The political truce is over.

"The reheated Benghazi "scandal" and other two aimless "scandals" are nothing but political junkie fodder. Neither will end in anything substantial. Collective yawns from the public as the tea party queens flog themselves with their laminated copies of the constitution that they can't read."

~Comment left on Mediaite~

Ouch!

I think we are far enough away from the tragedy in Oklahoma to declare an end to the cease fire when it comes to political s*** talking.

Of course the wingnuts couldn't even wait until the wind stopped swirling to start with their political cheap shots.

"That’s exactly the premise of a tweet that Fox News contributor Erick Erickson sent in the aftermath of the devastation. “I wonder when President Obama will find out about Oklahoma,” ...Erickson went on to scold his critics as humorless and “self-righteous,” even as he tweeted “Confession: I often hesitate to retweet pastors because of the unbridled hate from the hell bound that might then get directed at them.” [Source]

Erickson is a moron and a racist, so his very inappropriate and ill- timed tweet is not all that surprising. 

Bill Bennett, on the other hand, surprised me a bit. I expected a  little more from him. But there he was on his radio show this morning belittling and making fun of the poor people who suffered during Katrina and praising the folks from Oklahoma for their "fighting spirit" and their "patriotic American can- do attitude". [No links, but if I am lying, Bill Bennett is free to try and to sue me.] Bill Bennett, like all those of his ilk, is a sanctimonious dope.

And, as if this wasn't enough,a wingnut politrickster found it necessary to play political games with a national tragedy.

"As of this morning, at least 51 people, including 20 children, are dead in the suburbs of Oklahoma City, following one of the deadliest tornadoes in U.S. history. Rescue teams worked through the night, especially in the devastated city of Moore, and local officials fear the death toll may yet rise significantly. [Update: as of this afternoon, the death toll had been revised down to 24, not 51.]

Ordinarily, so soon after a disaster of this magnitude, discussions about political agendas and ideologies are put on hold, which is why it came as a surprise when one of Oklahoma's U.S. senators staked out a far-right position on federal disaster relief just five hours after the storm hit.

The tornado damage near Oklahoma City is still being assessed and the death toll is expected to rise, but already Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., says he will insist that any federal disaster aid be paid for with cuts elsewhere. 

CQ Roll Call reporter Jennifer Scholtes wrote for CQ.com Monday evening that Coburn said he would "absolutely" demand offsets for any federal aid that Congress provides. 

Coburn added, Scholtes wrote, that it is too early to guess at a damage toll but that he knows for certain he will fight to make sure disaster funding that the federal government contributes is paid for.

I've seen many note overnight that Coburn is at least consistent -- there are plenty of politicians who've balked at disaster-relief funds when there's a devastating storm, only to change their minds when their constituents are among the casualties. Coburn, however, has routinely questioned emergency funding for everyone, and apparently wants to apply the same standards to his own home state.

But while consistently is welcome, it doesn't change the questions about unnecessary callousness.

---

For many years, federal disaster relief was effectively automatic -- there was bipartisan support for quickly responding to American communities in their time of need. It was a reflection of who we are as a people -- when disaster strikes, we're there for the people in affected areas, regardless of politics.

But in recent years, many Republican lawmakers have decided to change the standards. Under the new approach, they'll consider emergency resources, but only if Democrats agree to cut a comparable amount from the budget elsewhere. There's no real economic rationale for this, but for much of the right, the ideological rationale is sufficient."' [Source]

Overheard in the Fox newsroom: "Is it safe to talk about Benghazi and the IRS now?" 

Yes wingnut, the truce is over.

 





 

Blaming the left for a lack of morals in America.

"Field, why aren't you posting about the dude who said black women are not as attractive as other people"?

That is typical of some of the e-mails I have gotten. I thought I would ignore this clown who posted his study in Psychology Today , but apparently you all won't let me. (WTF is an "evolutionary psychologist? I swear you academic types keep coming up with new ways to get paid every day.) Calm down people, this man is not all right upstairs. I am surprised that he is allowed to peddle his craft at a fine institution such as the LSE. But hey, it takes all kinds.

All I have to say about this subject is that "beauty is in the eyes of the beholder", and the top twenty...hell top one hundred most beautiful women in the world (starting, of course, with the lovely Mrs. Field) in my eyes just so happen to be sisters.

For a wonderful article on the subject read what my girl Jenice Armstrong wrote in the Philadelphia Inquirer. It should give all of you who were stressing over this latest bit of junk science a bit of perspective.

Now on to something that has been bothering me all day. It was an article I read by a so called conservative thinker by the name of Walter Russell Mead. His article focused on the moral decay of what he calls the progressive elites in this country, and their lack of moral leadership.


"Here in the early years of the twenty-first century, the American elite is a walking disaster and is in every way less capable than its predecessors. It is less in touch with American history and culture, less personally honest, less productive, less forward looking, less effective at and less committed to child rearing, less freedom loving, less sacrificially patriotic and less entrepreneurial than predecessor generations. Its sense of entitlement and snobbery is greater than at any time since the American Revolution; its addiction to privilege is greater than during the Gilded Age and its ability to raise its young to be productive and courageous leaders of society has largely collapsed.....

...Many problems troubling America today are rooted in the poor performance of our elite educational institutions, the moral and social collapse of our ‘best’ families and the culture of narcissism and entitlement that has transformed the American elite into a flabby minded, strategically inept and morally confused parody of itself. Probably the best depiction of our elite in popular culture is the petulantly narcissistic Prince Charming in Shrek 2; our educational institutions are like the Fairy Godmother, weaving shoddy, cheap, feel-good illusions into a gossamer tissue of flattering lies."

Oh please! This is more right wing "gobblygook" written to make it look as if progressives are the morally bankrupt ones in this country and not folks like W and his band of merry men who took us to war and caused the loss of thousands of lives for god knows what.

Bill Bennett, on his radio program, actually tried to connect what this clown wrote to the latest moral failings of The Governator and the horny little Frenchman who tried to get his jungle fever on with a chamber maid at his hotel without her permission. Talk about a reach.
He actually said that the moral decay of those in power started with Clinton. Clinton!

Hmmm, I wonder how many of our Founding Fathers were getting their jungle fever on with the help? The little Frenchman got caught. They, on the other hand, had children and sent them off to work in the fields (and sometimes to the house) to work with the other slaves. I suspect that many of them were just like The Governator: getting it on with the help.

"I am not, repeat not, saying this was a bad thing. Having grown up under Jim Crow, and having seen the University of North Carolina deny my mother a chance for an advanced degree because it refused to admit married women into certain professional programs, I have no nostalgia for Tara. Count me in with the carpetbaggers, scalawags and civil rights activists; I’m marching with Martin, not sulking with Scarlett.

But it has given the United States a complicated and kinky relationship to our national past. The racist, Indian-killing, woman-oppressing America of the past was not a perfect society, but it was the source of the values that enabled us to grow. Disentangling the good from the bad and finding a way for society to connect ever more deeply with the good in our roots without resuscitating old evils is one of the essential skills national leaders need.." [Article]

"A SOURCE OF VALUES THAT ENABLED US TO GROW"? Mr. Mead, maybe it's time you revisit your value system

Legalize It!

I remember back in the early eighties while I in college I would go home to Jamaica every chance I got. Seems I was always home sick back then. What was amazing to me was to see how some of the kids who I grew up with were living in freshly built mansions, complete with tennis courts and three car garages. These kids didn't have a pot to piss in when I left, but now they were blowing up. Of course I knew how they made their money. They made it the old fashion way, selling drugs. Ganga was our biggest export from Jamaica in the seventies and eighties, and there are many Jamaicans who will tell you that it kept our economy afloat. I will never forget the stories of planes taking off and landing all through the night on rural country roads after people would dash out of the hills to construct makeshift runways with home made lanterns. They would load those marijuana planes quicker than a NASCAR pit crew and off they would go.

Of course all that marijuana and all those drugs were coming to A-merry-ca. This country had a huge so called drug problem then, and nothing has changed since. Reagan and Bush (41) were in power during those years, and in spite of their so called "war on drugs ", and Nancy Reagan's anorexic ass crying "just say no", their war was doomed to failure. "Oh field you just want them to legalize marijuana so that your Jamaican ass can smoke it." Well that's half right. I do want it to be legalized, but I don't smoke it......well I did once but I didn't inhale......well maybe I did inhale, but that was a long time ago......and I did have some ganga soup once...enough of my personal life. This post isn't about the field's past indiscretions.

A drug dealer once asked me if I ever saw drugs offered at a discount or if I ever saw drugs being advertised? Of course not, because drug dealers don't have to offer discounts and they don't have to advertise; it's called supply and demand. That is what drives drug sales, and that is why some young knuckle head on a corner will risk serious jail time or death to sell rock cocaine to suburban kids for long dollars.

When the DEA working with Colombian police killed Pablo Escobar in 1993 on a Medellin roof top, they thought they had reached the tipping point of the war on drugs. But boy were they wrong. According to Rolling Stone magazine, the drug policy under Reagan and Bush was largely conducted in a "fog of ignorance". Bill Bennett's dumb ass spent 12 billion on the drug war and used Naval submarines, torpedoes, and F16's all for nothing. Congress panicked and passed tough laws to give poor crack cocaine users longer prison sentences than the wealthy powder snorting Wall Street users. As a result, an entire generation of poor black people have spent their lives behind bars, and have returned to society with no skills, no jobs, and no hope for a productive existence.

Again, according to Rolling Stone Magazine, If Richard Nixon had just listened back then to all those reports of a generation of soldiers coming home from Vietnam stoned with drug habits, things might have turned out differently. Nixon actually appointed a panel who considered decriminalizing marijuana and buying up the worlds opium supply to prevent it from being converted to heroin. But no, in typical rethuglican fashion, Nixon caved to the law and order crowd and A-merry-ca's fear of the hippies and those Negroes in the urban areas. What we have as a result is an out of touch and and fool hardy drug policy in this country which is getting worse every day.

I am not surprised to hear of the RAND Study that says that military efforts and imprisoning addicts is the least effective way to fight the scourge of drugs. They said that top decrease drug use the only thing that works is treatment. How about that? Good old fashioned treatment.

I bet treatment would curb A-merry-can's appetite and thus their demand for drugs. And then my friends down in Jamaica would have to cut back on their lavish spending habits. But unfortunately for the folks at the DEA, my friends are still laughing all the way to the bank. Or should I say the money launderers.