We’re taking another brief detour from our review of insane, Arizona GOP, Trumphumper candidates to talk about President Biden’s recent speech on the MAGA Republicans embracing ‘semi-fascism’. We thought it was mostly correct but ‘semi-fascism’? Really? Because the Republicans have been embracing full on fascism for some time now. And now they’ve been openly proving it every day since TFG took office in 2017 and then incited an insurrection on Jan. 6th 2021 because they didn’t win. In their typical whiny, cry-baby manner, Republicans wailed that Biden was being divisive while forgetting about how Trump vilified anyone who disagreed with him during his excruciating tenure as CEO/Dictator.
As a courtesy we’re reposting a photo-toon from December 15, 2015 post which depicts a checklist comparing the fascists of the NSDAP(Nazis) party of 1930’s Germany and the 21st century Republican party (or more appropriately, crime syndicate!). As you can see, there’s not much difference and hey, looky there . . . both had a well funded propaganda machine. So if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck . . . We repeat folks; the Republicans are full on fascists and every TFG enabler running for office needs to be voted out of office or we will lose our democracy just like Germany lost theirs in the 1930s!
The Republican Party has some eerie similarities to a certain right wing conservative fascist party from 20th century Germany.
Once again, an Arizona politician is embarrassing the state on a national level and this time it’s not a Republican. In a valiant bipartisan effort to be just as bad as Arizona’s GOP, Democrat Krysten Sinema has pretty much ended the Voting Rights Bill which Joe Biden and the Democrats have been pushing that will preserve the right to vote for all Americans, not just rich white ones. But Ms. Sinema and West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin have decided that defending the filibuster is more important than protecting democracy, much to the delight of the Republicans, most of whom still think the 2020 election was stolen by Joe Biden.
So, what’s the fricking deal with Ms. Sinema? We were psyched when she got elected in 2018. She had built herself up as a liberal and her credentials were solid. She had protested the Iraq War and had solidly supported Democratic causes. She’s even a member of the LGBTQ community. Basically, she checks all the boxes you want for a Democrat. To be fair, she has voted in favor of most of the bills Biden and the rest of the Democrats have pushed through. But she also supported several pieces of legislation during the TFG’s administration that the pro-Trump Republicans favored. So, again, what’s the deal?
Ms. Sinema seems to be under the delusion that she is some sort of master of bipartisanship. Somehow, only she has the grrrl power ability to reach across the aisle and sing Kumbaya with the likes of Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham and Ted Cruz. And predictably, the Republicans like Turtle Boy love her, but only because she is being such a tool. Did Ms. Sinema not see the Capitol riots? The Republicans attempted a coup to overthrow a legitimate election! The 21st century GOP cannot and should not be trusted on anything! The voting rights bill needs to pass urgently – NOW – or the Republicans will absolutely put an end to democracy if they ever get power back. This is obvious! They had no problem obstructing Obama’s Supreme Court nomination in 2016, claiming it was an election year, and then hypocritically pushing their right wing nomination through in 2020, which was an election year.
But Ms. Sinema has some kind of strange attraction to the filibuster which she sees as a means of bipartisanship but in actuality is a ugly method of obstructionism. During the Civil Rights Era, Martin Luther King said this about the filibuster: “I think the tragedy is that we have a Congress with a Senate that has a minority of misguided senators who will use the filibuster to keep the majority of people from even voting.” The filibuster has an awful history, especially in the last forty years, which is right about the time that gridlock seized Congress. Yes, if you want to blame the lack of progress on any meaningful legislation for the last forty years, you can blame the embrace of the filibuster or filibluster or Phil E. Buster or whatever you want to call this piece of rancid piece of obstructionism, by both parties (or corporate ass-kissing syndicates as we call them here at the Bucket). A common excuse by Democrats for not voting in elections is “what’s the point”. They claim that there’s no difference between the two parties and that both worship at the altar of capitalism, which is true. But the Democrats have pushed forth legislation in the past like Social Security Act, the Civil Rights Act and Medicare which has truly helped millions of Americans. Biden’s Build Back Better program and the Voting Rights Act are important pieces of legislation that will help millions. The American people overwhelmingly support these bills, especially the ones for infrastructure. But for some strange reason, Ms. Sinema wants to preserve the vile, obstructionist wrench that is the filibuster. If we get rid of it and pass the bills, Sinema opines that when the next election comes around and Republicans take back the House and Senate, then they will pass all their right wing legislation and do whatever they want – just like they did to put Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court with a simple majority vote – with no consequences. But if the Democrats actually PASS THE BILLS AND DO SOMETHING, then maybe they won’t lose the elections. Maybe the electorate will realize the Democrats mean business and won’t roll over and play dead every time the GOP clear their throats like they’ve done for the past twenty years.
Yes folks, Ms. Sinema seems to have pulled the bait-and-switch with all us Arizonans who voted for her thinking she would pursue progressive values. But it appears she’s given in to pressure from corporate interests. Since we’re her constituents, we regularly receive email correspondence from her office proudly touting her work for Veteran’s Rights, which is good. But it’s also not controversial at all. We know of no one who is against giving Veterans aid or assistance. This is like saying that you support breathing. But yet on the vital issues like preserving the right to vote for every American, Ms. Sinema seems to be clueless or bought out by corporate interests or bought out by the GOP or all three. At least the Arizona Democratic Party has announced they are very upset with her support of the filibuster and are looking to other candidates like Ruben Gallego in 2024 when Sinema’s term expires. Her poll numbers are in the toilet and good luck getting the Republicans support if she switches parties. Sinema is just a sassy fool and useful tool right now for the GOP’s fascist agenda. One thing’s for sure: Ms. Cutesy Pie Bait-and-Switcher won’t be a Senator too much longer. Arizonans are already sick of her schtick . Citizens from across the nation are sick of her schtick . But at least she’ll have a job at Fox News, a.k.a. the Republican Propaganda Network, when she’s handed her walking papers in 2024. Then she can sip her sangria, buy more sassy grrrl clothes, count all her money and swoon at the thought of Phil E. Buster.
For some strange reason, Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema seems to be enamored with the ugliest of Senate procedures, the filibuster (or Phil E. Buster) which prevents progress of any kind for the Democrat’s Build Back Better and Voting Rights Act legislation. But at least this cheeky grrrl has sangria, sassy clothes, lots of money from corporate donors and new friends in the GOP.
The right-wing dominated Supreme Court has shown their true intentions about abortion rights by recently letting stand severe abortion bans in Texas and Mississippi. We’ve been screaming about their intentions for years here at the Bucket. States with Republican leadership ranging from bible thumping states like South Dakota and Alabama to our home state of Arizona have been slowly chipping away at abortion rights over the last twenty years. Religious zealots have seized control of state and federal government and forced their horribly archaic, first century viewpoints upon the citizenry of the country because these holy huckster bible thumpers still view the woman as nothing more than a baby factory. If these people were truly pro-life, they’d realize that the woman’s life should come first. But then hypocrisy does seem to be commonplace with these sheeple. They claim to be pro-life but then fervently support gun rights. They claim to be pro-life but then violently protest getting a life saving vaccine against a disease that has claimed over 800,000 people in the US and over 5 million word wide.
Keep the sheeple scared and keep ’em away from the polls! Yep, Trump’s definitely angling to join the President for Life club with his pal Vlad and his Republican sycophants are no doubt going to do their damnedest to try and make it happen.
Upon seeing how scared the American sheeple have become due to the coronavirus, America’s Impeached CEO/Dictator Donald Trump reveals a plan that will enable him to be President for life and beyond, just like his hero and man crush Russian President Vladimir Putin.
America’s Impeached CEO/Dictator and petulant man child, Donald Trump, bears a striking resemblance to rotten, little imp Bart Simpson from the Simpsons and has even adopted walking around proclaiming loudly to all how great he is.
Donald Trump proclaiming his greatness to all.
Donald Trump perpetually proclaiming his greatness.
So, in true right wing, conservative Republican, authoritarian fashion, life in the United States can now be summed up by the mantra, Trump über alles. Enjoy your fascism, America – oh… and Heil Trump!
With their sham impeachment trial, Senate Republicans have officially declared that America’s CEO/Dictator and petulant man child, Donald Trump, is above the law and that democracy and rule of law no longer exist in the United States. In other words, Trump über alles, or in other other words, Heil Trump!
These are trying times not just for the United States, but for the entire world. Tensions are high in the Middle East with America’s assassination of Iran’s general Qassem Soleimani and Iran’s retaliatory attack on U.S. bases in Iraq, not to mention Iran’s accidental shooting down of a commercial airliner. There is the impeachment saga of Donald Trump and his continuing attempts with help from his flying monkey lackeys in the Senate at distracting Americans (see Iran attack).
But the most frustrating thing about it is that the conservative leaders in Australia, much like their conservative counterpart Republicans in the United States are big time climate change deniers. Prime Minister Scott Morrison has received a boatload of flack for his handling of the crisis. He actually took a vacation to Hawaii while Australian citizens grappled with the fires. Of course, Morrison blamed it all on a “breakdown in communications”. He was also roundly booted from a town in New South Wales where citizens, fed up with the government inaction, heckled him thus driving him away from their town. In our estimation, Morrison deserves every bit of criticism. His and other corporatists attitude is to protect the fossil fuel industries at all cost and to ignore the obvious results of climate change, flippantly dismissing bushfires as something Australia always have had, this year it’s just a little more severe. But Australia’s summer temperatures have broken records for the last several years and the hot, dry air is only making the bushfires that much worse.
The crisis is real and Australia is in danger of losing not only its unique land wildlife but also its diverse sea life as well. The Great Barrier Reef is also in tremendous peril. The leaders of the world need to stop being greedy and consumed by materialism and the pursuit of capitalistic wealth. Like we’ve said over and over here, there is no planet B!If the living plants and creatures on this world die, we die! Since humans have commandeered this planet, it’s our responsibility as its ‘smartest’ species to make sure all life survives. Capitalism is killing life on this planet. It’s time for our leaders to pull their greedy fricking heads out of their greedy fricking asses and pass laws, a.k.a regulations, against polluting industries throughout the world.
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison laments the possible extinction of the fossil fuel industry if climate change is addressed while a kangaroo, a koala and an endangered potoroo have a few choice words for the PM.
So, we have historic testimony of wrongdoing by a President of the United States and what do the corporate news media clowns focus on: how boring it is!!! Seriously!!! Not only did the jokers at Fox whine about how unexciting the hearings were, other networks like NBC also commented that the hearings “lacked the pizzazz necessary to capture public attention.” Yeah, that grown up stuff like running a smooth, efficient government is pretty boring, we guess. While we agree that many American citizens suffer from chronic attention deficit disorder and have been dumbed down to comical levels (i.e. Donald Trump was somehow elected President for Pete’s sake!) we here at the Bucket have found the hearings compelling and enlightening. For one thing: the Republicans are absolute scum. They’re no longer the party of Eisenhower or even Reagan, Bush or Dubya. It was unbelievably repulsive watching Devin Nunes or any of the other flying monkeys on the Republican counsel blatantly try to bully and intimidate the witnesses, all in an attempt to please their dear Leader: clearly putting party above truth, justice and country. Maybe Mr. Nunes and the conservative corporate media would rather have the hearings feature the dance stylings of Sean ‘Spicey’ Spicer performing a salute to Carmen Miranda. Yeah, that would please Trump supporters.
Due to whining and crying from Republicans that the impeachment inquiries were boring, Adam Schiff announces that the hearings will now offer entertainment featuring the dance stylings of Sean Spicer.
The Trump impeachment inquiry grinds onward but last week, the 2nd worst president of our lifetime, George W. Bush, a.k.a. Dubya, reappeared in the national arena when a football broadcast showed talk show host Ellen DeGeneres palling around with ol’ Dub Dub, who supported at one time a constitutional amendment against same-sex marriage, at a Dallas Cowboy’s game in luxury seats. This has sparked much controversy, some celebrities being supportive of Ellen’s new buddy and others, like Mark Ruffalo, not so supportive. Given how much we’ve griped about Dubya since 2003, we tend to agree with Ruffalo’s statements. In fact. we say Bravo!
We’ve noted before about the recent normalization of Dubya’s clusterf*cked administration now that Trump is in office. Make no mistake, Bush was awful!His administration tried to undermine rule the law just like Trump is doing now because. . . you know . . . that’s what Republicans do.Dubya lied repeatedly to the public and his Attorney General Alberto Gonzales did for Bush what Bill Barr is doing for the orange haired, megalomaniac man child in the White House. Remember, Gonzales tried to fire federal prosecutors back in 2007 for political purposes. He also had a litany of other controversies, which eventually led to his resignation. That’s just part of the Republican’s eternal blue print to destroy government regulations (or laws!) and privatize everything for the good of the plutocrats of corporate America.
We recommend that everybody review the history of these conservative Republican con artists from the Bush era. They should be held accountable but instead people choose to forget. We like Ellen. But it’s too bad that she is so willing to look past Dubya’s war crimes, because he should be held accountable for them. But, in true conservative fashion, Bush has not apologized and will never apologize for his transgressions, because in his mind, conservatives never make mistakes and to admit a wrongdoing is a sign of weakness. Sound like anybody currently occupying the White House?
Well, in America, we guess when you’re a rich celebrity, money trumps everything else. Who cares if you tortured people and started a war on false pretenses that screwed up the entire Middle East. Let’s enjoy a football game together in luxury seats because we’re famous and wealthy. What Ellen should have done was to offer up her seat to one of the many veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan who lost limbs or who are suffering from PTSD. Better yet, why don’t Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice and all those other millionaires and plutocrats who profited from those wars pay all the medical costs for those veterans who are now suffering. Nope; like everything else, we the people end up paying for everything while the wealthy skate away with their money without a care in the world and without accountability.
Here’s photo-toon featuring Dubya and Fredo ‘Pinocchio’ Gonzales from our June 26, 2007 issue.
President Bush continues to support his embattled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, despite calls for his resignation from both Democrats and Republicans, following his dubious testimony during the Senate’s investigation into the possible politically motivated dismissals of eight federal prosecutors last year.
But she’s not the first advocate for climate change. Jimmy Carter actually talked the talk and walked the walk back in the 1970s but thanks to conservative patron saint Ronald Reagan, the nascent green energy movement was ridiculed and quashed before it even got started. Of course, many other intelligent people have stepped to the forefront over the last forty years pushing for alternative energy, only to be ignored and vilified by the powerful oil, gas and coal industries and their Republican (and some Democrats) lackeys in Congress.
A few posts ago we noted how so many modern-day conservatives were against conservation, thus making themselves colossal hypocrites. But it’s much more complex than that, of course. It’s the collective, monstrous egos of our planet’s most intelligent (allegedly) species, homo sapiens, that have done the most damage. When you put it in that context, each and every human being on the planet is responsible for the demise of life on Earth. We are all to blame and if we’re to rectify the problem, we need to all get on the same page.We all need a giant philosophical paradigm shift and that starts with the realization that unregulated capitalism is killing the planet and all the life on it.
But Bolsonaro is only doing what other third world countries do when they want to play the capitalistic game. They see the wealth of the exploitative, industrialized first world countries and they want some of that action. Or, he who has the most money wins the game. Of course, once you place living, breathing ecosystems and wildlife as a commodity to be bought and sold for profit, human’s greed and hubris take over with devastating results. There are numerous examples throughout history. Most scientists believe it was humans who killed off megafauna like the mammoth, giant sloth and the saber-tooth tiger. We’ve killed off the Tasmanian tiger, the dodo and the carrier pigeon in the last five hundred years. We almost drove the American buffalo to extinction in the 19th century. We’ve killed off over 60% of species since the 1970s. Greenland is melting at an alarming rate which places its wildlife in peril. Climate change is killing the Great Barrier Reef as is human pollution. A new study has indicated that since 1970, bird populations have fallen 29% or 3 billion fewer birds. All because we ‘intelligent’ humans greedily lust for an abstract commodity; monetary wealth.
But how and why did having money become the most important thing in our world? Because we’re humans, goddamn it! We’re superior creatures! What are we humans supposed to do with our time? Go hiking in the wilderness, relax and enjoy life? Boring!!! We must grow, grow, grow! Bigger, bigger, bigger! We’re taught from day one that we must utilize our superior brains every second of the day or else we’re failures. We can’t just sit around doing nothing. Or can we? If you ask any sane person what their idea of paradise is, they’ll usually respond some idyllic tropical island like Tahiti or some mountain retreat with little to no development and lots of nature or some small remote village where people live simply. So, why are we constantly destroying nature and building ugly concrete and steel structures and athletic stadiums which only last for twenty years? Because we can; as a monument to human ingenuity and greed.
But just because we can do something, doesn’t mean we should. Would it really be so bad to just not build a new multiplex shopping center? Would it be so bad to adopt a simpler lifestyle and enjoy nature and the great outdoors? Would it be so bad to tear down some of our ubiquitous, ugly strip malls and skyscrapers and plant urban forests and farms? Plant an urban garden where that stupid parking lot is. Have a nature reserve where that stupid golf course is. If we combine this with a global effort of birth control and contraception, we can get things under control again. We need fewer humans, not more humans on this planet. Humans, especially ones from industrial, consumptive nations are at the forefront of environmental devastation. We’ve created so much waste that we’re exporting it to third world countries with poor waste management systems. If third world countries become like first world countries, then our planet is truly doomed and we can all kiss our materialistic asses goodbye. We need to dial our greed back from 11. We need to curb our consumption and learn to be content with fewer material possessions and simpler lifestyles. This is the only planet we know of that supports life. We need to put the welfare of our planet before our own wealth, because without the planet, how can we enjoy the wealth?We need to stop worshipping the greedy, egotistical and avaricious and start respecting and caring for nature and our environment. Those paradises we yearn for are right under our feet; we just don’t recognize them because of all the concrete, asphalt and steel.
In an attempt to demonstrate how superior they are, humans are proving to be far more destructive to planet Earth than any asteroid.
