Different Day, Same Shit.

So Benghazi is a thing again. If you're wondering why John Boehner and Co. are bothering with yet another attempt to mold that tragic series of events into an impeachable moment for the president, it may have a lot to do with events like these:

Just a few miles from his family home, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) felt the wrath of the tea party Saturday, when activists in his congressional district booed and heckled the second-most powerful House Republican.

They also elected one of their own to lead Virginia’s 7th Congressional District Republican Committee, turning their back on Cantor’s choice for a post viewed as crucial by both tea party and establishment wings in determining control of the fractured state GOP.

Cantor appeared with his family at the event, where Republicans had packed the house. He was there in part to address his own reelection prospects. He faces David Brat, a tea-party backed opponent, in a June 10 primary that will be open to all voters in the district.

Any sign that Cantor’s support has slipped among the region’s most active Republicans could spell a tougher challenge during next month’s election. And some of the crowd’s reaction Saturday when Cantor took a shot at Brat made clear that the Republican majority leader has not yet fully shored up support.

“When I sit here and I listen to Mr. Brat speak I hear the inaccuracies — my family’s here.” Cantor said. As he was interrupted by the raucous crowd, Cantor’s anger was evident: “That’s enough — we are a country of free speech, so decency’s also part of this.”

When you grab the tail of the tiger, you can expect to get mauled at some point. It's little wonder that the GOP's energies have gone into calming the tiger with a bucketful of red meat (with the red meat in this case being yet another investigation into Benghazi. You do what you gotta do to keep the Tea Party tiger from getting another go at your throat.

And he saith unto them, Whose is this image and superscription?

They say unto him, Caesar's. Then saith he unto them, Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's.

When they had heard these words, they marveled, and left him, and went their way.

The sage advice of Matthew 22:20-22 wasn't in the cards for Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy. The man whose actions nearly precipitated armed conflict between federal agents and a devoted group of self-styled militiamen laboring under misunderstood notions of sovereignty and rugged individualism had no interest in rendering unto Uncle Sam what was rightfully his, whether it was $1 million or so in unpaid grazing fees accrued since 1993 or the 58 head of cattle that were initially impounded as a long-coming result of his failure to pay said fees.

In spite of his professed love of country and willingness to express patriotism with profound ebullience, Bundy continues to operate under the belief that the things which are Uncle Sam's are actually his and his alone. It's the same modus operandi that many militia organizations and those within the sovereignty movement operate under: for whatever reason, the governing bodies of the United States are fraudulent and therefore, the militiamen/freemen are free to operate peacefully* outside of the bounds and without interference from the U.S. government, even as they live and work on U.S. soil. Which, by the way, isn't believed to belong to the U.S. but instead falls under the governing purview of the individual U.S. states, following the old conventions of the Articles of Confederation (and tossing the Supremacy Clause out the window as a result).

The militia/freeman movement and tea-party conservatism both feature a variety of overlaps on the Venn diagram of political ideology, so it was only a matter of time before Cliven Bundy became the darling of Fox News and a folk hero among conservatives longing to stick a Second Amendment thumb into the government's eye. You can't tell yours truly that the images of "ordinary Americans" demonstrating their right to bear arms against a government they could care less for (except when it works for them) didn't give other like-minded conservatives at home the warm and fuzzies.

It all could have went south. At least, if it wasn't for the Bureau of Land Management and other federal officials not wanting to replicate the worst missteps of Ruby Ridge and Waco and if it wasn't for the protesters displaying some rather desperate and craven tendencies just to get their point across. A full-fledged shootout between federal officials (framed for this purpose as "jack-booted thugs") and heavily-armed self-styled militiamen (framed as "real American patriots) not only would have made for great television ratings, but it also would have made for a powerful expression of martyrdom that resonated throughout the tea-party contingent and beyond. The consequences of that are best left uncalculated.

It's little wonder that the BLM decided it would be best to back off and not hand Bundy and Co. the opportunity to be remembered as martyrs for a flawed cause. Instead, the FBI's taking a more mundane interest into Bundy's supporters.

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Meanwhile, Cliven Bundy represents the picture-perfect embodiment of American welfare in one of its most idealistic forms. It was the massive expropriation of land from its former native owners and the introduction of homestead acts that opened the doors to settlement to the "right" sort of Americans that made it possible for Bundy to have his current livelihood**. And it's only through the generosity of the U.S. government that Bundy was and remains able to maintain his livelihood - otherwise he'd join the thousands of farmers who've lost their lands due to debt and foreclosure. There's no telling how many federal grants, subsidies and loans he's applied for so far to help bolster his ranching operations.

In return, Bundy lashes out with a generous helping of furious pseudo-patriotism, all the while using stereotypical views of black Americans and their supposed affinity towards government welfare as a foil for his own brand of "cowboy welfare":

Former conservative media darling Cliven Bundy ran into a tougher crowd on Thursday, when CNN anchor Bill Weir poked fun at both the disappearing act from his former media allies while also questioning Bundy’s claims that he should be able to graze his cattle for free on federal land.

“You are writing off a whole class of people, African-Americans as sort of dangerously dependent because they get government assistance,” Weir said, playing off of Bundy’s instantly infamous press conference earlier in the day. “At the same time, you’re grazing your cows on public land for free. So, how are you not sort of a welfare queen in a cowboy hat?”

“I might be a welfare queen,” Bundy shot back. “But I tell you something, I’m producing something for America and using a resource that nobody else can use, would use or could use and I’m putting red meat on your table. Maybe I’m not doing enough, but I’m trying.”

Bundy's own desultory views of the Negro as better off under chattel slavery serve as red meat for the legions of unreconstructed who hail Bundy as a "freedom fighter" of sorts against "government tyranny," especially now that the Oval Office is currently occupied (or "tainted" as some conservatives may say) by a "socialist Marxist Kenyan."

As with any major cause, there has to be a generous purse lurking in the shadows. In the case of Cliven Bundy, the purse strings belong to a few groups working on the behalf of billionaire industrialists David and Charles Koch:

Two affiliates of the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity are helping conservative media promote the cause of a Nevada rancher who has made violent threats against the federal government.

Americans for Prosperity (AFP), the conservative non-profit group, was founded by and has been largely funded by billionaires Charles and David Koch. The Center for Media and Democracy reported that in its previous incarnation as Citizens for a Sound Economy, AFP received $12 million of its $18 million in funding from the Koch Family Foundation.

During the 2012 election, AFP spent $122 million in an effort to defeat President Obama and Congressional Democrats. AFP has also sponsored and organized bus rallies and town hall meetings to promote conservative ideas, including deregulation, tax cuts, and opposition to health care reform.

AFP has been at the forefront of spending in the 2014 election, launching several ads attacking the Affordable Care Act which have come under fire for inaccuracy by independent fact checkers. As of March, AFP had aired a reported 17,000 television ads.

Two of its local affiliates, Americans for Prosperity Nevada and Americans for Prosperity Colorado, have become active boosters of Bundy's actions.

AFP Nevada's Facebook page posted a graphic attacking the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) for spending "one million dollars" to enforce the court order to round up Bundy's cattle on federal land. Another photo attacked the Bureau for creating a designated "First Amendment Area" for protesters to gather in near the property.

Still begs the question why the Kochs would be interested in supporting the likes of Bundy and Co.:

Matador Cattle Company operates three ranches: Beaverhead near Yellowstone National Park in Montana, Spring Creek in the scenic Flint Hills of Kansas, and the historic Matador Ranch in Texas.

Acquired between 1941 and 1952 by Fred C. Koch, the ranches total about 460,000 acres under management, including about 235,000 deeded acres. They wean about 9,500 calves annually and support more than 12,000 head of cattle.

In this light, Bundy's defiance over paying his grazing fees takes on a whole different perspective. If the likes of Bundy had the power to run roughshod over the BLM, then it becomes much easier for a heavyweight like Koch Industries to steamroll the agency into accepting concessions allowing the conglomerate to access acre upon acre of formerly protected land for its various resource extraction operations.

The Kochs know what's up. As long as they can advance Bundy's interests in maintaining his livestock and livelihood with little repercussions, their own interests also take a few steps forward. If it doesn't work out, it's back to the drawing board for another plan and avenue of attack. Like any good robber baron, the Kochs are always on the lookout for any opportunity for land and profit, even if it means hitching a rough and wild ride with a welfare cowboy.

* Or so they say.
** Despite claims of his family as the area's first pioneers, official records show that the Bundys were relative newcomers to the Bunkerville area. The range where Bundy makes his living was purchased in 1948.

Yesterday's government shutdown is the end result of what happens when one group of politicians play a game of chicken with a telephone pole. Things tend to get messy real quick and in this case, the engine of government was the first to go.

In the vigorous pursuit to defund what very well could be the stepping stones towards universal healthcare in the U.S., 30 caucus members representing the GOP's "tea party" faction in the House saw fit to double down on the rhetoric and attempt to push through a measure to delay and otherwise attempt to strangle the Affordable Care Act in its crib - something that the Senate predictably rejected.

Which brings us to where we are today, with national parks closed, most veterans services shut down and hundreds of thousands of government workers either furloughed or working without pay as essential employees. The Tea Party contingent are doing a remarkable job of showing the people that government does not work...by making sure it doesn't work.

At this point, you have to feel for House Speaker John Boehner. If he tells the Teabaggers to go forth and engage in a vigorous round of auto-fornication by passing a "clean" continuing resolution, he risks the likelihood of losing the remaining shreds of his authority and his seat to a more Teabagger-friendly Republican, most likely wannabe House Speaker and current Tea Party ringleader Ted Cruz. After all, he's demonstrated time and again that he's the one calling the shots.

If he decides to play to the baser instincts of the Teabaggers and maintain the congressional stalemate, the shutdown continues. Too bad neither the Senate nor the president has any intention of capitulating to GOP demands. That means piecemeal solutions like reopening parts of government here and there are out of the question. Either way it goes, the orange one comes out looking like a complete chump.

An increasing number of moderate Republicans now fear having their legislative asses handed to them by a beyond-pissed electorate, which explains why folks like Michael Grimm and 11 other House Republicans have indicated their support for a "clean" CR - one that's stripped of the poison-pill provision that hamstrings ACA funding. The longer this goes on, the worse the pain gets for the GOP in general.

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Meanwhile, the American people have to put up with some of the inconveniences of a government gone fishing:

• All of America's national parks and monuments are now closed. So don't bother packing your bags for that trip to Yosemite National Park.
• Don't bother sending in your application for a small business loan or loan guarantee, either. The government's not taking those while the shutdown's in effect.
• If you're a veteran with questions about your benefits, good luck. No one's around to answer your questions.
• The National Institutes of Health is also shuttered for the duration of the shutdown, so no further research into life-threatening diseases will be conducted and ongoing clinical trials are closed to new patients.
• Government workers tasked with border patrol, food inspection and air traffic control will work through the shutdown sans pay. Hundreds of thousands of other non-essential govt. workers are now on furlough. Figuring out how to pay the house note is going to be a bitch, but at least they won't have to worry about their car notes.
• No more non-essential inspections of drinking water systems and chemical facilities by the EPA until further notice. 
• Some services for seniors and young children may run out of money in the event of an extended shutdown.
• Even the president isn't immune to the effects of the shutdown. Teabaggers are no doubt pleased that he has to cut his Asia "vacation" short to tend to matters closer to home.

But it's not the shutdown that should have people worried. The debt ceiling deadline is just 15 days away and unless there's a bump in the $17.5 trillion debt limit, the ramifications could very well kick the legs out of the country's current attempts at economic recovery. Without a debt ceiling increase, the U.S. government loses its ability to borrow and defaults on some of its debts, which could set off a chain of events that could eventually lead to sky-high interest rates, frozen credit and investors backing away from U.S. currency and assets as quickly as possible.

Having the government lurch from crisis to manufactured crisis is precisely what the GOP quack doctors prescribed in the first place. A close look at the "Williamsburg Accord" lays out the current stratagem to reorient the national budget towards the general direction of the Ryan Plan, by any means necessary:

In January, demoralized House Republicans retreated to Williamsburg, Virginia, to plot out their legislative strategy for President Obama’s second term. Conservatives were angry that their leaders had been unable to stop the expiration of the Bush tax cuts on high incomes, and sought assurances from their leaders that no further compromises would be forthcoming. The agreement that followed, which Republicans called “The Williamsburg Accord,” received obsessive coverage in the conservative media but scant attention in the mainstream press. (The phrase “Williamsburg Accord” has appeared once in the Washington Post and not at all in the New York Times.) But the decision House Republicans made in January has set the party on the course it has followed since.

If you want to grasp why Republicans are careening toward a potential federal government shutdown, and possibly toward provoking a sovereign debt crisis after that, you need to understand that this is the inevitable product of a conscious party strategy. Just as Republicans responded to their 2008 defeat by moving farther right, they responded to the 2012 defeat by moving right yet again. Since they had begun from a position of total opposition to the entire Obama agenda, the newer rightward lurch took the form of trying to wrest concessions from Obama by provoking a series of crises.

Heritage Action for America's Michael Needham drove home the push for a "balanced budget" through an open letter to conservative congressmen:

Dear Congressman,

In the coming months, you will face tremendous pressure to accept a deal to raise our nation’s debt ceiling. Conservatives around the country will insist the debt ceiling not be raised unless our nation gets on a path to a balanced budget within 10 years and stays balanced. This is not an arbitrary marker; rather, it is the marker laid out by the entire House Republican Conference in what has become known as the Williamsburg Accord.

Conservatives cannot enter into the debt ceiling debate without understanding the promise of the Williamsburg Accord.

On January 18, four current and former chairmen of the Republican Study Committee announced an agreement to re-sequence the 2013 fiscal fights. In exchange for holding the line on the sequester and producing a budget that balanced in ten years, conservatives agreed to postpone the debt ceiling debate for several months. In turn, the debate on the debt ceiling would revolve around enacting the policies that put the federal budget on the path to 10-year balance.

A few days later, Speaker Boehner declared, “It’s time for us to come to a plan that will in fact balance the budget over the next 10 years.” He said it was the GOP’s “commitment to the American people.”

As the proverbial ink dried on the Williamsburg Accord, the House Republican Conference marched in unison. Lawmakers focused on laying the groundwork to enact the policies necessary to achieve a 10-year balance, as scored by the Congressional Budget Office, and attach them to any future increases in the debt ceiling.

At the same time, the National Republican Congressional Committee quietly poll-tested the message in key districts. Balancing the budget was a winning political argument in swing districts. The NRCC poll found that 45 percent of Democrats, 61 percent of Independents and 76 percent of Republicans thought balancing the federal budget would “significantly increase economic growth and create millions of American jobs.”

Good policy is good politics, and we know from recent history a coherent, principled message on the debt ceiling can shift public opinion. Before landing on the Budget Control Act in August 2011, Republicans consistently said America had a spending problem and spending reductions must accompany any increase in the debt ceiling.

Not surprisingly, the accepted narrative of that showdown is wrong. Many forget Republicans were winning the generic congressional vote the entire month of July. President Obama’s disapproval rating stood at 52% by the end of August. In September, Mitt Romney was leading in head-to-head polling.

The path to balance is the path to victory.

Conservatives should not raise our nation’s statutory debt limit unless Congress passes and the President signs into law real reforms and immediate spending reductions that place America on a path to balance within 10 years without raising taxes and keeping the budget in balance.

Regardless of how many concessions the Democrats offer to conservatives, the GOP in its current state is bound to go with the Assad option and obliterate everything within reach, just because. Meanwhile, the rest of the nation's getting pretty sick of playing hostages to a bunch of legislative psychotics.

While the president's citizenship eligibility has always been a bone of contention among conservatives throughout his term, there's not much ado about Ted Cruz's Canadian heritage:

When Democrat Barack Obama was running for president in 2008, Republican voter Christina Katok of Walden said she believed he was ineligible for the job.

She reasoned that he was born in Kenya and therefore wasn’t a “natural born” American — one of a handful of constitutional requirements for the job. (Obama's birth certificate shows that he was born in Hawaii, but some critics do not accept that as fact.)

Fast forward six years and another freshman U.S. senator, Canadian-born Tea Party firebrand Ted Cruz of Texas, is being mentioned as a potential 2016 presidential candidate. But Katok, who would vote for Cruz in a heartbeat, doesn’t have any concerns about his eligibility.

“As far as I’m concerned, Canada is not really foreign soil,” she said. Katok said she was more disturbed by Obama's "strong ties to Kenya," the African country where his father was born. She also said she didn’t like the fact that Obama did not release his long-form birth certificate during the 2008 race.

Cruz, who recently released his Canadian birth certificate, is at least “up front about it,” she said.

No wonder the alternative spelling for "hypocrisy" involves the letters G, O and P.

What's being left out of the conversation is the real reason why the so-called "birthers" were up in arms over the president's alleged Kenyan origin, despite his fulfillment of all the constitutional requirements for presidential eligibility. Cruz's Canadian birth certificate is of as little issue to conservatives as his heritage or his appearance, both which are sufficiently American enough to pass muster with birthers and Teabaggers who are chafing under Barack Obama's leadership.

Canada isn't as foreign as Hawaii, nor is it as "dark" or "exotic," if you get my drift. Also, Eleanor Elizabeth Wilson Darragh didn't commit the cardinal sin of cavorting with black men or giving birth to a "half-breed," as Stanley Ann Dunham had done. As for his father, Rafael, he managed to bribe his way into the U.S. after realizing that a post-revolution existence in Cuba wasn't as appealing as he previously thought. After his student visa evaporated, so did the elder Cruz's residency in the U.S. Only in 2005 did he remember that his Canadian citizenship would pose problems for his son's political ambitions.

Which should make the younger Cruz's views on immigration a bit softer than those of his contemporaries:

"The 11 million who are here illegally would be granted legal status once the border was secured — not before — but after the border was secured, they would be granted legal status," he says. "And indeed, they would be eligible for permanent legal residency. But they would not be eligible for citizenship."

Or maybe not. The above would turn today's illegal immigrant into an ersatz version of Japan's Zainichi Koreans - able to live in the U.S. as permanent residents, but not able to vote or otherwise participate in politics. It's fortunate for the younger Cruz that such a policy didn't exist during his younger days, otherwise his political ambitions would have been as limited as the average illegal immigrant's hopes of getting U.S. citizenship the safe and legal way.

Out of consideration for the birthers, the younger Cruz not only released a copy of his birth certificated, but he also announced that he would renounce his Canadian citizenship - he has yet to visit a Canadian Embassy and get it all done in writing, for good.

Being the antithesis of Barack Obama in some respects is Cruz's strongest appeal among conservatives. He's neither a "Negroid half-breed" nor was he born in some seemingly exotic locale. Unlike Mitt Romney, he's not some neo-aristocratic nitwit whom conservatives of all stripes had to hold their nose to support, nor is he a visibly batshit insane wet dream for the teabagger types. As long as there aren't any skeletons flying out of his closet, he's a shoe-in as a 2016 GOP candidate.

If Benghazi didn't provide enough fodder for conservatives' sense of victimhood, the following definitely will:

Internal Revenue Service officials in Washington and at least two other offices were involved in the targeting of conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status, making clear that the effort reached well beyond the branch in Cincinnati that was initially blamed, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post.

IRS officials at the agency’s Washington headquarters sent queries to conservative groups asking about their donors and other aspects of their operations, while officials in the El Monte and Laguna Niguel offices in California sent similar questionnaires to tea party-affiliated groups.

IRS employees in Cincinnati also told conservatives seeking the status of “social welfare” groups that a task force in Washington was overseeing their applications, according to interviews with the activists.

Lois G. Lerner, who oversees tax-exempt groups for the IRS, told reporters on Friday that the “absolutely inappropriate” actions were undertaken by “front-line people” working in Cincinnati to target groups with “tea party,” “patriot” or “9/12” in their names.

In one instance, however, Ron Bell, an IRS employee, informed an attorney representing a conservative group focused on voter fraud that the application was under review in Washington. On several other occasions, IRS officials in Washington and California sent conservative groups detailed questionnaires about their voter outreach and other activities, according to the documents.

“For the IRS to say it was some low-level group in Cincinnati is simply false,” said Cleta Mitchell, a partner in the law firm Foley & Lardner LLP who sought to communicate with IRS headquarters about the delay in granting tax-exempt status to True the Vote.

Moreover, details of the IRS’s efforts to target conservative groups reached the highest levels of the agency in May 2012, far earlier than has been disclosed, according to Republican congressional aides briefed by the IRS and the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) on the details of their reviews.

It's one thing to investigate 501(c)(4)s to make sure they stay within the legal boundaries of their status. It's another to laser target 501(c)(4)s based on their political affiliation:

Lois Lerner, head of the IRS unit that oversees tax-exempt groups, noted that the number of 501(c)(4) group applications doubled between 2010 and 2012. As a result of this influx, she explained, low-level workers at the agency’s Cincinnati office had flagged about 300 applications for additional review based on a keyword search. None had their status revoked or denied and the IRS apologized for the mistake.

While it unclear whether the IRS workers intentionally targeted conservative groups — an agency spokesman did not immediately respond to a ThinkProgress request for the complete list of keywords used — the office revealed that two of the terms on the list were “Tea Party” and “patriot.” As such, about 75 Tea Party groups were singled out for additional scrutiny.

The spike in 501(c)(4) groups comes after the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United v. FEC decision that outside groups may make unlimited political expenditures. Since then, some 501(c)(4) organizations have begun abusing the system. Though groups engaged in some political activity may qualify as “social welfare groups” and receive tax-exempt status under this section of the tax code, electioneering cannot be their predominant activity.

It remains seen whether this all was deliberate or unintentional, not that it matters much to conservative Tea Party-types. This only validates their claims of victimization by the Obama administration and chances are they'll milk it for all it's worth. That includes getting yet another round of "Impeach the Socialist Negro"...ahem..."Take Back the White House."

Where were these guys when the IRS decided to take a peek at the NAACP's books during the Bush administration?

The treacherous Marxist Usurper, Baraq Hussein Superallah Obama al-Kenya, current Chief Administrator of the American Republic, has always maintained his place of birth as the former Kingdom of Hawaii, despite proof to the contrary of his actual birth in the deepest, darkest regions of central Africa. The Most Noble Willard Milton Romney of the Massachusetts Commonwealth, aspirant to the position of Chief Administrator of the American Republic, has finally uncovered evidence of Obama's true birthplace, as seen in the above footage.

Sir Willard gained the footage from a peasant who claimed his occupation to be a traveling used marital aides salesman. The salesman was accosted on his journey through the strange and mysterious continent by a random passerby who was later rewarded handsomely with several 14-inch rubber penetrative devices. Taken from Super 8 footage that was somehow processed through a potato and later transferred onto VHS tape, the footage finally confirms what patriotic Tea Partiers and viewers of Fox News knew all along.

Earlier attempts to prove Obama's true birth circumstances proved futile after genuine copies of his birth certificate were deemed false and attributed to prankster peasants who claimed to have faked those copies. Some time ago, the treacherous Marxist Usurper himself revealed a very-much falsified long-form birth certificate, which states his birthplace as "Honolulu, Hawaii." Sir Willard spoke out in protest during the reveal, stating that "we all know that Honolulu doesn't exist. It's just a made-up fairy tale place from a fairy tale president."

The ultimate task for the people is to remain vigilant and aware ~ that the government, their government is out of control, and this moment, this opportunity, must not be forsaken, must not escape us, for we shall not have any coarse but armed revolution should we fail with the power of the vote in November ~ This Republic cannot survive for 4 more years underneath this political socialist ideologue.

The above comes from the "Whitehouse Watchdog" section of the Greene County, VA Republican Party's "Constitutional Conservatives" newsletter. Outside of the Free Republic, Fox News and other notably right-leaning locales, GOP newsletters are perhaps the best source for hyperbole, veiled hatred and outright hysteria. Ponch McPhee (heh) is the man assumed to be responsible for the above outburst in political insanity.

I'm not here to blame a single person who could easily walk back his words with a boilerplate apology. Instead, blame falls on an entire political spectrum that's collectively tweaked something fierce at the sight of a man of color occupying the highest office in the nation and presiding over what is arguably the most powerful nation on Earth. And it's tweaked to the point where armchair patriots issue oblique death threats through newsletters and e-mails passed on from supporter to supporter until they're inevitably intercepted by people with a modicum of common sense and shared with the general public, most of whom are understandably repulsed by the entire thing.

These people can't come out and say what they really want, as it would very well destroy their social lives and their power within the American Mediasphere. So they rely on twisted double-meanings, racially motivated dog whistles and coded rhetoric. Most people will instinctively parse the true meanings of their words. Others will just nod approvingly without realizing the subliminals underneath.

We all know most conservatives have a penchant of selling woof tickets to canceled events. And their words would mean absolutely nothing if it wasn't for that one person who takes those woof tickets at face value and attempts to cash them in. I believe some of the conservative folk are actually counting on some lone individual to swallow the hype and attempt something irretrievably stupid and dangerous.

Let it be known that if anyone was to take a run at the president, First Lady or God help us, the kids, the rioting that will ensue will make the L.A. and Detroit Riots seem like quaint and annoying Tea Party protests. If that someone actually succeeded, the United States of America will effectively collapse as a nation, as the generations of unmet grievances and unhealed wounds will burst open and consume this nation in a manner that even the so-called "patriots" never counted on.

Conservatives claim they want to "save" the nation from many perceived evils, yet they prove to be the exact evil the country is plagued by. Because the country couldn't be the exact way they want it, the armchair patriots, Teabaggers and the like are now engaged in a nationwide temper tantrum. You hope they decide to hold their breath and turn blue, but it never gets to that point. They're locked in the "knock things down and scream" stage. Someone should go fetch a belt.

Oddly enough, conservatives project their very failings onto their enemies...and it sticks. Instead of the conservatives being know as petulant children, it's the liberal "hippies" and "socialists" who are prescribed this behavioral trait. Instead of conservatives being spectacularly lazy and greedy, it's minorities who are accused of being this. If the GOP could get away with tagging Obama as an adulterer, they would, and they would proceed to ignore the likes of Newt Gingrich, David Vitter and Richard Melon Scaife.

These conservatives don't know what the fuck they're doing and they should stop before someone, somewhere gets hurt.

The challenge before us is very clear. Creating a blueprint for winning back the Senate and retaining the House, along with defeating the President is our party’s mission. We must return the Republic back to the people.

Conservative codespeak is an amazing thing. It's always implied that this country can't be shared with all 313.5 million of its current inhabitants. No, it has to be "taken back" by a small cadre of "freedom loving" individuals, who invariably and without fail are Anglo-Saxon descendants of either advanced or middle age. The people whom the country has to be "taken back" from are, without fail, minorities, the politically liberal, those with lifestyles or beliefs that deviate from the Protestant template, etc. In essence, people who don't look, act or think like them. And these folks use the words of the nation's founders and the constitution they created as justification for their beliefs and actions.

If the Founding Fathers were alive, you think they'd want to have a quiet chat with these people?

Remember that long-running thread from Something Awful highlighting the epic stench of stupidity and failed aspirations emanating from the lovely Free Republic? It's still going on strong, with twice the stupid, twice the bigotry and double your daily recommended amount of Vitamin Asshole™. FReepers (not to be confused with the far more admirable Detroit Free Press or "Freep") have proven to be a hardy breed, even during the challenging "dark age" (hehe) that is the Obama Administration. Sadly, all signs of a white lord and savior have proven to be for naught this election period, especially since perennial asshole Newt Gingrich's chances of being the GOP's designated golden boy are as good as Rick Santorum's.

For a moment, imagine the House That Jim Robinson Built as an old and decrepit rancher built back in the 1950s with peeling vinyl siding and droopy gutters. The lawn seems manicured to a tee, until you run across the various weeds that've been cut down instead of uprooted. Rusted burn barrels and car doors litter the backyard. The backyard itself is bare in most spots and littered with brass casings. A half-finished bunker is out there somewhere, but you dare not climb over the fence to look for it. Parked nearby are various full-size American trucks in various states of disrepair. Out front near the garage is a newish Toyota with a huge American flag screenprint on the window and a "Don't You Fucking Re-Nig" sticker on the bumper. The windows are either boarded up or simply covered in dust, dirt and grime.

You reach the front door and eye the sign informing you of your impending demise if you're black, Mexican, gay or a Democrat supporter. Open the door and you're confronted by a noxious stench that incapacitates people from the next county over. It's a hoarder's paradise. You brush past tall stacks of years old newspapers, gun magazines and printed emails featuring cartoons poking fun at Bill Clinton and Al Gore. You clamber over mountains of sweat and shit-stained clothes. You step gingerly over piss puddles, rotted food, empty Viagra and Cialis bottles and cat shit. Lots and lots of cat shit. There are empty dog food cans littered all over the place, but no dog. Ol' Nagger's been dead for years now.

The kitchen has stack after stack of dishes piled up, all dirty and unwashed since 1999. The fridge does not work. Of course it doesn't work. Part of a skinned deer carcass stands in the corner, rotten and maggot ridden. You pass another room that's filled with guns, laid out carefully on a nearby bed. The guns are well taken care of and there's stack after stack of ammo in the corner, with more out back in a shed.

You approach the bedroom located at the back of the house. Hunched over a Gateway 2000 desktop is a FReeper, personified as a morbidly obese man. An old USMC cap covers his shaved head and a well-worn inhaler administers medication for his severe asthma. The room is enveloped in a foul cascade of shit, sweat, pit odor and failure. A nearby printer slowly pounds out an image of Michelle Obama in a mammy outfit and Barack Obama in a butler suit, both serving a perky-titted Sarah Palin and a massively corpulent Rush Limbaugh. The ghost of Ronald Reagan looks on with approval while an American eagle sheds a single tear. You can barely see the Free Republic board through the green-tinted CRT monitor. You notice something on the man's plate. It vaguely looks like...dog food?

You quietly back away from the horrors in front of you, only to trip over an ill-placed copy of "Guns and Ammo" and land face first into a puddle of goddamned cat piss. You rouse the FReeper. He's pissed. He picks up something, but that something isn't one of the many guns in his collection. No, it's two dead cats, each fitted with...viking helmets? He starts swinging wildly. You clamber over the magazines, the rank clothes, the old newspapers, desperate to find a way out of this miserable hell. You reach the door and it's...locked? You turn around and it's just you, the FReeper and the makeshift dead cat nun-chucks he dubs the "Viking Kitties..."

Let's cut away from that highly unpleasant imagery and begin examining two examples of abject stupidity, the first representing blatant bigotry that's been coded for your pleasure (but just barely):

The simple solution would be for them to go to Africa, just “go”, live in a mud hut, breed and figure out how to kill each other. They sure as hell don’t belong in a civilized world.

I’ll chip in boat fare.

The above plays into the "All Blacks Are Savages™" theme while satisfying the "exotic creature/dangerous creature" prerequisites. The dehumanization effect is already built in, fortified by the rock-solid assumption that all blacks are criminal in nature and thus forth undeserving of any human treatment. So of course, the best way to deal with that pesky "black problem" is to ship them "back" to their "homeland." After all, it's where their ancestors got them, right? Doesn't matter which country on the African continent, they all look alike. *chortle*

Funny how these folks think problems can be solved by shipping them off. Negro gets uppity? Ship him downriver to another owner. Indians on "your" land? Have the U.S. government ship them off somewheres. Daughter gets diddled by Uncle Ted? Ship her off to relatives or a boarding school. She's pregnant? Ship the baby off to an orphanage. Baby's half-black? Say, where did that Negro get off to...

Nevermind two asshats who think their problems can be solved with man-sized crates and a UPS label. The following is perhaps the most blatant sympathizing for the ultimate personification of failure and victimhood: the Confederacy:

Lincoln was a Tyrant and a Atheist who used just enough phrases from the Bible to sound Christian. The South did not start a Insurrection against the Federal government but instead tried to leave the US and they started their own government!

Lincoln was the Poster Child for Adolf Hitler. The Nazi’s studied Lincoln’s war against the South to learn how to overthrow a government yet seemingly keeping the people from knowing they were destroying their own government.

Show me one instance were a Southerner tried to take over the US government! You can’t because it never happened!

The deaths of nearly 750,000 people and the dislocation of nearly 500,000 more rest solely on Lincoln’s head! He may not of killed as many people as Hitler but his war plans were the blueprint that Hitler used in Germany and against other countries.

In essence, Lincoln was a tyrant for putting an end to the tragicomedy that was the Confederacy. In preserving the Union, he became worse than Hitler, Tojo and William Tecumseh Sherman combined. The deaths of those 750,000 rest solely atop the man's stovepipe hat and not within the hands of men who thought succession was a wonderful idea.

BTW, let's ignore attempts by pro-slavery figures to induct more slave states into the Union prior to the Confederate clusterfuck.

Amazing how Confederate fans can wrap themselves up in pity, victimhood and delusion, something those same individuals constantly chastise black Americans for supposedly doing*. The Free Republic is chock-full of these nuts and I tip my hat to the folks at SA for not only making this happen, but also for having the courage and intestinal fortitude to provide (paying) viewers with a front-row seat to the Saddest Spectacle on Earth™. It's like a Gallagher show, only you have a two old, grizzled white guys spraying pressurized shit from a septic truck onto the audience. Have your rain coat, umbrella and a match handy.

*You see, blacks "whine" while Confederate symps merely "air out their grievances." Nope, there's no double standard here...

The nature of anonymous trolls make it so when there's more than one person making the same or similar point to the troll, chances are that person is a second account made by the same troll. In following one of these troll's YouTube video, I stumbled on the following comment:

@lmdslam republicans and democrats both suck. the new TEA party types are the best answer for us now. Small federal government, less taxation, fewer regulations, strong military.

The above comes from YouTube user "1Makyo". So why focus on boilerplate Teabagger script from some run-of-the-mill YouTube denizen?

Simple.

"Small federal government, less taxation, fewer regulations, strong military."

Let's break this down. In order for the United States to maintain its overgrown yet strong (in most respects) military in 63 countries, with over 250,000 military personnel and countless support staff, including contractors, the U.S. spends over $700 billion per year. That's more than other countries spend on their military forces combined. In contrast, China spends barely over $100 billion on their military.

Now that requires a pretty beefy federal government that's doing a fair bit of taxation. On the other hand, the small federal government desired by the Tea Party wouldn't be able to swing these types of expenditures. At best, the U.S. would have no choice but to cut the military aid, pack up the troops and send them home, and then shut down and gut the bases they were in. America's priority would suddenly shift to homeland defense. No more bodies coming from Iraq and Afghanistan. Cue the border wall between the U.S. and Mexico that the Tea Party wants.

The main problem with that is it will kick America's geopolitical chessboard from under it, and all of the carefully planned chess moves that involved military aid, interventions, counterterrorist works and plain old show of force will be for naught. Neocons will weep in anguish. If the U.S. wants to continue projecting force, something's gonna have to give.

The second problem comes from the taxation end. Given the wealthy and multinational corporations will be the most reluctant to pay their fair share in taxes (or believe what they're paying now is their fair share), the bulk of the tax burden will fall on the usual suspects -- the middle classes and the working poor. The whole idea of activating the "trickle-down effect" to spur consumer spending by relieving the "tax burden" from the wealthy and large businesses fell apart before America's very eyes during most of this year.

All of those tax cuts should have translated into spend-happy businesses and wealthy folk who hired more people and spend more money on more things just for the sake of spending, which should have translated into dollars trickling down from above and into the pockets of ordinary Joe Schmoes. Instead, the recession proved to companies that they could fire half of their workforce, force the other half to work twice as hard, and use the savings from firing the "dead weight" and their tax cuts to give their CEOs performance bonuses and better pay, while sitting on the rest of the money.

Now, how do you expect to fund your overgrown yet strong military if you have to rely largely on an exhausted tax base that is punitively hit with regressive taxes at every turn? Well, the U.S. military could start relying on corporate sponsorship as a way to shore up those funds. Businesses donated to the NYPD to shore up their operating costs during Occupy Wall Street, so there's nothing to stop them from throwing a few bones to the Army or Air Force every once in a while, in exchange for certain services...

You could also push a flat tax akin to Herman Cain's old "9-9-9" or new "9-0-9" tax scheme. And since "half of Americans don't pay taxes," all you have to do is to make them pay by getting rid of certain deductions and credits! Say goodbye to the EIC and Making Work Pay. Of course, this may drive some to partake more heavily in welfare/assistance programs, but you can kick them off the rolls just as well, if those programs even exist anymore. But that still takes a pretty big federal government to pull off.

In the Tea Party-governed world of 1Makyo, the concept of "small federal government" is applied everywhere except the military, while it also receives private bankrolling from corporate sources, in exchange for playing mercenary whenever there's a natural resource that needs securing. As far as "fewer regulations" go, all you have to do is march backwards in time to see the environmental, commercial and health-related damages that will ensue.

Hmm...sounds like business as usual. Perhaps the Teabaggers aren't up for the whole "small federal government, less taxation, fewer regulations, strong military" theme, after all.

Some people are still figuring out why black Americans still have President Obama's back, even after all of the economic turmoil and manufactured disappointment that the GOP hoped would turn black folks sour on him. They're also wondering why black Americans absolutely refuse to vote GOP, no matter how many black bodies they push onstage for the old shuck, jive and jig.

Perhaps it's the fact that black Americans see something in the GOP that other people just can't seem to see, and of course, they don't like what they see.

They see a collection of individuals who have little to no interest in the well-being of the poor, disadvantaged and downtrodden in this country. Just a collection of men and women who see themselves as the new American aristocracy, promoting economic and social policies that are designed to keep them in billions and trillions of hard-earned taxpayer dollars while distracting their deluded constituents with ethnic scrap fights and fear-based politicking.

And for this, blacks are often accused of being on the "Democrat plantation," possibly because the GOP sees them as a captive source of guaranteed votes. The GOP wishes they could have something like that -- the dyed-in-the-wool Deep South-style bigot vote isn't as reliable and it tends to turn moderates and swing voters off like nothing else. The GOP really, REALLY wants that black vote.

And black Americans refuse to give it to them. Which, of course, makes them "slaves." Infantile, servile slaves to the pinko commiecrats who steadfastly refuse to "think for themselves" and join the GOP like good little Negros. Besides, they have their own stable of fellow Negros, and you know how those Negros like to vote for other Negros just because they're Negros...

I bet the GOP figures that if they could at least split the black vote, they could use whatever moderates and swing voters they have lying around to shore up the guaranteed 27% crazy/Teabag vote...wait, you mean there are some Deep South-style bigots out there who just won't vote for a black American, no matter his party affiliation? Might be a bit of a problem there.

As far as the GOP is concerned, you are allowed to think for yourself, just as long as those thoughts are in accordance to GOP party doctrine. Blacks are more than welcome to join up with the GOP, just as long as they are on their best behavior and do nothing to either upset the established white power structure within or push their own interests too hard, especially if it happens to conflict with GOP tenets. Cain recognizes this, which is why he makes sure he always remains on the good side of the Teabaggers, working-class whites with an ingrained lack of tolerance for "uppity" black types and other party makers and breakers.

In protest of the presence of the "Kenyan Marxist Occupier in Chief" in the Oval Office and his desire to impose socialist measures such as "Obamacare" on the hapless American people by dictatorial decree, business owner and Tea Party supporter Melissa Brookstone is going on strike!

But she won't be toting picket signs in front of her own place of business or taking bus trips to D.C. to protest against the Brownish Usurper. Instead, she resolves not to hire a single person until Obama and the Democrats concede defeat in the war against her businesses and others throughout the U.S. And she's encouraging her fellow Teabaggers to join her!

Too bad she'd probably fire her employees if they ever decided to go on strike. And with jobs being few and far between, people who are lucky to have them can ill afford to lose them over a strike. Seems like the only people who can afford to dabble in workers' rights are the people with the power to hire and fire others, and rest assured they're not doing this on behalf of those who need jobs, no matter what they say to the contrary.

The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.

While the United States is still somewhat civilized in that metric, in comparison to places like, say, Mexico, Turkey or North Korea, we're doing our damnedest as a nation to change that, for the worst. The U.S. continues to trend southward on the list of "first-world nations you'd actually want to live in." When it comes to healthcare, education, advances in technology, per-capita income, amount of leisure time and general happiness, we're falling farther and farther behind our European and Asian contemporaries. At least we'll always be numero uno when it comes to military strength and expenditures...

When kids talk about their schools, quite a few will liken them to prisons. Not because they just don't plain like school (who does when you're a kid?), but because the schools have, for the most part, have replicated the rigid, regimented and highly controlled environment that resembles most maximum security prison environments. In many cases, you can thank zero-tolerance measures and building architects who design most new schools to be cinder-block enclaves with limited access and limited distractions. That means no windows and few entry and exit points save for the fire escapes. And they'd get rid of those, too, if they could.

I had the pleasure of going to a high school that was built in a hillside during the late 1950s, as a Cold War-era solution to surviving a nuclear attack and the resultant radiation fallout that followed. It didn't help that it was just a few miles away from a rather important military installation with a lot of stuff that made it nuke-worthy by Soviet standards. As a result, you had a hexagonal structure surrounded by other hexagonal stubs buried in a hillside, with no classroom windows. As this school was quite old by the time I attended, the HVAC and ventilation system was usually FUBAR and any decent temperature or fresh air regulation had to be done by opening the emergency doors in the classrooms that were lucky to have one. However, this school wasn't "urban" enough to warrant metal detectors and the school didn't seem to embrace the "zero-tolerance" policies with the fervor schools do today. Other schools I went to before that were built as most schools were before Brutalist architecture and the need for controlled environments came into vogue.

Not only do you have the buildings as instruments of control, you also have the adherence to class schedules, the assigned lunch seating, the requirement to travel to and from as a group at the appointed times, etc. I understand this is all necessary for young minds that have yet to handle independence with the measure of respect and good judgement that most kids have yet to develop, but I can't help but notice how the entire school environment resembles the corrective institution in a growing number of ways. It's a feeling you can't really put your finger on, but you know it's there.

The need for control and regimentation is manifested by students who act out because they're either bored or frustrated. Since the public school experience is largely regimented out of necessity (or laziness, in many cases), there's no way that a school teacher can fine-tune the curriculum to accommodate a student for whom the standard method of learning simply does not work. Lots of people require hands-on experience and end up doing better in trades and careers that feature tactile and tangible experiences. And since public schools usually lack the funds, will and foresight to identify underlying problems that could result in a miserable school experience for a kid, those problems are either ignored or doped away with copious amounts of Adderall or Ritalin. For others, they act out, and the zero-tolerance policies come into play.

Private schools are a whole 'nother kettle of fish. I had the opportunity to go to quite a few when I was a young kid, specifically a small, church-run school in the middle of a "distressed urban environment." The entire experience was different from any public school I've been to at that point -- the classroom experience was less restrictive and regimented. There was less stress, even though the environment was just as competitive (or far more, in many cases) as other ordinary public schools. Fewer fights, fewer disruptions and more opportunities for a custom-tailored educational experience that actually benefits kids. But it was expensive, and single parents with other household expenditures can't swing the private school bills as well as financially established families, and those are few and far between in most urban areas.

So, where am I going with this? Well, the Tea Party made plenty of public institutions targets in their scheme to dismantle and replace them with privatized entities. Actually, it isn't so much the Tea Party orchestrating this as they are simply the dumbassed foot soldiers doing the bidding of the real power brokers funding the so-called "grassroots" organization. Public schools are one of those targets.
(More after the jump)

Whenever I think about the various conservative movements, such as the Tea Party and others throughout the years, I can't help but notice how the interests of the so-called "small town America" conservatives seem to dovetail neatly with those of corporate America. Lower taxes, looser (or nonexistent) regulation, greater military involvement, less government welfare and the ability to dictate social morality and enforce religious doctrine on a national scale (except when it inconveniences the Powers That Be™). Okay, so the last two aren't exactly things you'd see corporate America cosigning to, but stranger things have happened.

I hate it when small business stand behind their larger corporate brethren, thinking those lowered taxes are going to benefit them instead of allowing Wal-Mart and others to either run them out of business or buy them out. Ditto for small town Americans who think the entire country can be run on the same shoestring budget faced by their own small municipalities. These same taxpayers shit themselves when their "hard-earned taxpayer dollars" go to help the homeless, but have absolutely nothing to say when those same dollars are poured into law enforcement or military expenditures. When it comes to government functions that specialize in beating, maiming or killing undesirables as a matter of policy, you'll either hear cheers or crickets. The aforementioned social morality issues serve as distractions from the issue of consolidated and concentrated wealth.

It doesn't surprise me the least to see Tea Swillers stand up for the same things that corporate America want. Lower sales and corporate taxes equal higher profits and larger bonuses. Larger budgets for law enforcement insure a standing force better equipped to enforce the laws that largely apply to the "little people" and not the "job creators." The push to get rid of welfare and other "entitlements" gives the self-righteous another social windmill to tilt it, while freeing up federal and state funds for kickbacks and other pet projects. The death of Social Security in exchange for a "stock market-based free market solution" for pensions and retirement provides financial markets with more taxpayer capital to gamble away on Wall Street. The whole self-reliance bit is meant to invoke the country's past as a nation full of rugged individualism, but in reality, it subconsciously prepares Americans for a period of time where the only service available to ordinary Americans is the ghost of Dick Cheney telling you to "go fuck yourself."

Yesterday, Robert Reich posted a straightforward piece outlining the true motives of those behind the general conservative movement, including where conservatives and corporate America want the nation to regress to.

They’d like to return to the 1920s — before Social Security, unemployment insurance, labor laws, the minimum wage, Medicare and Medicaid, worker safety laws, the Environmental Protection Act, the Glass-Steagall Act, the Securities and Exchange Act, and the Voting Rights Act.

In the 1920s Wall Street was unfettered, the rich grew far richer and everyone else went deep into debt, and the nation closed its doors to immigrants.

In truth, if they had their way we’d be back in the late nineteenth century — before the federal income tax, antitrust laws, the pure food and drug act, and the Federal Reserve. A time when robber barons — railroad, financial, and oil titans — ran the country. A time of wrenching squalor for the many and mind-numbing wealth for the few.

Very few people have a working memory of what life was like before Social Security, worker's rights, minimum wage and other protections were put into place. Ordinary Americans who genuinely believe the nation could do without these things have no idea what it would be like for them if the nation did just that.

Rather than conserve the economy, these regressives want to resurrect the classical economics of the 1920s — the view that economic downturns are best addressed by doing nothing until the “rot” is purged out of the system (as Andrew Mellon, Herbert Hoover’s Treasury Secretary, so decorously put it).

The only people who'd benefit from "doing nothing" about economic downturns are those who stand to benefit greatly from said economic downturns. The Carnegies, Mellons and Morgans of the world benefited from low tax rates and economic policies that allowed them to not just hold the vast majority of the nation's wealth, but also make even greater fortunes through interest payments and other forms of rent seeking, while extracting the maximum amount of labor from average Americans for the least amount of money possible. The end result is an impoverished nation that works for pennies while the moneyed men and women profit from their deeply discounted sweat equity. Their successors currently have over 42% of the nation's financial wealth and 34.6% of the nation's net worth.

Latent filial piety among small town Americans and their employers and the idea that ordinary Americans will someday be the next Andrew Carnegie through sweat equity are the only explanations I can come up with as to why conservatives like to line themselves up with the Carnegies and the like. The former is something I've seen in the Deep South -- essentially, if you do right by the company, then the company will do right by you. This could explain part of why unions aren't particularly welcome in these parts -- if you piss off the company, the company will take a good, long piss on you. This works, in the reference of small-to-medium-size companies where the bosses know the workforce, but at huge, multinational corporations, the idea of filial piety towards an employer becomes something of a joke. These huge companies couldn't give a good fig about you or yours.

The latter implies that with enough hard work, you too could be up there with the big boys. Or at least have a very comfortable lifestyle. Once upon a time, this was possible to pull off, with decent wages and low barriers to entry when it came to starting your own businesses or just methodically saving your money (with interest, even). Today, most of those avenues are closed, and unless you hit a huge lottery jackpot, you're not going to have much chance of being up there with the big boys.* Yet some conservatives hold on to this hope. Others fancy themselves to already being in the comfortable 1%, when they're really just a couple of bad days and bad decisions away from falling from grace.

Then there are those who genuinely believe that if they keep rewarding the wealthy by giving them everything they want, they themselves will be rewarded with "a seat at the table," or at least a few crumbs thrown their way. Social Darwinist doctrine offers this while tapping into America's "inner asshole":

Listen carefully to today’s Republican right and you hear the same Social Darwinism Americans were fed more than a century ago to justify the brazen inequality of the Gilded Age: Survival of the fittest. Don’t help the poor or unemployed or anyone who’s fallen on bad times, they say, because this only encourages laziness. America will be strong only if we reward the rich and punish the needy.

Have you ever felt the urge to be an asshole to someone just because? Or better still, be an asshole to someone perceived as beneath your own social standing in order to reaffirm and validate said standing? This is what Social Darwinism essentially offers. It exploits the average person's base desire to not want to appear weak or accommodate what could be perceived as weakness. The wealthy represent the strong, talented and successful, while the poor are derided as being weak, stupid and generally worthless. These beliefs benefit the wealthy, as there are a few challenges to their wealth and nothing but a public outpouring of support by the masses who are enamored and even somewhat jealous of their wealth and power. It encourages Americans to become sycophants who curry favor with and avoid doing any sort of harm to the most powerful and successful among them, while showing great disdain to those seen as weak and useless.

Apparently, that's the America conservatives want, whether they say so outright or not. That America runs counter to the general principles of the America envisioned by the Founding Fathers.

Corporate America has little to no interest in helping conservatives usher the "small government America" they've envisioned unless it is to the financial benefit. Conservatives will be disappointed to see the "job creators" strip everything of profit away from them after they've gleefully helped corporate America do the same to liberals and others outside of the conservative ideology.

The Carnegie Corporation and other similar foundations came about only because those people felt they were duty-bound to give something back to the American people. Can anyone say the same for the latest batch of CEOs and CFOs?

*Even the lottery winners are hit hard with federal and state taxes, not to mention the winners' own spending habits. Unless you're careful in how you manage and invest your money, chances are your dreams of being with the 0.5% won't come true any time soon.

- It's good to see the "Occupying Wall Street" movement going on strong, even though I have the distinct feeling it will peter out at some point and die with a whimper. I hope it spreads to other cities -- people need to let it be known they won't tolerate being drained and discarded for financial and political gain.

Not everyone's supportive of "Occupying Wall Street." This fucking guy or gal thinks they're all "a bunch of spoiled brats":

This bunch ought to get down on their knees in thanks that America's capitalist Founding Fathers saw fit to protect the privileges of the dumb and obnoxious along with everyone else.

They should also salute the NYPD and all its officers for paying diligent attention to ensuring that peace and harmony reign in their daze of rage. But no.

Blindly directed pseudo-patriotism and an equally blind subservience to authority, no matter how brusque that authority can be. No name on the op-ed piece, but the tone of it suggests someone who likes their brew in bags, if you get my drift.

- I guess all of the "SUPPORT ARE TROOPS" rhetoric goes out the window when it comes to GLBT servicemen. It really showed how classless the Tea Swillers can be. And the President wasn't about to stand for any of it.

Some people are wondering why Obama can't be that impassioned when it comes to standing up for the black community. And others are wondering if Obama would tell any other group to essentially "stop bitching and sack up" like he told the CBC.

- For those who think the anonymity of the Internet is ironclad, read this. Saying the ongoing drug wars in Mexico are "out of control" would be the understatement to end all understatements.

- The Department of Homeland Security is scheduled to move its headquarters into the western campus of St. Elizabeth's Hospital. There's a metaphor in there, somewhere, I know it.

- The way things are going, most sex offender listings won't be worth much. Not when 16-year-olds and guys like these are being thrown on the list. Once you're on that list, it's pretty much "Game Over" as far as your career and livelihood is concerned.

Stay safe out there. It's not just the meat and pork that's killing folks -- it's the gatdamned fruit, too.

A few days ago, several republican Congress members figured President Obama's jobs speech wasn't worth showing up for. Besides, football season was kicking off and the Saints and Packers were up. Sen. David Vitter had a nice watch party set up and everything. So you could read the disappointment on their faces when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid dropped the hammer by scheduling a can't-miss roll call vote on the debt ceiling right after President Obama's speech. This kept Vitter, Jim DeMint and other GOP senators back in D.C., but House Reps. Paul Broun and Jim Walsh were no-shows. Jimmy didn't want to be "a prop of another one of the president’s speeches," so he picked up his shine box and went home. At least Broun got chewed out over Twitter for it.

Many republicans weren't happy to be there. Even John Boehner looked like he'd rather do something else. I wonder why -- after all, John was the one who told the president, "No, you can't make your speech on the date you want."

I can't remember any other president being disrespected to the degree President Obama has over these past 4 years. I can't remember Bill Clinton catching this much hell over the Monica Lewinsky mess. And while legislators may have held a low opinion of George Bush, they maintained professional decorum and didn't blatantly disrespect the president over such. But #44? Whoooo boy...

"Marxist," "socialist," "punk" "ZERO" "O-bambi." These are just a few of the names and descriptors thrown at Obama these past 4 years. At least no conservative has had the stones to call Obama "boy" in public, and no one would dare call him that old racist standby, "Nigger." That's the real-life equivalent of Godwinning the hell out of yourself and your political career. Didn't Lee Atwater have something to say about that?

You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger”—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.

No one can call him a "Nigger" and not be tarred and feathered by popular opinion right then and there, so the code words and dog whistles have become so oblique, words and issues you didn't think had much of a racial connotation are now being used in lieu of more "honest" racial epithets.

One of the earliest attacks on the president was the whole birth certificate conundrum, because the underlying theme was that Obama was an "Other," a non-American, something completely foreign from the norm established over a 232-year period. And in a way, he was outside of the American norm -- born of a white mother and African father in an American state considered "foreign" in many ways, educated in a foreign country and long rumored to be a member of a distinctly foreign religion, one considered America's "public enemy #1" at the moment.

Instead of calling the man a "Nigger," Teabaggers asked for his birth certificate, on the hopes that if he was faking his American-ness, he would be impeached, removed and replaced with a white male president as the natural order of things intended. The natural order stated that no Nigger could ever become president of these United States, and lo and behold, there was one in the Oval Office, and he wasn't on the janitorial staff.

When the birth certificate mess didn't pan out the way they hoped, the Teabaggers and GOP hangers-on who wanted to stay in their good graces resorted to absolute obstinance. Color-aroused anger became so great among congress members that one in particular, Rep. Joe Wilson, made history with an outburst during a presidential address to Congress: "You lie!"

These days, it seems like everyone wants to disrespect the president. If it isn't foreign leaders and news media outlets pushing the man around, then it's the usual suspects -- die-hard white conservative members of the "grassroots" Tea Party and other similar organizations. Even the people you'd figure would have Obama's back are now gunning for the man to be primaried within his own party. No disrespect intended to Digby's Hullabaloo or Firedoglake, but I do find it disturbing when you piss and moan about the guy just because he hasn't shoved a stack of hundreds or a pony under your pillow just yet.

They claim the man wants to destroy the country, yet by being obstinate fucks, the GOP nearly landed the U.S. in economic hot water by prolonging both the debt ceiling crisis and our current economic recession. The desire to see Obama walk away from the Oval Office in shame with failure hanging from his shoulders drives part of the effort to bleed the American government dry by a thousand tax cuts and to assign as many government functions to private corporate interests as quickly as possible. Make no mistake about it -- they want this man to fail. They want him to fail so hard that no other black person even thinks about approaching the title of "president" for the next generation or even longer. And thanks to this drive, millions of Americans are homeless, unemployed, without proper medical care and just generally hopeless.*

And that's what it all eventually boils down to, although no one in polite company will admit to it. As long as people claim they're not "racist" while participating in discriminatory speech, actions and thought that continues to power the nation's collective neurosis regarding ethnic relations between black and white society, they'll never admit to it. Thanks to continuous propaganda originally designed to assuage white consciences over slavery and give their poorer white counterparts a windmill to charge at, Don Quixote-style, America's eaten up the meme that blacks are inherently inferior, criminal and lascivious, that whites are the supreme default "race" in both America and around the world, and that no mere "Nigger" could -- or should -- hope to accomplish anything of note anywhere. And this meme was enforced with extreme prejudice, by low-information rubes and the downright ignorant, and by a government that codified inequality and injustice into law to appease the rubes and assholes.

It took a long time and the lives of countless many to get blacks on something resembling an equal footing. Even then, many whites didn't believe blacks were capable of achieving anything unless they were helped along by a "liberal" government they've grown to despise for that very reason. As long as the benefits enjoyed by Americans were restricted to the "right" kind of Americans, everything was peachy keen. Even today, an accomplished black man with considerable experience at his profession is seen by some as an "Affirmative Action" hire whose credentials are nowhere worth the value of any other white male hire. Many conservatives called Obama an "Affirmative Action" president.

Epic amounts of asshole/fuckwad behavior spawned a legion of batshit insane presidential candidates who made their bones coasting along the wave of Teabagger-stimulated stupidity and nativism. First, an Alaskan governor who staked a claim on the republican vice presidency based on sex appeal from frustrated 40 and 50-year old men and a collection of "take our country back" nutcases living in fear of the Negros running off with their goods, money and women, and then another genuinely insane woman who handed out promises of $2-gallon gas brought to Americans by more drilling and presumably more wars for natural resources and more environmental ruin. Other candidates include a slick and polished G.W. Bush-clone with a hypocritical affinity towards religious fervor and state-sanction retribution, a man whose entire premise is based on being an unrealistic gold bug and a pizza chain exec who's only there for "colour." Oh, and to make awful, awful video tributes.

Unfortunately, the current color aroused bout of collective insanity will end only when the goal of removing Obama from office has succeeded and a white president, preferably a white Republican with southern tendencies and a lack of empathy for poors, blacks and other detritus collecting at the bottom of America's social swimming pool. The red cloth will disappear from in front of the bull and all of the glass in the china shop will be swept up and thrown away. All will be well with the world once again, as far as many are concerned. Too many whites in this country believe a variant of Chief Justice Roger B. Taney's opinion on the Dred Scott decision, circa 1857:

"It is difficult, at this day, to realize the state of public opinion in relation to that unfortunate race which prevailed in the civilized and enlightened portions of the world at the time of the Declaration of Independence, and when the constitution was framed and adopted. But the public history of every European nation displays it in a manner too plain to be mistaken. They had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior race, and altogether unfit to associate with the white races, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect, and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit."

As a black man, he has no rights which his fellow whites are bound to respect. As the president, he still has no rights that are worth respecting, as far as his fellow whites, conservatives particularly, are concerned.

*By now some conservative troll would chime "that enough hope and change for ya?" But because this is Different Day, Same Shit, trolls are an endangered species only found in worthwhile quantities on other blogs. And since the trolls know what's good for them, it will stay that way.

Something Awful Forums has a long-running thread that keeps tabs on the epic levels of conservative insanity that emanate from the annals of Free Republic -- no linkbacks, because that'd be akin to sticking your Pete Long into a jar full of Syphilis. If you have $10 to spare, you can see for yourself the dozens of pages (not counting the old, archived threads) of conservative dogma and carefully cultivated racism and nativism dispensed by the resident "Freepers."

As an example, here are the responses to the following news story -- "Teen girl gang assaults woman in brazen daylight attack outside Philadelphia City Hall":

To: Free ThinkerNY
Urban negro youth.....savages. Period. Time to take out the trash.
9 posted on Thursday, August 18, 2011 8:00:03 PM by RightOnline
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