Tag Archive for congress

Capitalism? More Like Cannibalism

It’s obvious that our nation is not a functioning representative democracy anymore. Thanks to the recent Supreme Court Citizens United and McCutcheon vs FEC decisions, we can safely say that the United States of America is a corporate oligarchy, where only the wealthiest corporations have a say in what happens to America. So contrary to what the Republican say, big government isn’t the problem; corporate America controlling the government is the problem. After all, Republicans and Democrats nowadays are just corporate lackeys; doing their corporate overlord’s bidding for campaign contributions. It is truly sad to see that America is as corrupt as a banana republic. The whole idea behind the Republican’s ‘government is the problem’ con is to fool the masses into thinking that relaxing government regulations and oversight on corporations is a great thing for freedom when in fact it is the worst thing that can happen. Let’s be honest and frank here; capitalism breeds greed, avarice and selfishness. These traits are counter to everything a supposedly ‘christian’ nation holds dear. Without regulations, humanity’s greed runs rampant and our economy and society truly becomes a rat race. It’s shocking that just living basically and simply today costs an arm and a leg. People everywhere in the past ten years have gone under. The middle class has all but disappeared. In order to survive, people have to raise rates, fees and prices to exorbitant levels just to break even. Just taking a beloved pet to the vet can bankrupt a person. It’s gotten to a point where you have to wonder whether it’s capitalism anymore or cannibalism. Is this really what we want for our society?

Modern capitalism has taken on a more cannibalistic approach.

Capitalism: devouring the humanity from humans since the Middle Ages.

GOP Insanity Plea

Just when you thought the Republicans couldn’t get any more irrational… Speaker of the House and Chief Oompa Loompa, John Boehner (pronounced bo-ner), has decided to sue President Obama for doing his job. According to the increasingly mentally unbalanced Republicans who control the House of Representatives, they see President Obama’s perfectly by the book executive orders as overreach of his authority. This despite the fact that President Obama has far fewer executive orders than any of his predecessors. We like that President Obama has finally given up trying to be the Compromiser-in-Chief and that he has said that he is doing his job because Congress is not doing theirs. Booom! There it is!  But the House GOP may have taken the final step for placement into the loony bin when they demanded action from Obama on the influx of immigrants into the southwestern USA after suing him for taking too much action. Talk about wasting taxpayers money! So let’s get this straight: Obama is damned for taking action and he’s damned for not taking action. Yep! Get the straight jackets ready. Boehner and Co. are officially lip-diddling insane.

Chief Oompa Loompa, John Boehner, explains that President Obama is damned if he does and damned if he doesn't.

Speaker of the House and Chief Oompa Loompa, John Boehner, dressed in his stylish new straightjacket, explains why people need to vote the Republicans out of Congress this November.

Spill? What Spill?

The water in Charleston, West Virginia has finally been declared safe for drinking after a chemical spill into the Elk River from Freedom Industries on January 9th. This happened when an aging containment tank leaked MCHM, which is an agent used in processing coal, into the Elk River above the water intake for the company which provides water service for the area. It appears that this facility hadn’t been inspected by federal or state officials since 1991. It was also just determined that another chemical called PPH was also leaked into the water. Of course, since the government is controlled by the oil, gas and coal industries, it’s not surprising that Washington is using the  “there’s nothing to see here” approach to damage control (remember the BP Gulf of Mexico oil spill a few years back). John Boehner said no new regulations are needed and all the other corporate lackeys in Washington are keeping mum as well. But this shouldn’t be surprising since our elected officials, especially Republicans, have been trying to reduce regulations and oversight since the Reagan administration. Dubya even put industry officials in key positions in the EPA. That’s like putting the mouse in charge of the cheese. Next industry officials will be trying to spin that MCHM and PPH are good for you. It’s smells like licorice, how bad can it be, right?

The water in Charleston, West Virginia tastes a lot like Freedom these days thanks to the coal industry.

A coal industry representative performs damage control with the citizens of Charleston, West Virginia after a chemical spill from an aging Freedom Industries tank leaked into the local water supply.

Season Of The Glitch

It’s no secret that the performance of the ACA website, healthcare.gov., has been less than spectacular. The words ‘lackluster’ or ‘dismal’ come to mind. But in these modern times of agile software development, where the goal is to just get the product out at deadline and then fix the myriads of problems after release, it shouldn’t come as any surprise at all to anybody familiar with software development. But you’d think the Obama administration would have found some competent developers on what will be his legacy piece of legislation. Nevertheless, the failures associated with healthcare.gov seem to be happening on very fundamental issues. It seems very fishy to us. Could there have been sabotage from…I don’t know…developers with conservative Republican bias? It turns out that the Canadian company, CGI, which contracted to do the website, contributed heavily to Republican coffers. Wow. Can you imagine a bunch of Teabagger patriots working on the site? No wonder it’s not working correctly.

A couple of highly competent Teabagger software developers work feverishly to fix the problems with healthcare.gov.

 

 

GOP’s Pyrrhic Victory

On Wednesday, Congress finally made a deal to fund the government and increase the debt limit, which was clearly a victory for President Obama and the Democrats. Right? Not so fast, America. Shutdown architect and smuggest Senator alive, Ted Cruz, declared that the shutdown was a great victory…for the Republicans???!!! Ah yes! The delusion continues…

Teabagger patriot and smuggest Senator alive, Ted Cruz, basks in the glow of his recent accomplishments.

Poor Wittle Baby

Georgia GOP Representative Phil Gingrey whined recently in a meeting about being stuck in Congress making $172k a year, while his staff can go out and get rich as lobbyists. All together now…Aaaaahhhhhhh! Poor wittle Phillie Gingrey!!! He can’t make it on just $172,000 a year! This would normally just be another of the myriads of examples of crybaby Republicans not getting their way, but what makes this even more profoundly disturbing is that these so called ‘compassionate conservatives’ just voted to cut funding for food stamps. So to review from events this past week: House Republicans say we’ve got money to go to war in Syria, but no money to feed our own citizens. Yessirree, that Jesus-like compassion is shining right through.

GOP Representative and well known pauper, Phil Gingrey, shows Jesus-like compassion for the poor and downtrodden.

Diplomacy Is So Wimpy

President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry are making the case for taking limited military action against Syria for allegedly using chemical weapons on it’s own people. We’re not sure more military action in the Middle East is wise at this time but what’s most disturbing is one of the reasons stated by our illustrious Democratic and Republican leaders: that we need to take action because we don’t want to look wimpy. Really? This is an important reason for taking military action in a hotbed of civil unrest? We don’t want to look wimpy???!!!  Right, diplomacy is so wimpy. Gee, don’t forget we want to impress the cheerleaders and cool kids, too. We’ve come to expect this grade school reasoning from Republicans, but come on President Obama and John Kerry! Screw using our tax money on jobs, employment, infrastructure and education IN THIS COUNTRY!!! Let’s get into another Middle Eastern quagmire, because we don’t want to look wimpy. Geez, you can almost see the marionette strings on our leaders as they are being manipulated by the military industrial complex.

President Obama explains the importance of looking tough to avoid the painful wedgies and swirlies which may follow from trying to use wimpy diplomacy.

 

 

Congress Keeps Priorities

In keeping with the Congress sucking theme…

Recently, a bill that would have strengthened background checks for gun purchases failed to pass despite passing 55-45, this despite a majority voting for it and 90% of Americans wanting stronger background checks. Republican Senators who voted against the bill proudly stated their obstructionism. Mitch ‘The Turtle’ McConnell even mocked the legislation on his facebook page after the vote. Then of course there is the dishonorable Senator Jeff ‘Two-Face’ Flake (but what a great smile and wow, the hair!) from our not-so-great-lately state of Arizona. He told constituents that he supported background checks and then promptly voted against the bill. Then his teenage son recently got into hot water when he tweeted homophobic and racist tweets on Twitter.  That’s would Jesus would do, right? So much for compassionate christian conservatism.

It’s nice to know that our elected officials are keeping their priorities straight, eh?

American gun lovers rejoiced after GOP Senators like Mitch ‘The Turtle’ McConnell and Jeff ‘Two Face’ Flake struck down legislation that would have required universal background checks on all gun purchases.

Congress Is Great…At Sucking

It appears that our congress has reached a new level of ineptitude. According to recent polls, congressional approval is down to 10% in a Gallup poll and 11% in a recent Rasmussen poll. Of course, this is to be expected since our Congress is made up of jellyfish (Democrats) and crybabies (Republicans). This says a lot about Americans as well. It’s been this way for some time and yet we continually send these same clowns back to Washington instead of sending new faces with fresh ideas from other parties. It’s like a certain segment of our population is comfortable with this clearly dysfunctional representation. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Maybe for the next election, we should try electing new people and new parties in Washington.

At least our bought-off-and-paid-for-corporate-loving congress has agreed on a bipartisan message for all us Americans who aren’t a corporation.

The United States congress has finally come together for a special message to the non-corporate American electorate.

 

Taxing the Rich? I Can’t Watch!

The talks to avoid the dreaded ‘fiscal cliff’ continue and yet one big Republican player has been sitting on the sidelines of the debate. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a.k.a. ‘The Turtle’, has pretty much kept himself out of the discussions. But we have no doubt that in the coming days, the good senator, who famously wanted to make President Obama a one-term president, will show us the typical spirit of bi-partisanship that Republicans have exhibited the past four years and block anything the Democrats put in front of him.

The always cautious but zany Senate Minority Leader, Mitch McConnell, plays the waiting game with the looming ‘fiscal cliff’.