Its been quite a week for news.  Everything happened at a fast and furious pace which always means a mixed news bag.  Some events are so large they can eclipse what would otherwise be startling headlines.  That’s why the powers that be plan things to shake-out the way they do.  Eric Holder is being crucified as Obama’s proxy by a bunch of bullies headed by Darrell Issa who claims he wants to get to the bottom of the ‘Fast and Furious’ gun-walking scheme; but without so much as taking a peek at the program’s origins.  The question is: who knew what when about US agents gun-walking arms to the Mexican drug cartel and how did a border agent wind-up dead?  I don’t know, but maybe Issa should start by asking the Bush Administration?  Then all heads for news turned, when Arizona’s ‘Papers Please’ law was struck-down by the Supreme Court; leaving Eric Holder’s trials and tribulations to smolder on metaphorical page six.  Good call on the part of the Supreme Court….

Meanwhile, Darrel Issa is Eric Holder’s smarmy and unbalanced inquisitor grilling the Attorney General on the floor of the House of Representatives all week long and all the week before that…. and all the week before that….  Ad nauseum.  Issa bears a striking resemblance to the reptilian Grand Vizir in Walt Disney’s Aladdin.  The man has a cruel and unlikable face.  I suppose he can’t help that, but he can help playing to ‘type’.  Issa is lubricating the House of Reptilians with his own brand of McCarthy’s Famous Political Snake Oil in an effort to draw attention away from his own objectives to curtail citizen’s rights to vote (which has no connection to Fast and Foolishness other than serving as a diversionary tactic).  Things get so layered in politics….  When suddenly Nora Ephron died and there was a legitimate period where everyone had to catch our collective breaths to respectfully laugh and cry.  And Eric Holder remained sitting in exile on metaphorical page six.  No one was talking about the ‘Fast and Furious’ program or how it was implemented during the Bush Administration.  Darrell Issa wants to get to the heart of the matter, but without ever venturing back to the daze of George Dubbuah Bush.  He wants to find wrong-doing on Holder’s watch even if he has to plant or fabricate his own evidence to do so.  We’re living through a truth be damned kind of decade….

Then the Supreme Court upheld Obama’s ‘Affordable Care Act’ and everything ground to a screeching halt.  Even before people had time to tweet, Rand Paul made one of his customary poorly thought out comments: “Just Because SCOTUS Says It’s Constitutional, Doesn’t Make It So.”  Actually it does, but when you have a barely nodding acquaintance with truth and reality, and you’re Rand Paul, you also have full license to be your father’s son.  Of course Romney called a press conference and said something but no one was interested in hearing it.  Nor should they be.  Some people tuned in to watch John Boehner bungling out a word or two, but only to see if he’d cry.  Pundits pontificated and purists of polar opposites retreated to their prospective camps – but in the final analysis, the Affordable Care Act took ownership of the week.  That’s when America’s first black Attorney General, Eric Holder was voted in ‘contempt of Congress’ – straight down party lines by House Republicans over strong objections from Democrats who shouted ‘SHAME’ repeatedly on the House steps.  This historic censure happened largely because of Holder’s own honest willingness to cooperate with his inquisitors.  After all, the program was busted on Holder’s watch – not implemented…!  Unfortunately the House of Representatives fell down a rabbit hole an election or two back…. And Eric Holder still sits metaphorically on page six as a token gesture of Republican tribal sacrifice.  He’ll survive this faux-scandal intact.  He’s from Chicago.

- Dissociated Press, 6/29/2012

http://features.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2012/06/27/fast-and-furious-truth/?iid=HP_River

The almost ‘white Supremest Court’ made two correct decisions in a row this week.  How can that be?  First by striking-down Arizona’s ‘Papers Please’ racist/fascist stupidity.  Now the Roberts Supreme Court has upheld the individual mandate of President Obama’s signature health care bill.  Roberts realizes this outcome, even as a five/four decision had to play out exactly as it did, given the disastrous results of judicial activism in bad legal decisions like ‘Citizens United’ (which is a very, very misleading title for a law that harms citizens in favor of corporate interests).  Go Figure….  The Supremes did something right twice in a row.  Now if the House of Representatives will please take the hint and realize no one is buying Darrel Issa’s bullshit about Attorney General, Eric Holder being in contempt of Congress, we’ll have a Trifecta.  (That decision has not been made as of my writing this post).

Right now, John Boehner is spewing oral diarrhea across the airwaves about how terrible this individual mandate will be for the country while dutifully reading from the playbill provided to him by corporate America.  Mitt Romney is just about to read similar non sequiturs from his Etch-A-Sketch just moments from now – tap-dancing around the reality that this decision is completely consistent with his own signature health care legislation from his days as the governor of Massachusetts.  Romney has a unique gift for wedge-issuing himself in between a rock and a hard place.  On the other hand, this is an excellent day for Barack Obama and an even better day for the American people.  Now we have a fighting chance of getting to tweak and tailor the existing health care legislation so as to include additional features like universal health care.  But remember, the health care bill doesn’t fully go into effect until 2014 – be patient.

It is essential that we reelect Barack Obama and defeat or neutralize as many neocon-congressmen as possible: People like Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, Eric Cantor, John Boehner, Jim DeMint and Rand Paul, all of whom have served only as a chorus of intestinal blockages when it comes to progressive reforms geared toward propelling this country forward.  A heavenly strike of lightening should hit Darrel Issa and Roy Blunt too.  That would make me start believing in a just God….

For America to become competitive with all the other industrialized nations with whom we deal, we need a cooperative congress in both houses where constipation, filibusters and stalemates aren’t the standard order of the day.  We need to wean ourselves off of our steady diet of bending to the will of greed motivated parasites like the health care insurance industry.  (They call is competition).  We need to educate American voters to grasp the importance of not listening to institutionalized lies spewed by shadow-pack political advertising, in favor of common sense voting that upholds their own best interests.  The GOP realizes that once the American people get a taste of health care reform, they’re going to like it, and once the people learn how much they like it, hopefully the din of stupidity coming from the Tea Party might just boil-over and burn the kettle dry.  By the way, Obama DOES care, and the term ObamaCare is fully reclaimed as a positive moniker.

- Dissociated Press, 6/28/2012

Mitt Romney’s views on self deportation might have its roots the candidate’s own family history, as they’ve done that very thing themselves.  Romney’s great grandfather “self deported’ himself down Mexico-way to avoid American Federal Statutes outlawing polygamy.  You see, Mitt’s grandfather had five wives, as was the custom among 19th century Mormons.  When Utah went from a territory to an American state, Mitt’s grandfather felt HIS right to keep a harem superseded any loyalty he might have to the new United States Federal Government.  As a point of fact, Mitt Romney’s own father was born in Mexico and didn’t even come to America until the age of seven so as to avoid the Mexican Civil War.  The Romney men have a long-standing history of avoiding participation in wars.  I don’t fault them for that, but I do fault Mitt Romney’s motivations, however that’s another topic….

When the Supreme Court struck down three out of the four lynchpins of the Arizona “Papers Please Law” that left Romney scrambling.  The 4th lynchpin is standing on shaky ground and is likely to itself be struck down in a future ruling.  However, Romney’s capacity for hypocrisy and flip-flopping is unmatched by any politician in American history.  He’s on record supporting states rights to enforce immigration laws that fly in the face of Federal laws.  Bear in mind, he can’t win the presidency without the Hispanic vote, so there’s a lot of scrambling and revisionist history coming from the Romney camp while they pray for a national collective amnesia.  Romney has to keep his extreme right-wing base energized, and nothing works better with that crowd than reinforcing hate and unfairness; as all of those people conveniently forget that unless they’re direct descendents of Native Americans, then they’re the ancestors of immigrants.  History is lost on the ‘low-Q’ constituents who comprise the neocons in the Tea Party.

The long and the short of it is:  Romney has boxed himself in with hateful rhetoric about Mexican, Cuban and South American immigrants to appease his low-Q base.  All of these comments are a matter of public record ranging from idiotic concepts like ‘self deportation’ to endorsing laws that would legitimize racial profiling (now struck down by the Supreme Court).  All this leaves Romney adrift on his own raft without a country.  His recent address to a Floridian group of National Hispanic and Latino leaders drew a chorus of crickets among a smattering of ‘polite’ but unenthusiastic applause.  Even Marco Rubio can’t save Romney’s perception among the Latino population, as Rubio has his own credibility issues to deal with.

How strange it is for a man like Romney, whose own family history includes immigration both to and from the United States and Mexico, to now find himself on record as opposing a legal path to citizenship for Hispanic/Latin Americans.  His stance on that and any topic depends on who comprises the audience he’s addressing, so you can’t trust a word he utters.  In Romney’s own freakish way he IS one of the very group he demonized even as he turns away from Hispanics while trying to woo their vote, all in the same breath.  But have no fear, Romney will say or do anything expedient to try and fake or buy his way into power.  He has no beliefs of his own.  He has no convictions.  He has a deep and reliant faith on the American people as a population living in a haze of short term memory spans.  Sadly he may be right, but lets hope not.  Remember, most of Romney’s money is in offshore accounts, making his greenbacks essentially WET greenbacks.  Romney looks less and less American in my eyes than any fabricated foolishness about ‘birther’ theories about the president’s birthplace.

- Dissociated Press, 6/26/2012

Welcome to the wonderful world of institutionalized denial.  The college professor who has a long buried history of complaints over ‘hitting-on’ coeds, but isn’t taken seriously until after he’s busted for rape….  The boss or supervisor who has two dozen grievances filed away for rage and abuse but somehow floats through his or her career unchecked….  These kinds of stories are far from uncommon, and if judicial conservatives get their way, victims of institutionalized abuse will find their ability to pursue legal remedies severely curtailed.  Let’s hope authority figures from all walks of life were paying attention to Friday’s pair of high profile smack-downs of institutionalized abuse.  It took something as chilling as the Penn State scandal to actually upstage the Catholic Church for egregious denial and repulsive impropriety.  That’s because football is more popular than religion.  By the way, two of my least favorite things in the world are organized religion and football.

Friday was a landmark day for drawing attention to institutionalized abuse.  Maybe June 22nd should be anointed Institutional Abuse Awareness Day?  Early on Friday, Monsignor William Lynn was convicted on charges of endangering the welfare of minors in the Philadelphia Archdiocese child sex-abuse scandal where the church was charged with knowingly redistributing sexually abusive priests to unwitting parishes.  Monsignor Lynn received a comparatively light sentence for taking the fall for the late Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua, but that’s the way the verdict crumbles.  At least he was convicted.  The church knew those serial offenders carried-on their pattern of abuse to ever new and unsuspecting flocks.  The subtext of what’s been on trial is institutionalized denial at its most insidious: The time-honored tradition of sweeping ‘inconvenient’ problems under the carpet in hopes that no one will notice the bubble under the rug.  That’s how the ‘old boy network’ operates.

Later that same Friday evening the nation’s most infamous college football coach, Jerry Sandusky was convicted on 45 out of 48 counts of sexual abuse of a minor in the biggest sex scandal to rock the sports world in living memory.  Personally, I don’t believe Sandusky’s behavior merely appeared out of nowhere as an abbreviated period of temporary insanity….  Both Penn State and the Catholic Church share eerily similar crimes that were mishandled with the same measure of institutional denial that allowed those crimes to thrive unchecked.  In both cases supposedly responsible adults bearing the burden of supervisory authority exacerbated the unspeakable by turning a blind eye while placing the ‘institution’ above the weight of the atrocities.  Clearly institutional priorities have always been geared toward avoiding responsibility for scandals, but in failing to respond when faced with such scandals, officials further diminished the reputations of the institutions they sought to preserve.  It’s difficult to understand how the reputation of a church or a college could supersede the welfare of a child but in some authoritarian mind-sets apparently it does.  In the final analysis, hiding crimes of that nature leads to far worse consequences for everyone concerned, than had those institutions confronted the charges head-on the moment they became aware of them.

Football is by definition an abusive game the appeal of which is completely lost on me.  I don’t understand participating in the game any more than I understand wasting time watching it.  Football is the contemporary ancestor of brutal Colosseum bloodsport, and it’s proving to have a wide spread laundry list of problems from bullying off the field to traumatic brain injury on the field.  Now raging misguided testosterone has upped the ante as Jerry Sandusky and his witless co-conspirators turned a blind-eye toward adult responsibility because football apparently trumps everything from academics to integrity.

Likewise, the Catholic Church has a long institutionalized history of violence and sexual abuse, all of which is in direct violation of Christian principles, but that hasn’t stopped anyone; its merely placed in under the radar.  Monsignor William Lynn will likely see a light prison sentence, but his conviction serves as an inroad toward finally securing accountability from the Catholic Church.  Sandusky, on the other hand, will never see the light of day outside of a prison yard, providing he isn’t beaten to death first.  Both men are pathetic.  Both are a disgrace to the institutions they represented; and how curious it is that 2000 years later a leading gladiator and a Christian leader should both meet their verdicts in the same Colosseum of justice….

By and large you don’t usually see openly gay men facing these kinds of criminal charges.  That sort of behavior runs rampant among closeted individuals living a lie within the ‘acceptable’ boundaries of traditional society.  It begs the question as to whether suppressed sexuality leads to a life of inappropriate secret sexual expression?  And, are places of worship and idolized football teams ripe breeding grounds for sociopaths?  Priests have long been looked up to as cornerstones of the community.  Sandusky was a respected married man who had a football reputation which enabled authorities across the board to allow his conduct to fester for decades.  He lived the lie of being a respected family man and community leader;  but his own adopted son has stepped forward with a set of allegations, and who can reasonably doubt him?  Should football EVER be THAT powerful a cloak of invisibility?  Of course not!  Football is worthless in the greater scheme of things.  Every single day trusting parents deliver children of both genders to the church and to sporting programs expecting the highest level of safety and respect for their sons and daughters.  What we have just witnessed is institutionalized failure at its most repulsive and extreme.

The lesson to be drawn from these crimes and ensuing convictions should not be a witch hunt, but rather a teachable moment for authority figures across the boards to fully grasp the ramifications of hushing-up abuse of any kind – especially child abuse, be it sexual, violent, psychological or a combination thereof.  All such allegations need to be taken seriously, investigated and prosecuted accordingly.  Hiding child abuse by putting it out of sight is the worst and most misguided way of governing children and the ‘institutions’ charged with protecting them.  In the long run, denial is the fast-lane to wrong-doing, and in so doing, inaction serves to further scar not only the institution, but the innocent victims who relive those experiences the rest of their lives.  And here I thought the only thing football and religion had in common, was they’re both as boring as watching paint dry….

There is a long standing Republican pattern of blaming the Democrats for a litany of GOP mistakes and blatant corruption.  In fact, it’s a time honored tradition.  Take the Iran Contra scandal where American weapons were intended to be distributed to Iranians by the Regan Administration in an effort to release seven American hostages.  Instead those weapons landed in the hands of a Nicaraguan drug cartel.  The GOP manged to dodge that particular bullet, and even land Oliver North his own conservative talk radio show.  And still people blame Jimmy Carter for our troubles with Iran….

Before the Iran Contra scandal, we witnessed the break-in at the Democratic National Headquarters in the Watergate Hotel at the hand of Richard Nixon and HIS Republican administration.  Later we lived through a near decade of Bush/Cheney’s Republican lies about weapons of mass destruction leading to two wrongful wars and an incomprehensible death toll – not to mention the deterioration of our standing in the international community.  When Democrats have a scandal, it’s a blowjob at best….  HOWEVER, it’s the Republicans who’ve elevated scandal and corruption to a fine and unpunished art form.  They’ve also learned how to best blame their mistakes on everyone except those who are genuinely responsible. 

Now the Fast and Furious gunrunning program has landed even more American weapons and munitions in the hands of the Mexican drug cartels in a misguided effort to bust illegal arms sales by becoming the very thing that program was purportedly designed to prevent.

Now think for a minute, who has a prior history of that sort of corruption and incompetence where drugs and guns are concerned?  The Republicans.  Who started the ‘Fast and Furious’ program in 2006, two years BEFORE Barack Obama was elected?  The Bush/Cheney REPUBLICAN administration of course….  The F&F program had already gone awry long before Barack Obama or Attorney General, Eric Holder had ever taken their oaths of office.  They inherited this as one more untidy mess courtesy of the Bush Administration.  Republicans fail to recognize that the Fast and Furious program was busted on Eric Holder’s watch, and he has fully cooperated with the Congressional hearings.  So it’s only natural in the course of things that the GOP would turn their own scandal into a witch hunt during an election year in an effort to bring down Obama.

The Fast and Furious congressional investigations are being chaired by the House Oversight Committee under the unreasonable madness of California Republican, Rep. Darrell Issa, who is no stranger to scandal or illogical behavior.  Issa, a known congenital idiot, demanded papers be turned over to the committee that would potentially put more American lives in jeopardy – then Issa accused Barack Obama of stonewalling because he invoked ‘executive privilege’ to keep vital classified information from going public.  Perhaps the committee should be renamed the ‘House Overlook and Overreach Committee’?  Issa has a long running history of shady dealings, not only concerning acts of suppressing information, but most notably within the business sector – no surprises there.  Google him.

Darell Issa’s unbridled evil is what is preventing testimony from being heard that would exonerate Attorney General, Eric Holder.  This action is NOT because the blocked testimony is irrelevant, but because it doesn’t dovetail with the agenda Issa wants to promote.  Issa is blocking testimony capable of getting to the root failure of the F&F mission for a very specific reason:  He realizes that testimony will point directly toward the Republican Party and the Bush Administration; therefore it isn’t useful in helping to elect Mitt Romney as the GOP presidential figurehead.  Remember, where the GOP is concerned it isn’t about doing what’s right or best for America: It’s about reclaiming the White House as if all our national troubles were nothing more than a hostile game of chess.  Meanwhile, running in the background like an insidious computer virus is the NRA pulling the puppet strings and protecting their own deranged gun and money interests.  Dollars will get you doughnuts the NRA knows more about the F&F program falures than history will ever uncover.

We are all extremely saddened that American border agent, Brian Terry was killed as a result of the failed Bush policies that deteriorated into the gunrunning fiasco we now call ‘Fast and Furious.’  Everyone is sorry about the countless thousands of lives lost in Bush’s two mismanaged and illegal wars in the Middle East.  Everyone is sorry about the global economic catastrophe visited upon us by Republican avarice and greed.  But don’t try and pin a morsel of it on Eric Holder in an effort to besmirch Barack Obama’s integrity.  Republicans need to clean their own ‘House’ before accusing the error of their own ‘ways and means’ on anyone else.  Admittedly it’s great theater for the House to censure the Attorney General for contempt; however the ‘contemptible’ component is being provided courtesy of Darrel Issa and the Republican majority in the House of Representatives.

Oh, by the way, in unrelated matters, Darell Issa is one of the driving forces behind the effort to roll-back women’s rights.  The man is pure undiluted evil, and he needs to GO, along with all his corrupt Republican co-conspirators.

- Dissociated Press, 6/22/2012

Did you ever think we’d live to see the day when the word ‘vagina’ was barely dripping off people’s lips before we were all suddenly talking about an all-nun bus tour to combat the Paul Ryan budget plan (?)  The world’s maternal voice is speaking-up; including contemporary Catholic nuns.  Women are on full scale rebellion and who can blame them?  These Catholic gals don’t always wear the traditional starched black and white habits we’re accustomed to, but rather, they prefer to blend-in with the crowd by doing variations on a theme of Mamie Eisenhower.  You gotta love their grim fashions and defiant attitude toward Rome, turning their backs on the Pope; in favor of taking orders from the heart.  What are they thinking…?  Adhering to Christian principals…?  Vowing to look after the sick and the poor…?  Certainly not while there is same-sex marriages to combat.  Pay no attention to the sexapades of the Catholic male orgy, I mean clergy and their own treasure trail of sex-crimes.

We do indeed live in interesting times.

Now if we could only get to see the Sisters of Mercy perform a reading of the ‘Vagina Monologues’ I would promise to attend church if only to witness the historic nature of the performance.  You haven’t lived until you’ve seen Sister Blandina with her clutch-purse pushed-up against an opaque projector reciting the stations of the cross before launching into the ‘Monologues.”

I will open all plastic wrappers in advance, and I will place my cell on vibrate in titillating respect and anticipation.  ‘Nuns on the Bus’ is spectacular – way better than ‘Snakes on a Plane.’  It’s gratifying to see the sweet old biddies defying the Scarlet Harpie of Rome; drag-queen that she is.  Instead of buying into the Pope’s poop, the good sisters have been dancing around a fire decrying the evils of the Paul Ryan budget plan, pointing out the obvious; that it benefits the rich at the expense of the poor.  Last I checked, the basics of the Ryan budget were in gross defiance of Christian principals.  Saints be praised, it’s about time someone from the clergy took the moral high-road because you know the Republican Party never will.

By the way, the good sisters are right.  The Ryan budget would most likely lead to wide-spread rioting and an American financial meltdown not unlike what we’ve seen play itself out recently in Europe.  Never underestimate the Republican capacity to diminish themselves individually and collectively in the name of stealing a penny.  It’s worth mentioning, the Paul Ryan budget plan is favored by Mitt Romney, who doesn’t answer to Rome either.  He answers whatever is convenient or pops into his head first.

Dissociated Press, 6/20/2012

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Man0DywvP8

America is a nation originally founded by prudes, depressingly austere religious prudes who were casting a pall over all of Europe, in turn seeking new lands where they could abuse indigenous peoples and introduce emotions like guilt and frustration and ‘original sin’ to the innocents who greeted them.  Innocents who they later massacred so America could be as white as Milk of Magnesia.  And we’re still carrying around their excess sexually repressed baggage to this very day.  In keeping that tiresome spirit alive, the Republican Party has morphed into Teapublicans which is similar in name only, but with a lower collective IQ and a lot more sexual hang-ups – and a higher teen pregnancy rate.

Michigan State Representatives Lisa Brown (D) and fellow Representative Barb Byrum (D) have been censured, effectively preventing either of them from making any comments out loud on the floor of the Michigan State House after they used the word “vagina” while addressing other members in the chamber about birth control restrictions.  This begs the obvious question: If conservative male lawmakers want to pass tasteless legislation that intrudes on the freedoms of any individual to have complete governance over their own body, those males should at least be man enough to say the word “VAGINA.”  It’s a short, three syllable word vā-gīn-a.  Very simple, easy to pronounce and clinically correct correct when referring to female genitalia, which is after all what they’re intrusively legislating.

Anyone gullible enough not to realize the Republican Party has indeed declared war on women is either naive or stupid.  But that’s not all, the GOP has declared war on homosexuality and immigration.  The Republican also stand for greed motivation, and to prove it, they’ve thrown a body-block in the path of regulating fair practices in banking, thus fostering our new national corporate domination.  Without ever saying the word, the GOP is effectively screwing every thinking, fair-minded citizen of the United States, male or female, thus forcing their own religious restrictions on other people while decrying the evils of Sharia Law – as they try to quietly enact their own watered-down version of it.

Heaven help us if the American people are dumb enough to pull Republican levers this coming November.  If that comes to pass, it’ll make the Bush years look like a trip to Disney World.  Republicans need to get the hell out of other people’s crotches.  The Republican Party has to learn how to stop stealing money and passing laws that make unethical conduct legal.  They have to stop constipating progress in Congress, and they have to realize how cruel and unusual it is to deport an individual to a country they know nothing about and don’t even speak the language due entirely to circumstance beyond that person’s control.  What is the matter with these knee-jerk conservative imbeciles?  Everything the GOP stands for flies in the face of common sense, human rights and decency.

For whatever irrational ‘rationalizations’ the Republicans may bring to bare, when you’re mandating what other people can do with their own crotches, it’s a legislative molestation.  A rape.  When you’re deporting innocent people because you haven’t taken the time to grasp their plight, you’re inhuman.  When you refuse tax-paying citizens the right to marry, it’s a heartless over-reach.  All of these conservative positions are nothing more than institutionalized rape of varying definitions.  We have been systematically raped as a nation by the Republican Party for decades, and I’m in disbelief there’s anyone still left standing who is willing to vote for them.  They’re crazy people.  Zealots.  Corporate criminals.  Bullies.  Thieves.  And fools.  But MAN to they know how to play their minions for suckers…

Representative Lisa Brown displayed defiant courage when she said aloud: “Mr. Speaker, I’m flattered that you’re all so interested in my vagina, but ‘no’ means ‘no.'”  She closed her words by stating the obvious: “If I can’t say the word vagina, why are we legislating vaginas? I’m outraged. I’m outraged that this legislative body not only wants to dictate what women can do, but what we can say.”  She deserves a lot of credit for adhering to her core principals.  It took tremendous courage.

We’re facing a concerted effort to repeal progressive legislation and suppression of our Constitutional rights as a blatant affront to our national dignity – all at the hands of the finest duplicitous swindlers in the country:  The Republican Party.  From my perspective, the greatest horrors ever perpetrated on women have been visited on them by men.  Sorry to be blunt about it, but I’m a student of life and I pay attention.  Men are generally guilty of all they condemn women of doing, thinking or being.  Be serious… Bands of women don’t molest other woman because it’s her idea.  Not even if money changes hands.  Men create the sex market and groom the brides without exchanging telephone numbers let alone vows.  If you look even deeper, it’s white male Republicans serving up all the wedge issues that tear our nation apart.  The American woman is our first line of defense. Clearly any woman who votes Republican this November does not have her own best interests at heart, andshe’s likely brainwashed by men.  Republican men.  Don’t let it happen, they’ll never find out how you voted.  Your vote is yours, and yours alone, no matter who you are.  Providing Republican men let you into the voting booth at all.

- Dissociated Press, 6/17/2012

‘Citizens United’ is decidedly neither.  Much the same as the ‘moral majority’ who masquerade around like a bunch of brown-shirts declaring the ‘future belongs to them.’  Lucky for the Republican party, an astonishing number of voters pay no attention to what should matter most to them: Their vote.  Those voters are easily swayed, inclined to swallow misinformation whole and vote counter to their own best interests.  These are the same people who’re complaining constantly about what has been done to them – not realizing they’ve done it to themselves.  Some individuals, both Republican and Democrat alike, have developed blind allegiances to one party or the other and are easily spoon-fed the dogma espoused by whatever news outlet delivers the most agreeable propaganda to dovetail with their own preconceived notions.  It’s one of the sad realities of human nature.  But there’s a third group who define themselves as ‘independents.’  Secretly I’ve always suspected the greater number of independents have adopted that stance either because they don’t fully grasp the issues at stake or they merely aren’t paying close attention.  The ads will be primarily aimed at that indecisive demographic.

Citizens United is, in plain language, best categorized as ‘corporations united.’  The purpose of ‘Citizens United’ is to subvert the will and fairness of the American electoral process to come-down on the side of big business while hanging the average ‘citizen’ out to dry.  Thanks to a conservatively stacked Supreme Court, that ill-advised, wrong-minded law allows billionaire neocons like Sheldon Addlebrain and Donald Trump to set the national political tone.  Trump is a fraud who’s most likely not worth anywhere near what he claims.  But Sheldon Addleson can dash-off multimillion dollar checks like a fist full of so many M&M’s – dispersing them to secret shadow packs for the sole purpose of bombarding the airwaves with political campaign ads.  Campaign ads where no one is accountable for ‘truth in advertising.’

Expect Madison Avenue to do extremely well this season creating a commercial bloodbath between the Romney and Obama camps in the months leading up to November.  Furthermore, expect it to be earthshakingly ugly.  Why wouldn’t it be?  No one has to take responsibility for what is tantamount to institutionalized lying.  Both sides will do it, but expect the most egregious non-truths to come from the Romney super packs.  We’ve already seen them ruthlessly at work during the GOP primaries.  Romney himself possesses a barely nodding acquaintance with truth and reality, so why should we expect anything better from his monetary-minions?

Both campaigns are projected to raise in excess of a billion dollars (each) to pound their messages home.  The Republicans will undoubtedly outdistance Obama in monies raised in a effort to buy back the White House.  Mitt Romney’s economic message is no different from Ronald Regan’s or Bush I and Bush II:  Take everything away from the middle class while promising a ‘trickle-down’ prosperity that never manages to reach those who need it most.

When casino gambling moguls are setting the tone for what defines the potential outcome of an American election, we as a nation are collectively in very big trouble.  When the criminals on Wall Street and corporate dictators like the Koch Brothers have the power to brainwash an empty headed electorate busy watching baseball, beware…  Be cautious of what you hear in the presidential campaign ads this year.  In fact, you should ‘TIVO’ past all campaign ads or hit the mute button for two essential reasons:  Your sanity and the ability to make-up your own mind without having a head full of twisted half-truths and boldfaced lies.  We’re about to enter an open-season massacre on truth and reality.

- Disassociated Press, 6/15/2012

Donald Trump knows that Barack Obama wasn’t born in Kenya.  He also knows Obama WAS born in Hawaii.  While Trump is an imbecile with scary hair, he isn’t actually all that stupid, he’s merely an opportunist with a failing non-reality TV show.  Sheldon Addelbrain knows the same thing, but his greed and prejudice rule his ‘thinking’ (such as it is) to where all that matters is his endless financial enrichment from casinos full of scantily clad young women.

The devise of painting Barack Obama as an outsider of ‘suspicious origin’ is too easy when pandering to a base who can tell you who won the Superbowl, the World Series and Dancing With the Stars – but can’t tell you who’s the Speaker of the House, Senate Majority Leader or how power is divided among the three branches of government.  They probably think Diana Ross is on the Supreme Court.  Mention the words ‘legislative body’ and your average voting couch potato is already snoring.  They have no interest in the matters that actually effect the quality of their daily lives.  They know what they see on TV, and if the television set blames Obama for gas prices – why bother with the facts?  Gas prices are determined by OPEC, and Obama has no say over them.  If TV reinforces a subservient role for women and minorities, then the voting public (including some women and minorities) will buy those feted lies even when they’re not in their best interests.

I find it astonishing that Trump has the ‘basketballs’ to still be hawking the ‘birther’ bullshit well after that paranoid fantasy has long since been debunked.  No one cares that John McCain was born in Panama or that Mitt Romney’s father, former presidential candidate, George Romney was born in Mexico as the son of long-standing Mexican residents.  There are always convenient loop holes that apply when the candidate is white.  Neocons see the world moving toward diversity and it frightens them.  What if the growing black and Hispanic populations become educated and outdistance all the people who dress at Brooks Brothers?  They might loose their delicate hold on the nation and be forced to confront the truth about human achievement not being confined to one racial group who believes themselves to be superior in the eyes of their false gods.  Best then to keep everyone stupid for the sake of the GOP’s fragile ego.

The key to backing this country out of it’s collective madness is to get-out the female vote.  Women across all racial and ethnic boundaries need to stand-tall and say ‘enough’ to nonsense and discrimination.  Obama is clearly behind gender equality, and that bothers the GOP almost as much as their answering to a black commander-in-chief.  So, if Barack Obama wasn’t born in Hawaii?  Where WAS he born?  Winnie and Duck traveled the world-over researching some possibilities, and here are some speculative conclusions…

All the following birthplace speculations were provided by readers…

It is time for neocons to face the fact that every time they claim Obama wasn’t born in America, they loose IQ points they can ill-afford to part with.  Barack Obama is a natural-born American who spent much of his growing years abroad.  Get over it and focus on the issues that matter.  Intelligent people lost interest, time and respect for your distracting, non-truthful wedge issues.  Now focus on the economy and bringing fairness to an even playing-field for women and minorities.  It’s time for America to listen to Barack Obama and retrieve this nation from the blithering idiocy of the Tea Party and other mental midgets.  The United States must return to being a peaceful and prosperous nation for more than just the privileged 1%. This birther issues is over.  Enough.

Read it and weep.  Your president IS your president and whether you’re smart enough to understand it or not, he’s the best thing to come along in the American political scene in our lifetimes.