law so that Bernie Madoff and others like him will face the prospect of one day having to walk onto a public golf course and endure awkward greetings from the peasant class, like: “Hey! I’m Bob. Aren’t you the guy that got your nuts cut off on CNN last year?”
For people who are unfamiliar with taxes and spending and want to learn more about how it all works without getting a Phd in economics or government accounting, I recommend Sim City.
Sim City is an old video game that lives up to its simple title: it allows you to simulate running a city as a mayor and developer. There are a dozen incarnations of the game, and its popularity led to the Sims, Sim Zoo, Sim Amusement Park, and a dozen other games you’ve problably heard of at some point.
I have a special bias for Sim City 2000, but since it’s difficult to come by these days without shady downloads, I recommend trying out the classic version, for free.
The game operates on a simple premise: you want to build up your town and keep your Sim citizens happy. Building residential zones draws more Sims to live in your town, commercial draws business, and industrial draws factories and warehouses. A supply and demand bar graph lets you know which zones to build and which ones you have too many of. If that sounds too easy to be true, it’s because it is.
Life in Sim City is similar to the real thing: your population needs things, and if you don’t provide them, they’ll move somewhere else.
1. Police stations and fire departments are essential. If you don’t have enough of them, the Sims don’t feel safe, and they pack their bags.
2. Railroads and streets- nobody wants to live in an enormous perpetual traffic jam, so you need to give everyone access to these.
3. Power plants for energy (sorry, liberal sissies, only Coal and Nuclear are available in the year 1900,) and power lines to connect them to your people.
Building all of these things for your city costs money. The way that you get money to build these essentials for modern living is through tax revenues.
The tax/spending system in Sim City is very simple. There are no seperate sales taxes, income taxes, or property taxes to worry about: the tax rate is set through one lone percentage. The default is 7 percent. Instead of a hundred different spending projects to worry about, as Sim Mayor you only need to deal with 3: Police funding, Fire funding, and Transportation.
If you are running short on funds, you can lower the funding levels for these things, but there’s a drawback. Lowering transportation funds leads to gigantic potholes and rubble showing up on your railroad tracks and in your streets, making transportation impossible for many Sim citizens. The cost of repairing these damages usually comes out to much more than the original cost of funding the transportation department.
Should a fire or an earthquake or hurricane strike your city while you’re only giving the fire department 50 percent of its funds, then the Sims will be ravaged and angry. Those that survive will leave town and take their tax revenues with them.
If you happen to be a jittery mayor and want a police station on every corner, it’s going to cost you, and you’ll have to seriously raise taxes. That drives away business, industry, and Sims alike.
The admittedly long-winded point that I’m trying to make is that in order to build a functioning society, you need to keep a healthy balance between taxes and spending. The same goes for our real world society.
Mayor George W. Bush decided that we were spending too much money on police, fire, and transportation services, so he cut their funding. At the same time, he cut taxes in order to draw more people to his town.
The plan backfired. Now his Sim nation budget is deep in the red and can’t provide basic services, so the Sims got very upset and they voted his party out of office.
Mayor Obama has decided that we do need police departments, firefighters, and public transportation funding after all. But since his predecessor squandered the surplus leftover from Mayor Clinton’s time in office, the only way he can do it is by raising taxes.
By raising capital gains and estate taxes our Sim society can get out of the red and start providing health care, infrastructure improvements, and energy services that we all desperately need.
The rich Sim citizens will screech and kick and bite and scratch and claw against it, and have their Sim media outlets call the whole thing a Sim socialist conspiracy. But the simple fact is that without raising the taxes on this income that the extraordinarily wealthy enjoy, our beloved Sim nation will go bankrupt.
The richest Sim citizens should be intelligent enough, despite all that inbreeding to understand that society costs money, and since they can afford it, they should help contribute their fair share and then some.
When I heard that President Obama is planning to cut our national debt in half by the end of his first term, at first I was skeptical, then I was afraid.
I’m going to be completely honest and not facetious at all with you. I love the deficit. I think it’s a great thing. I think that 10.5 Trillion dollars in debt is an awesome place to start, but we can do so much better!
See, the reason I and a few others like the deficit so much is because of our affinity for Chinese culture. Only by adding trillions more to our debt can we guarantee that one day we can be absorbed by the People’s Republic in a liquidation sale that will benefit all parties involved.
Did you know that the Chinese love basketball? So do I!
Have you ever had crab rangoon? Delicious!
I just don’t understand why Barack Obama would want to undo all the good work that President Bush has done. Through his strict adherence to conservative principles, our former President was able to push our national debt to new heights and at the same time liberate the Iraqi people! Bush followed in the footsteps of his father, George H. by aiding the Chinese transition through massive military spending projects. Unfortunately all that good work was largely undone by President Clinton’s budget balancing magic act in the 90’s.
Now I fear that President Obama is going to go down that same failed path of deficit reduction.
Who will liberate the people of Iran?
How can we all speak Chinese one day if we stop pleading for them to buy up our debt?
I worry for our future.
Obama’s so-called “PLAN” for cutting the deficit involves bringing troops out of Iraq and raising taxes on the wealthy.
Even though it’s been proven time and again that tax cuts for the wealthy are the greatest engine of economic growth in the history of the universe! Look at how great things are now thanks to the Bush tax cuts! Reposession businesses and collection agencies are getting windfall profits and that’s good for everyone. It’s called trickle-down economics, and I love the taste of what the rich trickle down into our mouths. Is it urine? I don’t care! It’s delicious!
As far as getting out of Iraq, what is he thinking? Doesn’t Obama know that if the United States were to leave Iraq that the middle east could potentially become an unstable place? The world cannot afford for the middle east to become violent or a hotbet for Islamic extremism. We can never allow that to happen.
I don’t know what President Obama is thinking. But I sincerely urge you to do everything we can to stop this deficit reduction plan and vote against him in 2012 so that we can all reap the rewards of becoming a Chinese colony. Just like Africa.
The New York Post has never been a beacon of progress or responsible journalism, but this week it sunk to new lows and got into very hot water over a racist cartoon.
To be completely fair, I frequently compared our last President to primates, but I don’t think this is the same ballgame. The New York Post is well aware of the racial undertones in the cartoon and the history of the insult, so to claim that they had no such intention, as they did even in their apology, is a bold-faced, underlined and italicized lie.
Supposedly the cartoon is a joke about a rabid chimpanzee attack and not about President Obama’s race.
Strange, because as far as I remember the rabid chimpanzee had no part in drafting the stimulus bill. I could be wrong though. I don’t have many inside sources for digging up stories, like say, the New York Post does. So unless the rabid chimp was secretly an adviser for the Republican members of the House of Representatives, I find it hard to believe that the depicted dead monkey is not supposed to represent President Obama.
Ladies and gentlemen, I submit to you that this is not just a single, unfortunate isolated incident. This is not just a thoughtless, calloused move by a fringe media outlet. This cartoon represents the worst parts of the conservative movement and a very accurate portrayal of the way many of its proponents think.
Boys and girls, this is your Republican party.
To villify a controversial piece of legislation is not enough: the far right wing is not satisfied until it slanders the character of the people who drafted the legislation. Whether that means calling the Speaker of the House a Communist, or the President of the United States a racial epiteth, it doesn’t matter.
This is what the right wing is really all about.
Conservatives in today’s political climate are not looking to conserve anything, they only seek to destroy the social progress that we have made over the last 80 odd years.
What they’re trying to protect is not family values, patriotism, or the American dream. What today’s conservatives are trying to protect is a more innocent time when boys and girls did not park in cars past 10 PM together, everybody lived in a 2 story home with white pickett fences, the negroes stayed on their side of town where they belonged, and the milkman delivered his wares on time every single day without exception.
This time and place never actually existed in any real sense, except in the fanciful imagination of narrow-minded, prudish, ass-backward, racist conservatives who were more terrified of change than of the atom bomb.
This stimulus bill represents change, albeit flawed change. But the mindset that got us into this financial crisis has to be reversed, and because that mindset is something they’ve come to know and to love, the conservatives are fighting for it tooth and nail.
Now that their fantasy world has come crashing down all around them, they are getting defensive. As it turns out, the market may not protect us from all evils, their teenaged daughters might know what oral sex is, and at least one black man is capable of becoming the most powerful person in the entire world.
It’s time that somebody sent the memo to the Republican party, the New York Post, and the ranks of racists who swell their readership.
Nobody likes paying taxes, but they are necessary if you want to live outside of the jungle.
But Republican legislators seem to be in a big hurry to don their jaguar-skin speedos and go for an extended vacation to some exotic place that has no indoor plumbing, let alone a functioning society, and we’ll all soon be joining them thanks to their market ideologue idiocy.
Case in point: the 787 billion dollar stimulus plan signed by Obama yesterday contains several tax cuts that the GOP insisted on being included in the bill:
1. The Making Work Pay Tax Credit will cut income taxes for everybody earning less than 95,000 dollars per year. Now before I continue, I would like to take this opportunity to have a moment of silence to observe the fact that nobody making 6 figures a year or more will be getting any tax cuts. You can weep, if you should choose. Are you weeping? I know I am.
Anyway, the MWPTC essentially gives back American workers $400. Now, I’m no economist, but I find it hard to believe that an extra $400 is going to help stimulate the economy when most of us are in debt to our eyeballs.
2. A homebuyer tax credit worth up to $8,000
This is just the most absolutely brilliant tax credit ever invented. What better way to solve the housing and credit crises by giving more money for people to buy homes they can’t afford?
3. Deducted taxes on buying new cars
Even better! Let’s take out the sales tax so that it’s easier for Americans to buy inefficient cars that place our testicles firmly in the pocket of the Saudis and the Russians.
Moral hazard is usually defined as the government subsidizing stupidity. If that’s the case, then these tax cuts fit the bill.
Until we really begin to see the causes of our dire financial situation, no amount of public spending or tax cuts can fix the problem. Rather than making sound, long-term decisions, we continue to pump money into industries that have no interest other than their own bottom lines.
The ethically challenged real estate and mortgage moguls who got us into this shitstorm shouldn’t have their industries being supported by our legislators. Somebody needs to tell these people that the housing bubble has already popped: wasting tax cuts to encourage home-buying will at best only re-inflate it.
The demented reptiles in the oil industry don’t need more incentives for people to buy cars that guzzle their liquid destruction.
I guarantee if we took every single dollar of this stimulus plan and put it towards alternative energy resources, we would be much, much better off in more ways than I can even calculate. Here’s a few to start.
What an idea!
1. By eliminating foreign oil imports, we take our balls out of OPEC’s pockets and give them a swift kick in theirs that will permanently dissolve their power.
2. New technologies related to green energy will create jobs and encourage foreign investment in our nation once again, rather than pleading for China to buy up our debt.
3. We can stop wasting hundreds of billions of dollars every year by having our armed forces protect oil fields in the name of “national security.”
Our financial crisis has many roots and causes, but the simplest way out of it just happens to be the most humanitarian and environmentally friendly solution as well: let’s go green and never look back.
I spend a fair amount of time berating Wall Street executives, Republicans, neocons, free market dogmatics, and campaign finance laws, and rightfully so.
But then on the other hand, every once in a while, there comes along a special person who seeks to fulfill every single negative stereotype of the welfare state and discredits liberalism to the core.
Thanks a lot, hun.
So, on behalf of every progressive-minded person in the country, I’d like to thank Nadya Suleman for making us all look like gigantic ass-clowns.
This woman just gave birth to octuplets, which brings her grand total of children to raise to 14. Three of which are on disability. All of whom are subsidized by California and federal taxpayers. Now it would be one thing if this woman by some miracle of nature gave birth to this many children, but she actively sought vitro fertilization in each case.
Nadya asks for understanding while she prepares to go back to grad school, and says that the children won’t need tax relief for long. She will rely on day care and volunteers to care for the kids.
Right. That will work out splendidly.
Thank you, Nadya for providing the conservative machine with enough intellectual ammunition to last for the next decade as we debate the merits of social progams in a time of increasing financial difficulty. For every dollar you get for your children, 3 more will be lost for more deserving parents because of the example that you are setting and the outrage that you will cause.
But Nadya is not alone. She is one of many Americans who exploit our taxdollars for their own selfish purposes. Sulemanism is a disease. I’ve seen it manifest in many forms:
In Illinois, while working as a cashier I’ve seen people use their Link cards (food stamps) to buy Reeses Pieces, Snickers, and Doritos. Their kids are happy to get the treat, of course because they don’t know any better.
If we are going to become a really responsible, democratic, socially concerned society, then we need to set limits. Children are a joy, but if you’re completely incapable of caring for them on your own, then perhaps there should be a state-sponsored limit. Let’s say, eleven? If you enjoy high fructose corn syrup and hydrogenated vegetable oil, then you should pay for it on your own dime. Don’t ask the people of the United States to pay for your kids to become obese.
Sulemanism is a danger not only to our national debt, it is a danger to the very principles of a socially responsible nation. Government intervention and all welfare programs will go the way of the dodo bird if the Republicans have their way.
Sulemanism threatens to hand our country right back to the greedy, sociopathic “compassionate conservatives” who got us into the mess in the first place.
So, for the sake of all of us, Ms. Suleman, look into adoption before you make us all wish we had voted for Bob Barr.
I live on planet Earth. I used to think that our Congressmen reside here and that our major media publications are printed here. But this week, I’m starting to really wonder.
Example number 1:
Congressman Pete Sessions of Texas said recently that the Taliban is a good model for insurgency that the Republican party should follow during Democratic control.
Sessions' next election slogan: Allahu Akbar!
I repeat. A Republican congressman said that the Taliban is a good model for the party to follow.
I’m not even going to comment on that comment, because to due so would be to somehow legitimize it. If you can read, which if you’re reading this, I assume you can, then you obviously see the inherent hilarious stupidity in Rep. Session’s quote.
Example number 2:
This article in the New York Times that complains about executive pay being limited to 500,000 dollars a year under President Obama’s stimulus plan.
The author, Allen Salkin writes a laundry list of typical New York City wall street executive yearly expenses:
- $32,000 per private tuition
- $96,000 for mortgage payments
- $45,000 to pay a nanny’s salary
I’m going to put forth the radical notion that if a person can’t live on 500,000 dollars a year, then they need to drastically change their behavior. I have a few helpful suggestions that these Wall Street executives might find useful in cost cutting.
1. Fire the nanny, and learn to do your own fucking dishes and laundry.
2. Send your kid to a slightly less expensive school so that they can meet people who may actually have to struggle and work at some point in their lives. They will be richer for the experience. But don’t worry. Their trust fund will still be intact, so they’ll get just enough plight for the poor and middle class to learn how to market to them, but not so much that they’d actually try to do anything about it during their adult lives.
3. Move out of the upper-east side and into a reasonable apartment like the rest of us peasant scum.
The author quotes a Manhattan writer who sympathizes with these poor CEOs who will have to make lifestyle changes:
“Five hundred thousand dollars means taking their kids out of private school and selling their home in a fire sale.”
OMFG!!! You mean they will actually know what the rest of the country is going through due to their running the economy into the ground with piss-poor corporate leadership and risky investments? Say it ain’t so!
Example number 3:
The new cover of Newsweek shows two hands shaking with the title “We are All Socialists Now.”
Inside the magazine once again asserts that we are a center-right nation, but that somehow the developments over the last several months are proof that we are heading towards becoming a European-style socialist state. Meachem also throws in a couple of flatliner jokes about the French, which went out of style with Freedom Fries a few years ago.
Newsflash, America: this is NOT socialism. This is corporate welfare and we should all, conservative and liberal alike be disgusted with it. The bailout is necessary, but its execution has been extremely flawed.
In a truly socialist system, we would not only bail out theses banks, but actually nationalize them so that the taxpayers would get their investment back when they become profitable again.
In a truly libertarian system, these companies wouldn’t get a dime of taxpayer money because they deserved to fail.
Both of these options have painful repercussions and flaws, but they both make a hell of a lot more sense than our current mixed economy that the establishment apologists have the gall to label socialism. Privatizing profits and socializing losses is called stealing from the American public, and any magazine or newspaper worth their printing paper should label it as such.
I hope that one day our elected officials and major print publications come back down to planet Earth. We’ll be waiting.
Have we learned nothing about the Republican party over the last 8 years? Better yet, have we learned nothing about conservative rule for the last 25?
Barack Obama and the Democrats are showing their spineless side once again in caving into the GOP’s demands on the stimulus bill, which will ultimately make it much less effective.
I understand that Obama wants us all to get along and sing happy sunshine songs under a velvet sky, but he’s missing a very key point. The Republicans cannot be trusted to do anything competently on behalf of the American people.
President Obama and President Clinton both inherited painful recessions and major deficits from their Republican predecessors which was a direct result of their stupidity.
Reagan and Bush greatly increased the size of government (very conservative) while cutting taxes, effectively making basic social services a luxury that could no longer be afforded and putting us on a path towards fiscal insolvency.
Clinton balanced the budget, albeit while destroying welfare.
Now Bush the 2nd has pushed Obama into an even deeper hole, and the fact is that the only way to reverse the damage that he’s done is to adopt extremely liberal economic and tax policies.
I’m not saying that we should become a socialist nation. Although it wouldn’t be a bad idea. I’m not saying that liberals are always right.
What I’m saying is that we need about 25 years of hardcore liberal partisanship just to bring us back to a sustainable center. The good news is that the President seems to finally be getting it:
“We are not going to get relief by turning back to the very same policies that, for the last eight years, doubled the national debt and threw our economy into a tailspin… the losing formula that says only tax cuts will work for every problem we face.”
Obama needs to stand up to these morons who have crippled America, and there’s no reason why he can’t with majorities in both houses of Congress and massive public support for his domestic agenda.
It’s time to stop playing nice. It’s time to stop appeasing the far right wing. It’s time to pay them back for their years of incompetent rule. The American people have spoken in 2006 and again in 2008 that we no longer have any interest in what they have to offer.
I know that liberals generally disdain direct conflict, but seriously. It’s time to tell them where to stick it.
The boomers had a popular phrase in the 60’s that went don’t trust anyone over 30.
I think it’s time for my Generation (Y) to come up with something similar.
The boomers felt threatened by a tone def establishment that made policies which directly endangered their lives: they grew up diving under their desks and closing their eyes during atom bomb drills. These drills were conducted because the boomers’ parents and their leaders had the brilliant idea to conduct a nuclear arms race.
Today the threat of nuclear war is no less real, but our generation is being threatened, assaulted even, by policies that will harm us for decades to come.
The TARP and stimulus packages run somewhere in the area of 1.5 Trillion dollars. Add interest to be paid and additional stimulus measures in the future and that number is probably going to balloon to at least 5 trillion, which will add still more digits to our ever-growing national debt.
These measures do need to be taken to prevent another Depression. But even if they do work, their effects will be felt for generations to come.
At some point in the future, some unfortunate son of a bitch who was ambitious enough to become President of the United States will have to deal with this debt. He will have to raise taxes and cut spending in major ways in order to prevent a national liquidation sale to China.
I have news for you, Generation Y: we will be the ones who foot the bill. We will suffer because the generations who came before us chose to elect selfish, short-sighted leaders who sank us into a gargantuan hole.
Reagan Revolutionaries, listen up. I hold you responsible for this mess. Moral Majority mothers of the world, heed this call: you have severely handicapped the lives of your children and your childrens’ children. Far right wing evangelicals, get out a pad of paper and a pencil: you have betrayed your faith and your country.
This economic fuckstorm is what happens when you vote for people who believe that the only government program that deserves any funding is the military.
This cataclysmic recession is what happens when you gut social security, medicare, and welfare in the name of balancing the budget, without ever considering closing our costly bases in Yemen.
This global financial meltdown is what happens when you allow your supposed religious principles like helping the poor to be subverted by your own vapid desire to consume cheap goods and services.
Nihilistic Gen Xers, Naive baby boomers, and every Joe Six Pack idiot in-between, I hope you have enjoyed your prosperity. I hope your smug sense of self-reliant satisfaction was worth the knowledge that you have sentenced your grandchildren to poverty and destitution.
We will remember what 40 years of militaristic conservatism has done to this country. As you pass into retirement and senility, know that your legacy is finished. The right wing has failed. The Reagan foot soldiers are all dead and buried. The free market dogma has been proven to be a fraud.
History will judge you for your short-sightedness, and so will we.
Michael Phelps won 8 gold medals at the Olympic games in Beijing this last summer.
Now, thanks to this photo, he might have to give them up.
The image is a photo of Phelps smoking Marijuana from a bong.
According to the poll that I just saw on the local news, 81 percent of the people watching believe that Michael Phelps should be stripped of his gold medals because of this outrage.
This outrage. This travesty. This calamity. This moral depravity!
An olympic gold medalist smoking marijuana??? What will the children think?
BY GOD, won’t someone PLEASE think of the children?
…
Here’s the thing. Marijuana is a drug, just like tobacco, alcohol, Vicodin and Viagra. It should be legal because it is not nearly as dangerous as tobacco or alcohol.
Period.
Michael Phelps should not take this hypocrisy lying down. Understandably, he’s a bit nervous about his future and may regret taking a hit from that particular bong. But the idea that he should forfeit his hard-earned prizes because he took a substance that had absolutely no bearing on his winning those prizes is absurd.
Michael Phelps, this is your opportunity. It’s unlikely that you will ever top your performance in the 2008 games. 8 gold medals is an amazing accomplishment. If you don’t want it to be the peak of your life, you should dedicate yourself to worthy causes, like say, the legalization of marijuana.
There are many more worthy causes, certainly. Like say, eliminating the death penalthy, or working to eradicate HIV, or make health care free and available to everyone. But since you’ve drawn the unlucky card of this issue, I suggest you use it to make the world a better place.
How?
Tell the people about marijuana. Educate them. Tell them that an adult can smoke marijuana and still win 8 GOLD MEDALS. This will instantly take all the wind out of the argument that marijuana users cannot succeed. The fact is that there are millions of marijuana users out there who are perfectly functional, productive members of society and to stigmatize them and not alcoholism is just plain nuts.
Legalizing marijuana will not in itself make the world a better place. But indirectly, through the proper distribution of resources, it can help.
For every dollar we spend incarcerating a non-violent marijuana user, that’s one less dollar to go towards educating our children.
For every penny used to wage the endless, pointless war on drugs, that’s one less penny we can use to relinquish our dependence on fossil fuels.
The time has come for a paradigm shift. We will either choose to continue to waste obscene amounts of money fighting imaginary or exaggerated enemies like drugs and terrorism, or we will grow up and use those resources to solve the very real, and far more important problems that we face.
When Michael Phelps hit a bong, nobody and nothing was hurt except the lung cells inside of Michael Phelps’ body. To act as if the people who cheered him on during the 2008 Olympics have somehow been betrayed by this is to engage in the most sincere form of idiocy imaginable. A grown man put a substance into his body and nobody made him do it. End of story.
The outraged 81 percent will have you believe that Phelps did something wrong by taking a toke from that bong. But if he had instead gulped down 3 pints of Chivas Regal, they would have been perfectly ok with it.
That kind of mind-numbing hypocrisy is what we should really be worried about. Not olympic gold medalists getting high at a college party.
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Posted by Tim Weaver 
Posted by Tim Weaver 
Posted by Tim Weaver 
