So now, without any further a due, here’s Mickey Jax with one of my favorite Intellectual Situations ever — along with Mickey’s effort into deconstructing the brain of Michele Bachmann, and his breakdown of State Capitalism — which is also genuinely worthy of a spot on any major newspaper’s Op-Ed section…

Intellectual Situation 12.0: Mittens, a.k.a Mitt Romney, Won Puerto Rico Primary… So What? — By Mickey Jax

Mitt Romney won the Puerto Rico primary. Why we have primaries in Puerto Rico escapes me. We can’t vote in the presidential elections, so why would we count in the preliminary match?

(CNN) — Mitt Romney heads in to Illinois’s presidential primary this week with a handy win in Puerto Rico, pocketing the territory’s 20 GOP delegates in a bruising race that has become a numbers game for the Republican nomination.

With about 83% of total ballots accounted for early Monday in Puerto Rico, Romney had garnered more than 98,000 votes — or 83% of the total — based on unofficial results obtained from local party and election officials.

Let me introduce Uncle Tom; my new literary ploy. He’s modeled after this dude I’ve known since my high school days, a committed conservative – and possibly more aristocratic and flavorless than William F. Buckley. Uncle Tom has made a few arguments about why we should support Romney. He pointed out how Romney has taken pity on our island’s dilemma, the Portorikanischefrage if you’ll let me be that pretentious: our status as part of the United States.

Romney went on record saying he’ll support statehood for Puerto Rico. You know, just like all the other republicans that have to come to our island to pander for votes.

Uncle Tom makes a pretty good case about how we’re getting shortchanged. Our only representation in the House is a nonvoting member, and no representation in the Senate. As a state, that would change to about six or seven House members and two Senators. We also get shortchanged in money. We’d get more federal subsidies as a state than what we get now…

But Uncle Tom, what about your party’s base?

I get the feeling the GOP is so compartmentalized they don’t recognize their own hypocrisy. It’s better described as schizophrenia, double personality disorder, doppelgangerism, etc, ad nauseam, *insert even more pretentious sounding latinate word here*.

The Republican base is xenophobic beyond belief, even if they say otherwise. They’re ready to support a nationwide immigration policy modeled after Arizona, but they’ll let a territory that’s virtually 100% Hispanic become a state? But what about the federal subsidies? Yes, Puerto Rico would get more money from the federal coffers as a state, but republicans are talking about lower taxes, which would result in the federal government having less revenue, which means less subsidies.

Can you feel my incredulity?

Xenophobia and less federal government weren’t enough for them. Glenn Beck, mouthpiece for the disgruntled Republican base, has already lambasted us for having statehood dreams. He offers an argument that’s even more twisted than his linguistic and historical ignorance when he tells people Nazis were progressives because their full name was the National Socialist German Worker’s Party. According to the Encyclopaedia Brittanica (I purposefully bypassed Wikipedia to avoid accusations of it being “corrupt” because anyone can edit it), National Socialism is defined as follows:

… In its intense nationalism, mass appeal, and dictatorial rule, National Socialism shared many elements with Italian Fascism. However, Nazism was far more extreme both in its ideas and in its practice. In almost every respect it was an anti-intellectual and atheoretical movement…

Who does that sound like? I digress…

How can you top that? I’ll admit it’s actually quite simple given the name of the party in power back home, the New Progressive Party. Their current leadership is very much in line with at least the Republican Party’s economic and social stance. Unfortunately, they’re implicitly in line with the xenophobia and race baiting since their critiques of them amount to crickets chirping or coquíes singing.

Glenn Beck, deep sufferer of Nazi Tourette’s, makes the race baiting argument that making Puerto Rico’s inclusion as a state is part of a progressive conspiracy to further the fundamental transformation of the United States. He cites their party platform as proof of this:

The New Progressive Party adopts the Tennessee Plan as an additional strategy for the decolonization and the claim for the admission of Puerto Rico as the 51st State of the United States of America.

What the hell is the Tennessee Plan? According to the latest territory that used it successfully, Alaska, the Tennessee Plan consists of electing a congressional delegation and sending them on to DC before congress has even ratified, deliberated, voted on, or wiped their asses with a statehood act. The New Progressive Party is in favor of using such tactics to demand statehood from congress. Since “progressive” is in their party name, Glenn Beck brands this as a progressive bullying tactic.

The New Progressive Party… the New Progressive Party… just because you keep repeating that mantra it doesn’t mean they’re progressive in the least. Look at the fuss they made over Agapito’s “indiscretion” at the sex shop, or how much of a scandal Roberto Arango’s nudie pics.

So many contradictions to deal with for “Mittens”, who has already put his foot in his mouth saying he supported Arizona’s immigration law as national policy. He had the good sense to “retract” himself a bit, but that just gives his opponents more fodder for flip-flopping accusations.

Mitt Romney being Mitt Romney, his flip-flopping is going to get increasingly worse as he navigates the politically correct line. I’ll gladly bet my car the first thing he drops will be his cynical promise to support statehood for Puerto Rico.
____________________________________________

(Editor’s Note: A couple of bonuses here for you, the first one’s that hilarious video from The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, where Lewis Black so beautifully elaborates on why Glenn Beck, as Mickey just claimed, is a deep sufferer of Nazi Tourette’s… and then one of our patented and infamous Demotivational Posters honoring Mitt Romney and his juggling talents — Enjoy!)

Glenn Beck, is a deep sufferer of Nazi Tourette’s…

Mitt Romney Demotivational Poster

Intellectual Situation 11.0: Puerto Rico Banana Republic News – Evil Politician Buys Strip Club Gift – By Mickey Jax

I need to let out my inner dumb teenage girl:

"OMG! SMH! WTF! Alphabet soup!"

I wish my exile had been akin to Zarathustra. I would’ve come back revitalized, energized for a new future. Unfortunately, I was burning out at a desk job, but the energy I have left is being fast consumed by sheer incredulity. Puerto Ricans already knew we lived in a banana republic, but the world has been catching up fast during my time away.

USA Today pointed out recently something I had touched upon some time ago, that Puerto Rican professionals are leaving en mass due to lack of job prospects. We have one of the nastiest brain drains in the world to the states mainly because it’s so easy to harvest us for capable professionals. There are more than a few reasons for that…

Higher education is still cheap relative to the US. Neoliberal forces from our pro statehood party, the New Progressive Party, are working hard to change that. Overall, though, our college graduates start life with better economic footing than our fellow OWS participants. College graduates in Puerto Rico, even the ones graduating from our two-bit private colleges and universities, don’t feel as economically desperate because they carry on average less debt.

Not only does Puerto Rico produce – per capita – more professionals than the US does, but we are also highly attractive to employers because we already have citizenship. We’ve had it since 1917, which tells you that the US didn’t grant it to us out of the kindness of their hearts (WW1 anyone?). There is ZERO bureaucratic mess in giving us a job. Employers don’t need to think of work visas, sponsorship, and we can travel in and out of the country when needed. Less bureaucracy to work through equals money saved.

Another plus for our Puerto Rican professionals is at least some form of theoretical bilingualism. Becoming functional in English is not hard to get to with such a basis as Puerto Rico has. You also get the added bonus of Spanish, the second most spoken language on the planet and #2 most learned language. If the the Free Trade Area of the Americas ever becomes a reality, you’re going to need a lot of Spanish speakers. Even with the free trade agreement with Colombia you’ll still need a lot of Spanish speakers.

A lot of them...

And thanks to the bullshit going on in the island, there’s no shortage of them that want to leave Puerto Rico.

Crime and murder in Puerto Rico have risen about 50%, since I left Puerto Rico. I can’t quantify how much show-politics has risen, but this is the first time I hear about a politician being highly scrutinized for the anticlimactic crime of visiting a sex shop:

Alejandro García Padilla revealed last night that, while in Seattle, Washington on an official trip in 2006, he visited an adult store or “sex shop” where he purchased a gift for his wife.

The gubernatorial candidate for the Popular Democratic Party (PDP) in Puerto Rico, rejected categorically that he visited a “strip club” located in the same building where he purchased the gift.

The former secretary of the Department of Consumer Affairs (DACO) made these statements after the television program SuperXclusivo challenged him to explain whether he had paid $ 47.25 in a Seattle brothel.

Excuse me? $47.25?

$47.25 worth of BLOWJOBS... ehrm... yeah... *nervous laugh*

I wish I could go back to my cave…

Mickey Jax is finally back with his latest installment of The Intellectual Situation, to school me on some previous ignorant comments I made, where I wondered aloud to Mickey if Newt Gingrich was starting to sound reasonable as a candidate — Mickey took no mercy on this poor soul.

This week has been pretty ridiculous so far. You guys don’t know, but work has me temporarily stationed in Colombia, nose candy capital of the world, at least in name that is since other countries in the vicinity are taking part in the supply side of the gigantic drug market that is the US.

Monday morning I took a trip on a less than mint condition C-12 down to guerrilla infested lands in southern Colombia to bring our guys down there fighting the good (read: dumbass) fight against drugs some nice ‘merican food.

 They make for some lovely care packages.

Once we landed, I heard a hissing sound, followed by “that’s not good…” from the pilot. I turn to see the landing gear hydraulic fluid leaking out. Clearly we weren’t getting out of there on that plane. Good timing too, ’cause the day before the guerrillas had detonated three IEDs nearby. Fun…

Alas, we got the fuck out of dodge. Back in the civilized part of the country I’m spoiling myself with some internet when a friend sends me an article on Saudi Arabia. The title says it all: “Saudis fear there will be ‘no more virgins’ and people will turn gay if female drive ban is lifted“.

Dan Savage was already booked for a sex ed lecture the day after the ban is lifted.

But why stop at the title? The very second sentence clears up how even more ludicrous the entire thing is:

A ‘scientific’ report claims relaxing the ban would also see more Saudis – both men and women – turn to homosexuality and pornography.

Had enough? Third time’s the charm:

Within ten years of the ban being lifted, the report’s authors claim, there would be ‘no more virgins’ in the Islamic kingdom.

Girls Gone Wild 2022: Saudi Coeds

All of this is well and good, but the one thing that broke through my writer’s block this week was, ‘dum dum DUM’:

Newt Gingrich has upped the ante in absurd comments on his bid against Ron Paul to become the new “anti-Mitt”, a mythical creature that supposedly could go toe-to-toe with Obama in the 2012 election and win.

I thought Newt had reached his limit when he tried to convince people you could pay for a Hawaii vacation on food stamp money, but oh no, he managed to one-up himself with this gem:

I have two grandchildren — Maggie is 11, Robert is 9… I am convinced that if we do not decisively win the struggle over the nature of America, by the time they’re my age they will be in a secular atheist country, potentially one dominated by radical Islamists and with no understanding of what it once meant to be an American.

I cringed when I kept reading this happened in San Antonio, where I live when not temporarily deployed. For a moment I felt paranoid about Newt’s insanity percolating into my apartment.

I understand the Republican Party base and the Tea Party (I repeat myself) are easy to energize by fear mongering, but c’mon man, a secular atheist country dominated by radical islamists? That defies not just logic, but possibly physics. No need for the Large Hadron Collider anymore. Newt Gingrich’s mouth is where the Higgs boson resides.

That could be the Higgs boson, or a picture of my brain listening to Newt Gingrich.

Impeccable logic like that is what begets absurd comments like Obama is both a communist and a fascist. It amazes me when people forget which side the Soviet Union was on in WW2, but never fear, Cracked.com to the rescue:

Understand, the Russia versus Germany part of the war wasn’t just a little more important than the part the USA was involved in. It was “four times the scale” of the whole Western front, larger than all other phases of the war put together. The Soviet military suffered eight million soldiers dead, more than 20 freaking times the number of U.S. casualties.

This is what the eastern front looked like.

Newt is so wacky even for a Republican that Michael Savage (he thanks G-d every day he’s not related to Dan Savage) has offered him the princely sum of one million dollars to drop out of the primaries.

The search for the anti-Mitt continues…

It’s been a month since thousands answered the call to occupy Wall Street here in New York City, and as of this weekend, the movement has gone global.

October 15th was a date thrown out for months. I am sad that I missed it.

Tahrir Square initiated the year. It was exciting to know it was happening, to see videos, to read about. It would’ve been more exciting to be there. I was sad.

Then came Wisconsin. The spirit of the times seemed to be in flux. More people fighting against oppression? That can’t be right.

But it was, and it exploded. As soon as the specter of austerity came over Greece and the rest of Europe, massive protests took place. People recognized their respective country’s situation was not a personal fault. They came, they saw, they are conquering.

Protests abounded against governments, but people recognized who pulled the strings. A month ago, ordinary people, people like you and me, occupied Wall Street.

October 15th has been the peak so far. The Wall Street occupation had a massive spillover all the way to Times Square. Solidarity the world over was high:

Tens of thousands nicknamed “the indignant” marched in cities across Europe, as the protests that began in New York linked up with long-running demonstrations against government cost-cutting and failed financial policies in Europe. Protesters also turned out in Australia and Asia.

Clearly this is a global movement. Even back home people took to the streets. Something other than our colonial status got them to protest. But I’ll wager that at least some of my brothers and sisters back home see the connection between money, power, and our dynamic with the US. Money and power beget each other, and our relationship with the US shines in its asymmetry.

People have already started comparing this year to 1968. It’s true both years have been full of protests, and it’s also true that some sixty-eighters have been popping up in support of the current protests, but hopefully the one difference will be that the “eleveners” will be able to achieve something much more lasting than the sixty-eighters.

These are important times. To quote Naomi Klein on Saturday:

The Stakes Are Too High for Us Not to Make the Absolute Most of This Moment.

Intellectual Situation 8.0: Puerto Rico Yellow Journalism & Politics… By Mickey Jax

Apparently I’ve bitten off more than I can chew in the past two weeks between absurdity at work and the quasi vacations I’ve taken.

I always take the road less traveled... on acid, of course.

You know what this means, right? I need another source of income. It falls on you, the reader, to distribute all the articles on this website to everyone you meet so we can start making some money. I get out of the military next year, so I’m going to need a new job, preferably entertaining all of you with informed commentary.

Then again, selling drugs seems like a lucrative venture.

I took a trip to New York City this past weekend. My girlfriend and I went to visit a friend of hers on the Upper West Side in Manhattan that got married recently. I’m guessing quite a few wealthy immigrants live around there ’cause we passed by two newstands full of newspapers in different languages. By the time we passed the third one I decided it was time to check it out. What made me decide to stop? El Vocero, Puerto Rico’s insanely successful attempt at yellow journalism.

I don't need to read it. Looking at the picture already pisses me off.

Before I get into any specifics, a little aside on my purchases. I got a copy of El Vocero and Corriere della Sera, an Italian newspaper I’ve read on occasion since I went to Italy. The old man at the cash register was dumbstruck at such a selection, lifting his gaze and asking me with a puzzled look “YOU can read these?!”

Uhh, yes, old fart, I can. Stop hatin'.

As I skimmed through the pages, I was both scandalized and not so surprised at what I saw. There was an article on spousal abuse and how some cases fall apart because the beaten wife fails to testify due to some sort of threat to her life (or the beaten husband due to a threat to his ego). One of the prosecutors has an almost failsafe method of making people testify: don’t just subpoena them, put out warrants for their arrest.

Apparently it works ninety percent of the time.

Wikipedia defines yellow journalism as presenting “little or no legitimate well-researched news and instead uses eye-catching headlines to sell more newspapers”. El Vocero is looking for new ways keep up with wikipedia, so it’s publishing an “article of the week” of sorts taken from El Ñame, Puerto Rico’s answer to The Onion. It’s obvious by now that whatever happens in the US is a good subject for Puertorican newspapers, so El Ñame published a satirical article on Obama and how he can heal the sick by laying his hands on them. El Vocero helped get this amazing piece of humor reach the tech-unsavy population back home.

They need all the help they can get.

Props to El Ñame for capturing the Republican spirit in their portrayal of the objections against President Obama’s healing powers (my own translation):

“Congressional Republicans immediately accused Obama of practicing medicine without a license, ‘socializing’ medicine, eradicating countless health industry jobs, and collaborating with the enemy.”

A few nights ago I had dinner with a family friend. She’s been an expatriate on and off for slightly longer than I have. Our conversation took an obvious turn toward the homeland, which I always enjoy talking about, but specially with her since she’s a space-time social scientist (geography). She was home a few weeks ago on vacation and expressed how much she hates what she disdainfully calls our complaint environment. People complain all the damn time back home about how fucked up our situation is, but don’t do shit.

They need all the help they can get.

I pointed out that people in the US complain too. She replied that she felt more at ease here, that people don’t exasperate themselves with the situation as much as back home.

And possibly, there lies the problem.

I have a feeling people here don’t complain, they don’t have that urgency to complain as much as us, because their fingers are not on the pulse of the problem. Several layers of abstraction, people. A lot of people in the US are anesthesized because they barely understand how DC affects them in ways other than taxing them. All they see is money being drained from them. That’s all that matters.

I quote (ok ok, paraphrase) my family friend: “Any governor back home would never be able to do what, for example, Rick Perry has done in Texas. Political suicide for sure.”

There you have it, how life looks from within the Empire. They can relax. They don’t need to think. The people outside the Empire need to always be on the lookout, they have instinctuallized the worry.

Wake up.

PS: Don’t forget to click on the ads.

Intellectual Situation 7.0: On Michele Bachmann, Slavery & Capitalism… By Mickey Jax

Last week I was a bit preoccupied with a minor (read: major) problem, so I was unable to impart a bit of my wisdom in digital print. Who would have thought that a nice cup of tea would make you sweat bullets during a urinalysis…

Don’t worry, I’ve been keeping up with my politics.

Before I go on, though, I have to say Bondness was wrong when he implied one could’ve freely stolen from Borders since the employees cared less than a honey badger. Back when I still lived in our homeland, an overzealous employee caught me at the Plaza Las Americas Borders trying to use a 5-finger discount on a notebook. I was slapped with a permanent ban from the store and unceremoniously photographed, mug shot style.

The employee also brought some friends along...

Don’t have to worry about that now that they’re bankrupt.

I digress. Michele Bachmann is apparently crazy enough that she got on the Koch brothers’ money radar back in May:

But when it comes to the 2012 presidential race, the Kochs have been more selective with their giving, with only one presidential candidate so far benefiting from their largesse: Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.).

I’m pretty sure people like Bachman find it easy to pander to the Tea Party movement because they believe at least the basics of their complaints. I’m also pretty sure people like the Koch brothers are calculating sociopathic bastards in the image of Ayn Rand. Let’s compare them.

I like to find patterns and inconsistencies in everything. Sometimes I worry I’m one step behind A Beautiful Mind crazy. Bear with me as I go through a particular line of mental speculation.

Don't they look cute together?

I’ll give a shameless plug to Richard Wolff since his intro to Marxian Economics podcast provided some fuel for this. He explains how capitalism gets its intellectual start from the same enlightenment ideals that sparked the American and French revolutions.

Americans wanted life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The French wanted liberty, equality, and brotherhood. The argument for capitalism at the time was a moral one; the way to obtain liberty, the way for people to live in brotherhood and be able to achieve happiness, was through capitalism. It was this way because, unlike slavery and serfdom, under capitalism one would be compensated in accordance to one’s effort and ingenuity.

Following the moral argument, under capitalism you do not own people. Everyone should fall under the rubric of being compensated for their effort and ingenuity. That was obviously forgotten by the American South.

There was some well-deserved controversy a few months ago over Michele Bachmann’s signing of a  marriage vow pledge which gives the following as an example of how marriage as an institution is in crisis in the US:

Slavery had a disastrous impact on African-­American families, yet sadly a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-­parent household than was an African-­­American baby born after the election of the USA’s first African-American President.

National Geographic went back in time to gather evidence of this claim.

Ryan Lizza has an interesting bit in the profile he did of Bachmann for The New Yorker about J. Steven Wilkins, the “leading proponent of the theory that the South was an orthodox Christian nation unjustly attacked by the godless North”. Lizza quotes Wilkins on race relations:

Slavery, as it operated in the pervasively Christian society which was the old South, was not an adversarial relationship founded upon racial animosity. In fact, it bred on the whole, not contempt, but, over time, mutual respect. This produced a mutual esteem of the sort that always results when men give themselves to a common cause. The credit for this startling reality must go to the Christian faith… The unity and companionship that existed between the races in the South prior to the war was the fruit of a common faith.

According to Lizza, Wilkins’s biography of Robert E. Lee, from where the above quote is taken, was listed for the longest time in Bachmann’s website under the heading “Michele’s Must Read List”. He makes the connection between the above and Bachmann’s earlier comment of the founding fathers working tirelessly to end slavery as her particular worldview.

Think about that for a minute. It’s not that far-fetched to say Michele Bachmann believes black people had better lives as slaves. Many people still hold that type of paternalistic “white man’s guilt” mentality. They see themselves apart from the savages, but instead of direct demonization and exploitation they prefer to go into condescending rhetoric. “They don’t know any better. We need to guide them”, and so on.

Michele Bachmann pays a lot of lip service to capitalism. The cynic in me doubts she believes in it for good reason, but let’s take her at her word. Capitalism is an economic system that works. It produces wealth and it distributes it according to people’s ingenuity and hard work. Why, then, would she be in favor of keeping black people in bondage? Does she not think they have the ingenuity to function in a capitalist economy? They sure as hell have the hard work down, otherwise they wouldn’t have been very good slaves to begin with.

A typical day in the life of a slave... in the white man's mind that is.

Again, it’s very easy to believe Michele Bachmann is a highly condescending and opportunistic politician, but I repeat myself…

There’s one aspect that doesn’t get much time in print, on paper or digital anyway. What does it say about an economic system that one of its hardcore proponents does not believe it would bring liberty and equality for a significant number of people?

Also, what does it say of the morality of such person that she believes these people can only function and survive in an economic system (slavery) in which they are treated as things that can be owned, as a commodity?

But furthermore, to tie the Koch brothers in here since I despise them, what does it say about their morality that they basically want to act as force multipliers for people with already questionable ideas about the equality of people just so they can amass even more money?

I guess it’s true that some people are more equal than others.

Michele Bachmann exemplifies the cognitive dissonance of the American right wing. But why do I care? Because their absurd example seeps into my homeland’s politics and politicians.

Forewarned is forearmed.

I apologize in advance if this ends up lacking in visual stimulation, but bad times are coming. Time to get serious.

If you are ever in the presence of a Republican or some other type of conservative who claims to hate socialism, do them a favor and ask them to define it. If the answer is the government taking over the economy, they probably took Econ 101 with Rick Perry (check the lower right corner).

For any type of economic socialism to be in place, the means of production have to be cooperatively controlled by the people that use their physical and intellectual labor to create an output. Basically, it has to be controlled by the workers.

If the government takes over said means of production and we end up having something like Venezuela or China, or to a lesser extent Brazil, that isn’t socialism. That is state capitalism. Same structure as capitalism, only the managers change. Output is still being produced for a profit, which the state would get in this case. The state might be benevolent and realize the dream of capitalism with a human face, or it might just not give a fuck and take 1984 as an instruction manual.

Then again, according to Christopher Hitchens, North Korea preempted us.

But back to state capitalism. Why do Republicans hate it so much? The more literate of the bunch will cite Hayek or von Mises to show themselves enemies of totalitarianism.  Some with slightly weaker reading skills will cite America’s favorite uncle, Milton Friedman. Private actors ALWAYS act rationally and make the best decisions. That’s why our economy grows slow and steady and no one ever loses money.

I don’t doubt Hayek, von Mises, and Friedman believed what they wrote. They honestly believed a free and prosperous society is achieved by as little government intervention as possible. They’re economists. They fancy themselves the purveyors of a new mathematical type of science. Their theories are right, or at least they’ll be proven right with time. Sure…

I’m also sure they cringed at the state capitalism practiced by the United states from the Great Depression down to the 70′s, back when we were the world’s economic behemoth.

That’s the economists, but what about someone like Charles or David Koch? Why do they quote the above economists ad nauseam? Because they loooooove their profits and absolutely HATE the competition that comes from government. That’s why they fund organizations like Americans for Prosperity and the various groups linked to the Tea Party movement.

I have particular contempt for the Koch brothers for using their insane cash supplies in the most cynical of ways. They have “endowed” (read: bribed) Florida State University with a hefty sum on condition that they peddle various courses sympathetic to their economic philosophy, including Ayn Rand’s books. I get visibly annoyed at those that cite her as the source of their love for private capitalism and the virtues of pure individualism. Not only is her fiction unreadable (I cringe every time I see Atlas Shrugged at bookstores), but her morality is abhorrent.

Why yes, I will stoop down to use big words to make my point.

“Who is John Galt?” A fucking sociopath according to some, but apparently Paul Ryan thinks he’s just peachy. Makes you think not only about his budget proposal, but about how much his biggest donors hate competing in a level playing field.

Wait a second, aren’t conservatives also really religious? What would Jesus do when confronted with a baby killer? Fictional notwithstanding.

The American Christian Right is world famous for twisting themselves worse than pretzels in trying to make pure selfishness compatible with a religion founded on a purported first century Palestinian hippie. It’s also interesting to note said hippie hung out with hookers and tax collectors while preaching unconditional love for one another. I could’ve sworn conservatives hated hookers and tax collectors, though their actions speak in favor of male hookers.

They still hate the tax collectors, though.

The American brand of “conservatism” is a strange marriage. Let me elaborate.

Liberalism, in its classical sense, has as the goal to be rid of everything that might remotely impinge on our liberty. It sounds cheesy putting it that simply, but it means making conditions so as to develop and live to your fullest without having an authority impinge on you. There are two basic liberalisms out there, economic and social. They both want freedom, so why can’t they seem to work together?

The early Europeans escaping religious persecution that came to the original thirteen colonies recognized the government part of state religion, but they seemingly forgot about the religion part. By the time the constitution is drafted, they had absolutely no problem with the first part of the First Amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

It’s talking about freedom! It’s limiting the government from doing something! No one will take away our religion!

Funny how that worked just fine when the population was pretty religiously homogeneous. Once other denominations came into the mix, things started getting rough. Other religions came in and shit went biblical.

Religion is a huge part of identity. I’m currently going out with a lovely young lady who happens to be part of a religion that’s not on good terms with many Americans at the moment. I’m pretty reactionary, but I know when not to rock the boat. Her father has expressed how in his opinion religion is a huge part of ethnic, sometimes national identity. It’s a very common feeling. Most group actors in history have had altercations that have been directly about religion or expressed in religious language. (Keep in mind Operation Enduring Freedom’s first name was Infinite Justice.)

The day people started thinking their first amendment right was being impinged on because they couldn’t express their religion in the same despotic ways they had before because all religions have to be treated as equals by the government, that was when economic liberalism, under its new name, Libertarianism, started courting them.

Remember, American religious people, “economically liberalized” in their thought, have convinced themselves that they’re being “conservative” by saying “No! We will not give our money to the state!” so they can be free to do as they please with their money. What do they do with it? They give it to whatever church they belong to, ’cause they forgot that religion can also be, and more often than not is, just as totalitarian as any government. They seem to have forgotten they used to BE the government. (Ask the average American to name some theocracies and they’ll think of majority Muslim countries, theocracies or not, before they think of Medieval Europe).

The Tea Party, the child of the sordid affair and consequent marriage of libertarians and the American Christian Right, don’t seem to grasp the contradictions in their ideology. They also don’t seem to grasp how some people aren’t even driven by ideology, they are driven by sheer self interest. If they can get away with progressively lower taxes, they will go for that. If they understand they need someone bigger and “badder” to protect them (cough*US government circa 1940′s to 1970′s*cough), they’ll gladly pay higher taxes.

I’ll leave you with that.

“I’ll call AND raise you” said Michele to Sarah.

Remember Palin’s North Korea slip? Michele Bachmann was just dying to do the world one better with this wince inducing remark:

“What people recognize is that there’s a fear that the United States is in an unstoppable decline. They see the rise of China, the rise of India, the rise of the Soviet Union and our loss militarily going forward. And especially with this very bad debt ceiling bill, what we have done is given a favor to President Obama and the first thing he’ll whack is five hundred billion out of the military defense at a time when we’re fighting three wars. People recognize that.”

I think Michele was playing with an UNO deck...

I understand there are some politicians that will throw out some doublespeak here and there to signal their constituencies. Some may even use Cold War lingo ’cause, you know, it works when stereotyping. I work with a dude that was suspicious of his daughter’s college roommate just because she’s Chinese. I couldn’t stop laughing when he said it out loud.

But please, the Soviet Union went poof two DECADES ago.

The galactic empire is still alive, though.

This week, my desk is looking like this:

Gotta drown the pain somehow...

This list looks more like a reality tv show cast than a distinguished group of presidential candidates. You have Bachmann, closet racist and flunker of American history. C’mon Michele, we have modern day examples of father and son being president (W). Why can’t you keep track of John Adams and John Quincy Adams?

We have two Mormons. Need I say more? Actually, I should. I’m obviously eons removed in social liberalism from Huntsman, but I’ll give him that he’s somewhat receptive to what modern science has to say about the big GOP boogeyman, climate change. Romney did a pretty awesome thing when he instituted universal healthcare in Massachusetts, a good thing he had to recant and spin into a horrible thing in order to be palatable to the rightwardly radicalized Tea Party constituency. Again, sigh.

Third cousins? They look a lot closer than that...

Newt Gringich. Really? You are a smart man, stop pandering to the Tea Party. Your career was finished the moment you showed them a dose of reality they didn’t like. In an effort to gain even better Tea Party cred by whitewashing herself for the 345th time, Nikki Haley felt the need to criticize Newt:

“In an interview with CNN Tuesday, Haley sharply admonished Gingrich for his comments over the weekend disparaging the Medicare plan proposed by House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan as “radical change” and ‘right-wing social engineering.’”

Above: what Nikki still looks like to Teabaggers, you know, even after all the right-wing social engineering.

Ron Paul. Well, I have mixed feelings about him. He’s rational, yet somehow disconnected from the reality. Unfettered private capitalism is not my cup of tea. Essentials to life and human development should not be run for profit. (My boss, the Editor, might have something against that comment. He can put it to words in this forum he has created for us. I’ll gladly reply to the best of my ability.)

Rick Santorum. Are you kidding me? Your career was over the moment Dan Savage turned you into a “frothy substance”. Keep spreading, Rick.

Herman Cain. Huh? No offense to people that do know him, but who the fuck is this dude? Granted I’m only 26, but I’ve never heard of him. Maybe that’s his hidden power, some sort of behind-the-scenes control of whatever. Honestly, that doesn’t help you in any way when you’re seeking the highest profile job in the world.

Herman Cain might have a harder time than Nikki Haley whitewashing himself.

This lineup is somewhat depressing. Coupling that with Obama’s performance so far, I’m gonna need to go on meds come 2012. I agree with our Editor that the Obama team are campaign-fucking-masters, but it brings a tear to my eye how much promise Obama conveyed in 2008. I had hope, and it fizzled slowly as Obama bent over in front of the Republicans again and again.

But I’ve gotten off topic. Rick Perry is the worst fucking thing that can happen to the US.

The morning after Perry made his announcement, Congressman Lloyd Doggett sent out an email with a summary of how Perry flushed Texas’s future down the drain:

• This is the same Rick Perry whose answer to Texas being the state with the highest percentage of folks without health insurance is to do even less here, while questioning the very existence of Medicare.
• This is the same Rick Perry who has undermined our future economic competitiveness by slashing budgets for primary and secondary education and undermining our institutions of higher learning.
• This is the same Rick Perry that dangerously disregards the importance of protecting the water we drink and the air we breath. Texas now leads the nation in clean-water permit violations in the nation, hazardous waste spills and toxic emissions.

Those are already some pretty big faults. So where is the money going instead of healthcare, education, or potable water? Corporate welfare? Uhh, yeah:

“The largest fund, the Texas Enterprise Fund, was created in 2003 and has awarded some $412 million in subsidies to companies nominally to create jobs. A December 2010 analysis by the Texas comptroller found that $119 million of that money went to companies that didn’t deliver on the jobs they promised. The governor’s office took back only $21 million from those underperformers, often choosing to define downward the job-creation requirements. GOP Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, whom Perry beat in last year’s GOP gubernatorial primary, called revelations that taxpayer-funded contracts sent money overseas to create jobs ‘disturbing” and “unacceptable.’

The second major fund under Perry’s control, the Texas Emerging Technology Fund, has also proven controversial since its creation in 2005. It has spent some $320 million on tax credits and other subsidies for high-tech companies willing to move to Texas. An October 2010 investigation by the Dallas Morning News found that $16 million of that money was awarded to companies with investors or officers who are large campaign donors. Perry denied that politics influenced the awarding of money from the funds. He succeeded in fending off efforts to cut his massive subsidy fund budgets in the legislative session that ended last month, but the legislature did impose new controls and oversight on the funds.”

It’s really weird how in public he loathes corporate welfare. The Teabaggers eat it all up. Then again, it could be said the Teabaggers don’t even understand their platform.

Do any of them look like they've ever opened an economics textbook?

I promise you for next week I will crack open my econ textbook and give you a nice summary of the ridiculousness and contradiction that the American right-wing symbolizes.

Cheers.

PS: Perry-Palin 2012!!

A few years ago when I had just gotten to San Antonio, I was at a nightclub doing a decent job of chatting up a young and very forward woman when she uttered the following: “I am so glad you are intelligent. You don’t know how many stupid people I’ve met in San Antonio.”

Over the years not only has that statement been proven for the city, it’s been proven for the entire fucking state by one man.

All hair. No substance.

Rick Perry is on a mission to outdo W in quite a few measures of crazy. I wish Gunny Ermey had been right when he said “only steers and queers come from Texas.”

The face of a man who's always right.

W has always worn his religion on his sleeve, but Rick wants to brandish it like a tommy gun:

“Lord, you are the source of every good thing,” Mr. Perry said, as he bowed his head, closed his eyes and leaned into a microphone at Reliant Stadium here. “You are our only hope, and we stand before you today in awe of your power and in gratitude for your blessings, and humility for our sins. Father, our heart breaks for America. We see discord at home. We see fear in the marketplace. We see anger in the halls of government, and as a nation we have forgotten who made us, who protects us, who blesses us, and for that we cry out for your forgiveness.”

Too bad praying didn’t save him from an abysmal record at Texas A&M. It doesn’t surprise me his alma mater wants to dropkick his ass for his higher education proposals.

Reenactment of Rick Perry's friday nights at Texas A&M.

I really hope Rick Perry is just a cynical bastard politician who’ll do anything to get elected. I’d respect him more than I do now, but I honestly think he believes his religious garbage works. There are scientists already studying the correlation between religiosity and wealth inequality. They really need to come to Texas, where Rick Perry’s economic miracle has produced the state with the highest percentage of minimum wage jobs.

Pictured: Rick Perry's economic miracle.

Is there an end in sight? Why yes there is, when good ole’ Rick tries to make his economic miracle nationwide. Watch out for Saturday when he might make his 2012 bid for the presidency known.

I think I’m gonna be sick.