December 20, 2010

For healthcare, the US is made of four countries.

In the USA we have four different countries for healthcare purposes.
If you are in the military, you live in England.
If you are over 65, you live in Canada.
If you are insured by your employer, you live in Germany.
If you have no insurance, you live in Afghanistan.

From TR Reid's talk at the Commonwealth Club of California:


WATCH THE WHOLE THING: TR Reid, the Healing of America on Fora.tv

December 14, 2010

Judge calls healthcare mandate unconstitutional

Click here for the article in the Wall Street Journal.

Personally, I think this is a victory.

WHAT?! The Obamatons say.

Chill, let me explain.

The parts of the bill requiring health insurance companies to cover everybody, regardless of pre-existing conditions, still stand.

And the shittiest part-- forcing people to buy private insurance, the one part that the INSURANCE COMPANIES liked best, is facing the axe.

This kind of reminds me of the time that republicans accidentally banned straight marriage.

Victory! (for now).

And to all the Obamatons who think that this past Healthcare bill was the best idea ever, listen up:
Mandating insurance for health is different than mandating insurance for driving a car.
Anybody can choose to not drive and still go about their business.
Health Insurance, through this bill, is a requirement of being alive.
And there's only one way to choose to stop being alive-- and it makes it really difficult to go about your day. (I'm talking about suicide folks).

December 12, 2010

Welfare Talking Points #3




Talking Points on Welfare Part 3:


People on welfare are mostly black teenage mothers:

FALSE: This is a fiction created by assholes like Newt Gingrich to get poor white people to get angry at poor black people, so that poor people in general would spend our time fighting against one another, instead of coming together and fighting against rich assholes like Newt Gingrich.
According to our gov’ts figures, white people receive the largest amount of welfare by race, making up nearly 40% of the welfare recipient population. 43% of welfare recipients with children have only one child, 30% have two, 15% have three, and there’s a real sharp drop-off after that.
Of those who are on welfare, and are mothers, 47% are between the ages 20-29. 32% are between the ages of 30-39. Only 7% of welfare recipients who have children are teenagers.

So sorry. The most common welfare recipient is white, between 20-40 years old, and has two kids or less.

December 10, 2010

15 year old kid tells establishment to suck it

h/t No Cure For That



This 15 year old kid speaks at a Student Union meeting.

Inspiring!

DADT vote fails; my thoughts

Even after Obama caved on the tax cuts, the GOP has thanked him by... giving him NOTHING.

Driving home from work today, I was scanning the radio, and came across what turned out to be Sean Hannity's radio show. He was talking about how the blame doesn't rest entirely on the shoulders of the GOP, and that the Democrats should stop Demonizing the GOP when the Democrats vote the same way.

I think this may be the first time I actually agree with Sean Hannity.

Democrats voted with Republicans in blocking DADT.

Now, I've been following politics, and working on campaigns since I was in high school. Let me let you in on a little secret that I've learned along the way: Federal Level Politicians don't give a shit about you, or your issues, unless they can use them to get you to vote for them.

That's right! I know-- shocking. Politicians lie through their teeth about what they are going to get done when you elect them. Why? Because most don't see themselves as beholden to you. They are beholden to their monied donors. Are you rolling in cash? Then who gives a fuck what you have to say?

But that's not all. There's a second half to this equation. You, the voter, make yourself irrelevant every fucking election cycle by buying into their bullshit. That if you don't elect the Democrat/Republican the gays will; be put in camps/destroy America.

They don't give a shit about gay marriage. They don't give a shit about DADT. It's a wedge issue, as I cover in this video:



It hitting your head against the wall hurts your head, maybe you should stop doing it. Stop voting for people who lie to you.

December 9, 2010

In the UK, students prepare to Kill And Eat the Rich



Live Stream of the UK protests from Fox News (no audio)

Footage of the riots as they unfolded. Students say, "This is just the begining."

Live Newsticker from the Guardian.co.uk

Despite the raging fires, and the smashing of windows, the protesters at large have managed to keep fairly cool heads, as demonstrated by the crowds reaction when one student who made his way to the top of the building threw a fire extinguisher down onto riot police:


Now some may think that these protests are a bit extreme.


But I admire these student protesters in their restraint, as they have not yet Killed And Eaten the Rich.

Anonymous & Wikileaks vs Governments: World War III

Keith Olberman speaks with author James Moore about the article he published on Huffington Post today.



What we're seeing go down right now really is World War III.

Governments/Corporations are literally trying to censor the internet.
The idea that the internet is information anarchy is being put to the test, and we're finding that the internet is actually far more controlled than we have assumed. Gatekeepers have found their way into places of power, and we've been asleep at the wheel while they've dug their trenches.

Now, if a the corporate government wants you gone, they can shut you down. What we are seeing now is a people's revolt against oppressive virtual regimes.

People who understand computers are not taking to the streets, but are taking to the internet and fighting back in virtual space, throwing virtual maltov cocktails.

Why this war? In the real world, wars are usually fought over access to resources. On the internet, information is the primary resource used. Those in this People's Revolt feel that access to information should be free for everybody.

The powerful entrenched feel that information should be limited; not shared, but hoarded.

We are living in an era where governments want to know everything about us and what nefarious things we're possibly up to, but don't want us to know anything about them and what nefarious things they are possibly up to.

Wikileaks and Anonymous are fighting against exactly that paradigm. And that's ultimately what this is all about.

This is World War III, and it is quite literally is a war of ideas.

Author James Moore is on Team Wikileaks!

Read his article on why over at HuffPo.

And then some shameless self-promotion:



CLICK ON THE PICTURE, BUY AN AWESOME T-SHIRT

Daniel Ellsberg: The attacks they are making against Wikileaks were made against me.

ORIGINAL SOURCE HERE
It was down earlier today, so I'm mirroring it on my own blog. -- PP

[Below is a news release put out by the Institute for Public Accuracy, co-signed by Daniel Ellsberg]


Ex-Intelligence Officers, Others See Plusses in WikiLeaks Disclosures


WASHINGTON – December 7 – The following statement was released today, signed by Daniel Ellsberg, Frank Grevil, Katharine Gun, David MacMichael, Ray McGovern, Craig Murray, Coleen Rowley and Larry Wilkerson; all are associated with Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence.


WikiLeaks has teased the genie of transparency out of a very opaque bottle, and powerful forces in America, who thrive on secrecy, are trying desperately to stuff the genie back in. The people listed below this release would be pleased to shed light on these exciting new developments.


How far down the U.S. has slid can be seen, ironically enough, in a recent commentary in Pravda (that’s right, Russia’s Pravda): “What WikiLeaks has done is make people understand why so many Americans are politically apathetic … After all, the evils committed by those in power can be suffocating, and the sense of powerlessness that erupts can be paralyzing, especially when … government evildoers almost always get away with their crimes. …”


So shame on Barack Obama, Eric Holder, and all those who spew platitudes about integrity, justice and accountability while allowing war criminals and torturers to walk freely upon the earth. … the American people should be outraged that their government has transformed a nation with a reputation for freedom, justice, tolerance and respect for human rights into a backwater that revels in its criminality, cover-ups, injustices and hypocrisies.


Odd, isn’t it, that it takes a Pravda commentator to drive home the point that the Obama administration is on the wrong side of history. Most of our own media are demanding that WikiLeaks leader Julian Assange be hunted down — with some of the more bloodthirsty politicians calling for his murder. The corporate-and-government dominated media are apprehensive over the challenge that WikiLeaks presents. Perhaps deep down they know, as Dickens put it, “There is nothing so strong … as the simple truth.”


As part of their attempt to blacken WikiLeaks and Assange, pundit commentary over the weekend has tried to portray Assange’s exposure of classified materials as very different from — and far less laudable than — what Daniel Ellsberg did in releasing the Pentagon Papers in 1971. Ellsberg strongly rejects the mantra “Pentagon Papers good; WikiLeaks material bad.” He continues: “That’s just a cover for people who don’t want to admit that they oppose any and all exposure of even the most misguided, secretive foreign policy. The truth is that EVERY attack now made on WikiLeaks and Julian Assange was made against me and the release of the Pentagon Papers at the time.”


Motivation? WikiLeaks’ reported source, Army Pvt. Bradley Manning, having watched Iraqi police abuses, and having read of similar and worse incidents in official messages, reportedly concluded, “I was actively involved in something that I was completely against.” Rather than simply go with the flow, Manning wrote: “I want people to see the truth … because without information you cannot make informed decisions as a public,” adding that he hoped to provoke worldwide discussion, debates, and reform.


There is nothing to suggest that WikiLeaks/Assange’s motives were any different. Granted, mothers are not the most impartial observers. Yet, given what we have seen of Assange’s behavior, there was the ring of truth in Assange’s mother’s recent remarks in an interview with an Australian newspaper. She put it this way: “Living by what you believe in and standing up for something is a good thing. … He sees what he is doing as a good thing in the world, fighting baddies, if you like.”


That may sound a bit quixotic, but Assange and his associates appear the opposite of benighted. Still, with the Pentagon PR man Geoff Morrell and even Attorney General Eric Holder making thinly disguised threats of extrajudicial steps, Assange may be in personal danger.


The media: again, the media is key. No one has said it better than Monseñor Romero of El Salvador, who just before he was assassinated 25 years ago warned, “The corruption of the press is part of our sad reality, and it reveals the complicity of the oligarchy.” Sadly, that is also true of the media situation in America today.


The big question is not whether Americans can “handle the truth.” We believe they can. The challenge is to make the truth available to them in a straightforward way so they can draw their own conclusions — an uphill battle given the dominance of the mainstream media, most of which have mounted a hateful campaign to discredit Assange and WikiLeaks.


So far, the question of whether Americans can “handle the truth” has been an academic rather than an experience-based one, because Americans have had very little access to the truth. Now, however, with the WikiLeaks disclosures, they do. Indeed, the classified messages from the Army and the State Department released by WikiLeaks are, quite literally, “ground truth.”


How to inform American citizens? As a step in that direction, on October 23 we “Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence” (see below) presented our annual award for integrity to Julian Assange. He accepted the honor “on behalf of our sources, without which WikiLeaks’ contributions are of no significance.” In presenting the award, we noted that many around the world are deeply indebted to truth-tellers like WikiLeaks and its sources.


Here is a brief footnote: Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence (SAAII) is a group of former CIA colleagues and other admirers of former intelligence analyst Sam Adams, who hold up his example as a model for those who would aspire to the courage to speak truth to power. (For more, please see here.)


Sam did speak truth to power on Vietnam, and in honoring his memory, SAAII confers an award each year to a truth-teller exemplifying Sam Adams’ courage, persistence, and devotion to truth — no matter the consequences. Previous recipients include:


-Coleen Rowley of the FBI

-Katharine Gun of British Intelligence

-Sibel Edmonds of the FBI

-Craig Murray, former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan

-Sam Provance, former Sgt., US Army

-Frank Grevil, Maj., Danish Army Intelligence

-Larry Wilkerson, Col., US Army (ret.)

-Julian Assange, WikiLeaks


“There is nothing concealed that will not be revealed, nothing hidden that will not be made known. Everything you have said in the dark will be heard in the daylight; what you have whispered in locked rooms will be proclaimed from the rooftops.”

– Luke 12:2-3


The following former awardees and other associates have signed the above statement; some are available for interviews:


DANIEL ELLSBERG

A former government analyst, Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers, a secret government history of the Vietnam War to the New York Times and other newspapers in 1971. He was an admirer of Sam Adams when they were both working on Vietnam and in March 1968 disclosed to the New York Times some of Adams’ accurate analysis, helping head off reinforcement of 206,000 additional troops into South Vietnam and a widening of the war at that time to neighboring countries.


FRANK GREVIL

Grevil, a former Danish intelligence analyst, was imprisoned for giving the Danish press documents showing that Denmark’s Prime Minister (now NATO Secretary General) disregarded warnings that there was no authentic evidence of WMD in Iraq; in Copenhagen, Denmark.


KATHARINE GUN

Gun is a former British government employee who faced two years imprisonment in England for leaking a U.S. intelligence memo before the invasion of Iraq. The memo indicated that the U.S. had mounted a spying “surge” against U.N. Security Council delegations in early 2003 in an effort to win approval for an Iraq war resolution. The leaked memo — published by the British newspaper The Observer on March 2, 2003 — was big news in parts of the world, but almost ignored in the United States. The U.S. government then failed to obtain a U.N. resolution approving war, but still proceeded with the invasion.


DAVID MacMICHAEL

MacMichael is a former CIA analyst. He resigned in the 1980s when he came to the conclusion that the CIA was slanting intelligence on Central America for political reasons. He is a member of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.


RAY McGOVERN

McGovern was a CIA analyst for 27 years, whose duties included preparing and briefing the President’s Daily Brief and chairing National Intelligence Estimates. He is on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.


CRAIG MURRAY

Murray, former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan, was fired from his job when he objected to Uzbeks being tortured to gain “intelligence” on “terrorists.” Upon receiving his Sam Adams award, Murray said, “I would rather die than let someone be tortured in an attempt to give me some increment of security.” Observers have noted that Murray was subjected to similar character assassination techniques as Julian Assange is now encountering to discredit him.


COLEEN ROWLEY

Rowley, a former FBI Special Agent and Division Counsel whose May 2002 memo described some of the FBI’s pre-9/11 failures, was named one of Time Magazine’s “Persons of the Year” in 2002. She recently co-wrote a Los Angeles Times op-ed titled, “WikiLeaks and 9/11: What if? Frustrated investigators might have chosen to leak information that their superiors bottled up, perhaps averting the terrorism attacks.”


LARRY WILKERSON

Wilkerson, Col., U.S. Army (ret.), former chief of staff to Secretary Colin Powell at the State Department, who criticized what he called the “Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal.” See recent interviews


For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:

Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

Is it time to use Killing And Eating The Rich as a bargaining chip?



Much thanks to Davis Fleetwood and No Cure For That Productions for adding fuel to the fire.

We're building a movement here folks.






CLICK HERE AND GET SOME

Send in your photos of you in your shirt to PunkPatriot411 {at} Gmail [dot] com.

What's that? You don't HAVE one yet? You gotta change that.

December 8, 2010

Keith Olberman Nails it



Also, MoveOn.org is taking a stand against Obama. If you're a Democratic President, and MoveOn.org is against you, you KNOW you've fucked up.

Obama is turning out to be a Hoover, not an FDR.

December 7, 2010

The Punk Patriot Plays Pundit: What Obama Should Do

So there's this hullabaloo about the Bush Tax Cuts.

Here's what's going down:

The GOP is saying that they want to make the Bush Tax cuts permanent.
If we do that, our country is so incredibly fucked, you have no idea. If we dont' start paying back our debts, other countries are going to drop the dollar like it's hot feces, and our creditor nations like China are going to call in our debt. We'd be totally fucked.
We HAVE to increase revenue and pay down our debt.

The GOP is making a power move, saying that "If you don't give us what we want, we're not going to let you have anything!" Basically they'd block every possible vote on things like Unemployment benefits, and other much needed reforms.

Now, I'm going to get super cold and game-theory on you.

What Obama should do is this: Veto the tax bill, force the Bush Tax Cuts to expire, and throw out the Unemployment benefits with it. Then immediately go to the microphones and say, "America needs congress to get SERIOUS. (explain the debt crisis). We gave the GOP an opportunity to give middle income Americans an extension on the tax breaks, while letting the tax cuts for the most wealthy expire so that we can do the responsible thing and pay down our debt.

"The GOP felt that it was MORE IMPORTANT to give the wealthiest 2% of Americans millions of dollars that we can't pay for, that we're borrowing money from China to pay for, than to give the working people of this country the majority of Americans, a much needed break.

Then the GOP will freak out, and accuse Obama of all sorts of things. Who cares what they have to say, it's a bunch of noise.

Obama stays on the offensive, accusing GOP and BlueDogs in congress of opposing the policies that we need to make America great again.

Unemployment benefits end for thousands of Americans.

Hit the microphones, and beat the GOP over the head with it. Blame them for letting them expire, because they were more worried about serving the super-wealthy than helping out the Average American. Lay out a New Deal type plan for putting americans back to work.

Homelessness ticks up as folks lose unemployment benefits.

Once again, Obama hits the microphones, accusing the Congress of inaction, and paint himself as the change agent whose progressive policies will save the day.

Repeat this tactic ad naseum until you beat them into submission.

How do I know this will work?

It's what FDR did.



By allowing the GOP to frame the debate, Obama will inevitably lose:
* the argument
*the war of ideas
*he'll lose ground on policy
* and he might even lose the next election.

Anonymous Hackers Join Team Wikileaks!

In an article over atRaw Story.com you can learn about this group, calling themselves Anonymous.

Apparently, they have taken down the website of the bank that froze Wikileak's funds.

RawStory gets one thing wrong-- they say the group is called "Operation Payback." The group is called Anonymous, and they've been around for a while. What they're doing is "Operation Payback." This is interesting, because as far as I know, their protests have in the past been limited to DNS attacks on Scientologist websites, and standing around with Guy Fawkes masks on, evoking V for Vendetta.


From RawStory:

Earlier in the day, Swiss bank PostFinance issued a statement announcing that it had frozen 31,000 euro ($41,000 US) in an account set up as a legal defense fund for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

The bank said it had frozen the account because, in opening it, Assange had claimed residency in Geneva.

"Assange cannot provide proof of residence in Switzerland and thus does not meet the criteria for a customer relationship with PostFinance," the bank said.

As of Monday evening, the PostFinance website was unavailable.

Operation Payback also promised a hack attack on PayPal, the online payment service that last week cut off WikiLeaks, denying the group a major tool for collecting donations from supporters.


Here's a video Anonymous posted on YouTube about what they are doing.



For more on the Wikileaks story as it unfolds, check out the New York Times blog

Glad to see Anonymous is on Team Wikileaks!



CLICK HERE AND GET YOURS

Taxing the Hell out of the Rich is the More American than Apple Pie

A prominent figure in history on why we should tax the hell out of the rich and spend it on socialist things like public schools, and infrastructure:

"Our revenues liberated by the discharge of the public debt, and its surplus applied to canals, roads, schools, etc., the farmer will see his government supported, his children educated, and the face of his country made a paradise by the contributions of the rich alone, without his being called on to spend a cent from his earnings." *
--Thomas Jefferson, 1811



"Another means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions of property in geometrical progression as they rise."
--Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1785.


*Emphasis mine.

December 4, 2010

YOUR PHOTOS #2

Cat can be seen here sporting a lovely "Kill And Eat The Rich" t-shirt by The Punk Patriot. Also, Cat appears to have eaten all but the tie of a wall street hedge fund manager. Thanks Cat! Also, nice photo!




We're building a movement here folks. GET YOURS

December 3, 2010

TheRealNews interviews Ray McGovern about Wikileaks

They are the real deal




Ex-CIA analyst, and anti-war activist Ray McGovern is on Team Wikileaks!


BUY THIS SHIRT


Also, Donate to The Real News Network

DEAR CYNICS- STOP EMAILING ME

You're not going to convince me that all hope is lost and that I should give up. My own life experience, as well as my studies of history, prove to me, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the only way to persevere is to do what is right regardless of whether or not it will work.

I get about half a dozen of these emails a week. I guess that means I'm doing something right?

Here's one that I got today:



From: Atheist Howard
To: punkpatriot411@gmail.com
Sent: Fri, December 3, 2010 4:59:32 AM
Subject: I'm sad to say this, but it's time to give up.

I found your youtube website and blog after viewing your "Fix the Economy" video and while I agree with it, I don't see the point of making such a video in the first place. Nothing you say in there is going to be realized. Progressives have lost, it's time to face the music and watch the destruction of the economy and possibly the country. It's time to face the music, there's no light at the end of the tunnel, it's over with. The democratic party has sold us out, after he put so much momentum and support behind President Barack Obama. And now, look at him, he's a complete disappointment. And the Tea Party is rising up, it will take America and there's nothing we can do about it. Ever heard of Rob Bishop? He's a house rep from Utah who's introducing a constitutional amendment to allow states to veto and not follow federal laws, and the tea party is backing removing so many constitutional amendments, including citizenship rights! And it's all going to happen! We're going to see the economy collapse from their economic plans and the complete destruction of our civil liberties, and seeing people like you thinking we have a chance and there's something to do seems horribly unrealistic and crazy, and I'm here to correct you on it.

Our progressive reforms, our economic strengthening, our civil liberties, came from great leaders who gave it "from the top down" FDR for example, because people voted democrat enthusiastically and they were rewarded for it. Now people don't, and the democrats have become a crappy party standing for little different than old guard republicans. Because of such, we're fucked now and not a single progressive thing is happening on a municipal, state or federal level. As Chris Hedges said, it's time not to vote, not to participate, we're fucked and at least we can send a message of disapproval.

Thanks for your time, hope you understand why I sent this message.




And here's my form letter response...

From: punkpatriot411@gmail.com
To: Atheist Howard
Sent: Fri, December 3, 2010 12:11:32 AM
Subject:RE: I'm sad to say this, but it's time to give up.

Hey there. I think I've got you cynics figured out. The reason you spend so much time trying to convince people like myself, the people who have done work to change things for the better, that we're wasting our time, isn't because you're trying to convince us. You're trying to convince you.

If you really believed that everything was without hope, and if you really wanted nothing more than to just sit on the sidelines and watch it all fall down you would be equally amused to watch folks like me struggle as we do, with little help and with little avail.

But instead you make it a point to try to convince us of something other than what our own life experience tells us, something other than what folks like me have found to be empirically true.

You're not actually trying to convince me of anything. My existence, my work, and my philosophy threaten your worldview.
You think you have everything all figured out, but then somebody like myself says something, or does something, that-- at least subconsciously-- calls that into question.

If you really truly didn't care, you'd never have initiated this conversation. You'd have laughed, shook your head, and moved on.

But the truth is, small changes for the better slowly add up to large changes for the better. Just look at Czechoslovakia. Of course, the Velvet Revolution wasn't all good. Nothing in this world is entirely good. Everything has downsides. But some things just suck less. And some governments are less fucked up than others.

To life, liberty, and pursuit of a less fucked-up government,
The Punk Patriot

TEAM WIKILEAKS



So just like people are dividing between Team Vampire and Team Werewolf around the Twilight series, people are also dividing between Team Wikileaks and Team Secrecy.

Which team are you on?

If you're on Team Wikileaks, show it by wearing this shirt.
If you're on Team Secrecy, show it by telling NO ONE.

CLICK HERE TO BUY IT!

December 2, 2010

Welfare Talking Points #2




Talking Points and facts on Welfare part 2:
"I was denied welfare because I’m white."

The largest population of welfare recipients, by race, is white. So that’s clearly false.

You were denied welfare because conservatives like you threw a hissy fit back in the 1990s, because you thought it was too easy to get on welfare, and that too many people were getting on it. Now that you’ve applied for it, you’ve seen hard to get on it, and rather than admit to your own mistake, now you’re playing the race card.
Typical...

NASA discovers ALIEN LIFE- here on earth!

According toGizmodo.com NASA announced today that they've discovered a new life form that may well have evolved independently of all life here on earth.

Which lends credence to my crazy theory that all life on earth probably DIDN'T evolve from a common ancestor. My thinking: If life really IS due to chemistry and not some direct divine intervention, there's no reason that it should be rare. In fact it should be as ubiquitous as other things caused by chemistry are. In fact, I see no reason why some of the five kingdoms of life could not have evolved separately from unique origins.





UPDATE

Okay, yeah, so it's not nearly as cool as Gizmodo initially made it seem:

pbbbbt

November 30, 2010

Computer beatboxing in German

Yeah, I know this is stupid, but I HAVE to share this:

1) Go to Google Translate
2) Select German-> German
3) Copy and past the following: pv zk pv pv zk pv zk kz zk pv pv pv zk pv zk zk pzk pzk pvzkpkzvpvzk kkkkkk bsch
4) Click listen
5) Be amazed.

Welfare Talking Points #1




So after my last video on how to fix the USA’s economy, I saw a lot of ignorant comments in the comments section about WELFARE.

They weren’t NEW ignorant comments, they were the SAME ignorant comments that you hear over and over. Apparently nobody out there is challenging people on their declarations, and allowing the virus of ignorance to spread.

So I wanted to make a list of facts and talking points for progressives when confronted with these conservative... well, let’s call them what they are-- they’re LIES, and stop the spread of ignorance in it’s tracks.

So let’s go down the list, and tackle them one by one, shall we?

1) Welfare spending is the reason our government is in debt.
FALSE.

If you had the choice between giving somebody a dollar and getting back either $1.50 or $0.80, which would you choose? Hold that thought.

According to USGovernmentspending.com The Federal Government is committed by law to spending 557 billion on welfare in the year 2010. Which seems like “Oh my! That’s a lot of money!” Which, for one person, yeah it is. But for our federal government, not so much.

Especially when you compare that to the $895 billion we’re committed to spend, by law on Defense spending. Which doesn’t account for the $711 billion in our discretionary spending on stuff like the War in Iraq and Afghanistan, and useless cold war-era weapons that we don’t even use, and never will.

Next you have to take into account what we get for those dollars spent.
Most economists agree on the following figures, including conservative ones:
Welfare spending has a fiscal multiplier of about 1.5-- while military spending has a fiscal multiplier of 0.8.

To which you might say, “wow, you just said some numbers, but what the hell does that mean? It means that for every dollar our gov’t spends on welfare, we get one dollar and fifty cents back in the form of GDP. With military spending, for every dollar we spend, we get back $0.80.

That seems really stupid. And that’s because it is. Which is why politicians frame their arguments about or disgustingly wasteful military spending as being “patriotic” or “supporting the troops.”
How much support actually goes to our troops? You, know, like after they come back from getting shot at and having their legs blown off?

According to the White House’s own figures, we’re slated to spend $125 billion on veterans affairs. And we all know about staffing shortages and underfunding that goes on in our VA system. So clearly this isn’t about supporting our troops.
For those who don’t care about human lives, and only the hard economics, I want to ask you again: If you had the choice between giving somebody a dollar and getting back either $1.50 or $0.80, which would you choose?
Now for the humanitarians out there, if you had to choose between giving somebody a dollar to feed their family, knowing you’d get back $1.50, or give somebody $1 knowing that your next door neighbor would have his legs blown off and you’ll only get back $0.80, which would you choose?

November 27, 2010

There IS a class war, and the rich are kicking our ass

Bob Herbert in the New York Times had this to say on the Class War : There is a Class War, and the Rich are KICKING OUR ASS!

He goes on, and you should really read the full article, but the part that resonated with me the most is the following paragraph:

"The rich may think that the public won’t ever turn against them. But to hold that belief, you have to ignore the turbulent history of the 1930s."


YES!

Which is why I've started the Kill & Eat the Rich Campaign. I don't know if it will take off or not. It all started with a t-shirt and a fable. I'm really hoping, that like that Green Revolution in Iran, it becomes a viral meme and take on a life all of it's own. Hey, I can dream, right?

November 26, 2010

Rep Todd Akin is either a fucking idiot, or lying

Because he's wrong. Incredibly, wildly, laughably wrong.
He's wrong in the same way that people saying that the moon is made of cheese are wrong.
He's wrong in the same way that people saying that the earth rests on the back of a giant space turtle are wrong.

But what sucks most of all is that it does not matter that he is wrong. It does not matter that he is either saying this because he thinks it's true- making him a complete fucking idiot and the product of horribly failed parenting-- or saying this knowing full well what bullshit it is (which, arguably, still makes him the product of horribly failed parenting.)




The reason that it doesn't matter, is because people on the right wing of our political spectrum in the USA ARE fucking idiots. They don't CARE if he's lying or not. What matters is that what he's saying SOUNDS GOOD TO THEM.

Just like they don't care that there were no WMD's in Iraq.
Just like they don't care that Saddam Hussien had nothing to do with 9-11.
Just like they don't care that removing regulations from the market is what triggered the economic collapse.
Just like they don't care that NAFTA and the WTO have created a vacuum that sucked all the jobs out of the USA.

They don't fucking care at all. In fact, they'll keep voting for people who spout bullshit like this, because they are INCREDIBLY FUCKING STUPID. I would not be surprised if when the GOP cuts all their social services (which poor white people are the biggest recipients of) to our collapsing banana republic, that they throw a big parade for the GOP.

It wouldn't be so bad that they were so incredibly stupid if it weren't for the fact that they're also wrong about everything. And thanks to low voter turnout in 2010, now the gov't represents the fucking stupids in the Tea Party who actually bothered to go out and vote. Great job cynical lefties. Way to "protest" by not voting. Thanks a bunch.

November 24, 2010

What about all the liberal rednecks?

They exist. Why aren't progressives talking to them?

Backstory: So I'm reading the book "No More Prisons" by League Of Pissed Off Voters (aka League of Indy Voters, aka League of Young Voters) founder William Upski Wimsatt.

It's all about hip-hop activism, inner city organizing, etc. And I think that's largely been the model that the league has followed. Which is great- If you live in a city.

I had an epiphany today, which is tied back to my training at the 1st annual Smackdown (aka organizer training session) in Columbus, Ohio back in 2004. After hearing story after story of how hard it is to be poor in a city like New York, I began to feel like, "well damn, I thought I was poor, but I've had it pretty good." But then after talking with the same people, I discovered that they had all sorts of opportunities that I never had, like specialty public schools for the arts, after school programs, they were cultivated for leadership by these like... community unions which served as like a parallel government.

Anyways, I'm not saying that living in a city doesn't suck-- like I said, I heard horror stories too, but I realized when talking with these kids, that rural folks like myself grew up in a different kind of poverty that sucked in different ways. I ate gov't cheese and gov't bologna growing up. Sometimes that and mustard was all we had to eat. My middle school almost folded because our property tax base wasn't enough to support it.
Arts program? Phht. Music program? HA! We barely had a gym program. Hell, we barely had a school.
What would the solution be? Bus us to another school? Where exactly might that school be at? We consolidated already to cut costs...

In the Boy Scouts, parents brought venison they'd hunted, killed, and cleaned themselves, for barbecues. They talked obliquely about factory farms and pollution, and how hunting connects us to the land. Hunters and fishermen are ready and available allies on environmental issues, but we dismiss them as rednecks. To our own peril.

Anyways, the long and the short of it is this:

The next breakthrough that progressives are going to have to make before we can effectively take our country back, is getting a foothold in areas of rural poverty.

The question we need to be asking is, "What about all the liberal rednecks?"

November 21, 2010

If Bush were to go to Europe, he'd be Arrested for War Crimes





It's not hyperbole to call him a war criminal. It's a fact.


Boris Johnson, Tory (Conservative) Mayor of London:
" It is not yet clear whether George W Bush is planning to cross the Atlantic to flog us his memoirs, but if I were his PR people I would urge caution. As book tours go, this one would be an absolute corker. It is not just that every European capital would be brought to a standstill, as book-signings turned into anti-war riots. The real trouble — from the Bush point of view — is that he might never see Texas again.

One moment he might be holding forth to a great perspiring tent at Hay-on-Wye. The next moment, click, some embarrassed member of the Welsh constabulary could walk on stage, place some handcuffs on the former leader of the Free World, and take him away to be charged. Of course, we are told this scenario is unlikely. Dubya is the former leader of a friendly power, with whom this country is determined to have good relations. But that is what torture-authorising Augusto Pinochet thought. And unlike Pinochet, Mr Bush is making no bones about what he has done.

November 20, 2010

Thank you again, Tom Tomorrow



I don't know if Tom Tomorrow gets paid by visits to his Salon.com column space or not. So click the cartoon just to be sure he gets the $0.05 he's due.

November 17, 2010

KILL & EAT THE RICH (your photos)

This one is from Rachel:


CLICK HERE TO GET YER OWN

The Punk Patirot Fixes the USA Economy



With quantitative easing, people are worried about inflation!
If we don’t do anything, the Fed is worried about deflation!
By blaming our shitty economy on people who receive welfare checks, we’re having a big problem with CONFLATION!

I’m the Punk Patriot, and I’m going to fuckin’ fix the economy for you.

I was watching the news the other day, they were doing “man on the street” interviews, and I saw this one person give his thoughts on the economy: “I think thar’s too much people gittin on welfur, and too much of our jobs is bein’ sent overseas.”

Well, you got half of that right. Thanks to NAFTA, CAFTA, and the WTO, our manufacturing jobs have almost all left the country. Manufacturing is important, because it’s a job that takes a low-cost raw material and transforms it into a high-value consumable good. This happens through the MAGIC OF LABOR!

Because people are working on transforming low value materials into high value goods, the product that they create using their skilled labor has more use and therefore more value, than the stuff that they started with. Which means that they are creating wealth. Factories are not just places to create goods, they are places that create wealth. And right now, all our wealth is being created in other countries. Thats why the economy fucking sucks so bad.

I work in a boot factory. I make boots. I transform leather and rubber, both of which are relatively low cost, low value materials, into a high-value, higher-function good-- a boot.
You can’t keep your feet dry and warm with scrap leather and rubber alone. You need it to be crafted into a fucking boot. That takes skilled labor. You’re welcome.

Your retail jobs don’t do this. They simply move a product from one place to another. You will never grow an economy on retail sales, because the margins are slim, and no wealth is created by moving a product from one point to another. An economy based entirely on retail sales-- which is what we’ve pretty much had for the past 30 years, will eat itself alive- which is pretty much what we’re seeing right now.

Now, the address the conflation of “Too much people gettin on welfar”...

For whatever reason, it’s a common misconception that people receiving welfare is bad for the economy. People getting on welfare isn’t the reason you don’t have a job. The reason you don’t have a job is because nobody fucking MAKES anything anymore. Which means that all our wealth has left the country. Which means that nobody has any money to fucking buy anything anymore. Which means that the retail jobs are having to lay people off. Which means that more people have less money to buy things with. Which means that more layoffs are in the works. Which means that more people have less money to spend.

Welfare spending actually reverses this trend. If a person receives welfare spending, what do they spend it on? (DRUGS!) No! Actually they spend it on food and rent. If more people have more money to spend on food and rent, then the grocery stores can hire more people, and the superintendents are better able to afford repairs. Which means that construction and repair workers can stay employed and grocery stores can hire more people, which means that they can buy other things like cars. Which means that more people can get paid to make cars. Or whatever. Money flows in one direction-- from the bottom, up. This is a fundamental truth of capitalism. Fixing the interest rates for all the rich fucks on Wall Street can start doing more derivatives trading again doesn’t do ANYTHING to fix the economy.

Which is why Quantitative Easing is doomed to fail. Capitalism is fundamentally flawed, and supply-side economics, which apparently even Obama has drunk the kool-aid on, is even more so.

You’re not going to fix fundamental flaws by fucking around with interest rates. The problem isn’t our monetary policy, it’s our monetary system, which is biased towards savings, wall street mathematical gymnastics, and scarcity. It’s the fundamental flaws in our entire economy-- that we do NOT RECOGNIZE that the poorest people amongst us are actually the ones who create all wealth in society by providing consumer demand. If it wasn’t for consumer demand, all the pioneers of industry would be wasting their money and time. Which with the economy in recession, it looks like they’re doing.

Rich people don’t create jobs. They don’t create a single fucking job. If labor hadn’t worked their asses off striking and protesting and doing work-slowdowns, and sit-down strikes, and taking police billy clubs to the head, and being shot and killed, so that we could have all the labor laws we take for granted, things like overtime pay, minimum wage, the right to organize, a half hour lunch, 15 minute breaks, OSHA safety requirements, etc etc etc-- we’d be no different than those third world countries that all our jobs have gone to.

If we didn’t have these labor protections mandated by law, we’d be working our fingers off- literally right off our hands, getting them caught in unsafe machinery, or permanently damaged due to repetitive motion injury.
Now Randian regressives who would prefer we live in a pre-Great Depression laissez-faire, free-market system, would have us believe that we should be willing to make ourselves POORER-- by taking cuts in benefits and wages, to make ourselves richer, by having more jobs. We aren’t going to make ourselves richer by making ourselves poorer. That’s so fucking illogical I don’t even know where to begin with debunking that...

You want to fix the fucking economy? I’ll fix it for you.
First thing we need, is a trade policy where we stop importing goods from whoever is fucking over their workers the most, just because it’s cheaper to do so. We can harness the greed and consumption of America to do good work for the rest of the world. Pure free-market economics is like a child with an overactive ID and no superego telling them what’s right and wrong.

What we need is to put in a safeguard to protect us from our own greed and stupidity. If we implement a trade policy in which we only trade with countries who have labor laws and environmental protection laws at least as good as our own, then we force third world countries to give their lower class more protection by their governments, and increase their standards of living, by giving them more labor protections, and higher wages, and more protection from getting poisoned by lazy fucks that we call the “captains of industry”, who pollute because it’s cheap and easy to do so.

Second, we need to implement a MAXIMUM WAGE law. Now there’s been talk about this for a while. Some think we should just cap it arbitrarily. I think that’s wrong. I think that would stifle the GOOD things about capitalism and greed-- the incentive to make the best fucking product you can for the lowest amount of money to the consumer, so that you can make the most money you can. Capitalism works really well for creating amazing consumer goods. Like cellphones and computers. People really wanted to be able to watch YouTube videos and so now you can do it on your fucking PHONE. In fact, some of you are probably watching this on a phone. A FUCKING PHONE! That’s crazy! That couldn’t happen without capitalism responding to consumer demand.

But there’s a problem-- the Average CEO makes 10million dollars a year.
The average worker makes 40,000 a year or less. The average worker spends the majority of their income on meeting their basic needs-- which is all shit that actually makes our economy function.
The average CEO keeps it. This is called “dead money.” That money sits in the bank, or goes to wall street where it does mathematic gymnastics, but doesn’t create a single fucking job.

So what’s the solution? The maximum wage needs to be indexed to the lowest paid employee at any company. Let’s set it at say, 20 times what your lowest paid employee makes-- which is roughly the same ratio that we saw in the 1950s and 1960s, a time when the USA was far more properous. Back in the 1960s, indexed for inflation, we worked half as many hours, got paid the same amount, but the cost of living was a third of what it is now.

Today, CEOs make roughly 300 times as much as their lowest paid employees. That’s fucking absurd. If a company is doing really well, it’s because of EVERYBODY at that fucking company working their ass off, least of which is the CEO. If they have enough money laying around to give themselves bonuses, they have enough money to let everybody share in the wealth. After all, all those poor fucks are the ones who put their labor into making that company successful.. They should share in that wealth. So if a company does well, and the executive board wants to give themselves raises as a pat on the back-- go ahead. But you have to a raise that is proportional to your income-- to everybody else in your company. If you want to give yourself a raise, you have to give EVERYBODY in your company a raise.

This forces more of the wealth downwards into the lowest classes, where it belongs. Because it’s all going to end up back in the pockets of the CEOs anyways. Fixing the economy to work better for the rich and the traders on wall street, is like fixing a tree to work better for a fungal parasite. You’re going to end up killing the tree.

This is the punk patriot, to life, liberty, and pursuit of a less fucked up government.

November 16, 2010

TSA: If you don't let us TOUCH YOUR PENIS, we'll have you arrested

PRE-SHIRT design. Will be a tri-color t-shirt.



For for those of you who don't know, John Tyner said to the TSA when about to be subjected to a full genital pat-down, "If you touch my junk, I'll have you arrested."

Because he, an American citizen with a shred of dignity left, declined to submit to groping or naked photos, the TSA responded, saying something along the lines of, "If you don't let us touch your penis-- or take a photo of it, we'll have you arrested."

That case is pending.








For the ladies:

November 12, 2010

Kill And Eat The Rich Conversation




ZING!

If you're familiar with Etsy's conversation format, you'll notice that the first email should be on the BOTTOM, but it's at the top here.

I put it in photoshop and reordered it to read in the sequence of how the conversation transpired.

Also, if you want to buy this killer shirt, click here

I'm hoping that once people get them, they will post themselves wearing it as their facebook profile picture, sparking a movement like the Green after the Iranian Election.

Hey... I can dream.


November 9, 2010

Defending the Green Party

Monday, November 08, 2010

Defending the Green



From Eric Zorn's Chicago Tribune Column: Change of Subject
Political Science professor William P. Kreml of DePaul University writes to take issue with my view [Eric Zorn's] of the Green Party's performance in the recent election:

I believe I was the largest contributor to the Rich Whitney campaign. I contributed to, and raised money for, the MSNBC television ads that ran from September 20th through November 1st. I also appeared in the ads. Rich [Whitney for Governor] ran as a Green and Eric Zorn of the Tribune has seen fit to castigate the Greens as a party that has contributed little to the public well being. I differ.

A large number of Green Party members are former Democrats. We left for various reasons but I think I capture the core of them when I ask Mr. Zorn to look at the Federal Election Commission contribution reports of recent years and find that, increasingly, the Democratic and Republican Parties are receiving money from the same corporations. The Greens take no money from any corporation. We, like most of the rest of the world, believe that America’s banks, insurance companies, and Wall Street corporations caused the world wide recession.

Why would a political party not want to take money from the corporations? Please recall that our great country was founded as a middle class nation, thus following the admonitions of Aristotle in The Politics, that both political stability and economic justice was best secured within that large body of a population that did reasonably well and thus voluntarily legitimated the existing political order. That middle class ideal was realized in America in the early nineteenth century, and again in the early twentieth century, by having two political parties that differed along the various iterations of the original Hamiltonian/Jeffersonian Divide, balancing the public and the private sectors, as well as tempering the tendency towards exorbitant wealth and wrenching poverty.

In the latter half of the nineteenth century, largely as a result of the Industrial Revolution’s full flowering, and in the latter half, or least one-third, of the twentieth century, when the opposition of the principal parties became far more suspect, both instability and economic injustice reared its head. To return to the Democrats, I ask if there is not a correlation between the beginnings of deregulation under Jimmy Carter (remember the Civil Aeronautics Board?) and the ghastly Clintonian oxymoron of “self-regulation” with the year by year dispersions of income and wealth, along with the increase of both economic instability and governmental debt that have occurred under Republicans and Democrats since the mid-1970s. I think there is.

In short, I suggest there is a correlation between a) the former Federal Reserve Board chairman Alan Greenspan’s admission that “there was something missing in the model” (Greenspan having been reappointed by Clinton after his Reagan appointment) b) Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin’s “I never knew the private sector could go so haywire,” c) former Democratic National Party chair and chair of the Senate Finance Committee Chris Dodd’s VIP home loan with Angelo Mozilo and Countrywide Financial, and d) Senator Joe Lieberman’s quashing of Security and Exchange Commission chair Arthur Leavitt’s 1990s investigation into the insurance industry, and the mess we are in. As good conservatives properly teach, actions have consequences. There are reasons for why our country is enduring the most significant decline relative to other countries in our over two hundred year history.

I ask Mr. Zorn to examine three more things. First, a look at open source CIA Fact Book material reveals that virtually all of the nations of Europe, as well as democratic countries like Australia and Canada, have multi-party political systems. Even with smaller and in almost all cases more homogeneous populations, these countries feel a need for a broader range of political views than a country that has hindered third party entrance into the political arena with high ballot access percentage requirements. Illinois requires a 5% minimum, one of the highest percentages in the nation. A rigidly two party system is semi-democratic, at best; better than North Korea, Cuba, etc. for sure, but not as good as other democracies.

Secondly, I ask Mr. Zorn to examine the history of at least some of the third parties in America. Did not the Liberty Party lead to the Free Soil Party that became part of the Republican Party under Abraham Lincoln?

Did not the Populist Party merge with the Democrats and advance the progressive policies that righted some of the inequities of late nineteenth century America?

And, finally, Mr. Zorn, what of our region, the Upper Midwest, that imported the economic and political balances of Scandinavian, German, Czech, Slovak, and Alsatian peoples into the American mainstream, guaranteeing minimal economic protections to the citizenry? The Greens, the world’s largest political organization with ninety-two national parties, have a different history, and ideology, than that of Democrats like Rep. Melissa Bean. That is why 6.500 Americans voted for the Green candidate for Congress.

Perhaps the Democrats will learn something from this.

From Eric Zorn: My response: As I wrote before, there is precious little evidence that winning or losing candidates have ever taken much notice after the fact of the positions taken by single-digit opponents. But even if they did in this case, what would taking "notice" look like? What positions could Bean have taken that would have won those Green voters and yet not cost her with those who did vote for her?

As I've written before, I'm not opposed to third parties, independent candidacies, fresh ideas in politics or anything else that smacks of rigidity in political thought. But neither am I in favor of futility or symbolism when it comes time to vote in close elections.

I'm in favor of casting votes that stand to make an immediate difference.

I will ask here what I asked in a comment thread: If it were up to you and you alone and you could choose Melissa Bean, Joe Walsh or abstention, thus ceding the choice of U.S. Rep. for the 8th district to someone else, which would you choose?

This hypothetical turned out to be closer to real than we could have known, and those who voted Green for all practical purposes abstained.

November 6, 2010

A note to the Dissafected Non-Voters out there:

The reason our Government sucks, is because nobody participates.

To complain about not being "given" enough choices on the ballot reminds me of the Russian Folk Tale of the Little Red Hen:



Where she worked growing wheat, she could get no help from anyone.
She harvested it, and got no help from anyone.
She ground it to flour, and got no help.
She baked it into bread and got no help from anyone.
They all slept.

To make it a closer analog to our Democracy-- when the Democracy Bread was finally baked, everybody wanted a loaf of their own, and when the Little Red Hen said "no" they all bitched and whined that it wasn't fair. When she ate the bread herself, the Dog, the Cat, and the Mouse used this as an excuse to further justify their lack of participation. So they never got any bread, and were miserable.

The Mouse took up teaching linguistics at MIT, and wrote books about how the Little Red Hen was stupid for working to bake bread when the bread would likely go bad over time, or have small rocks in it from being ground at the miller, and how since the only REAL way to get bread is to plant seeds, nobody should participate in harvesting or grinding flour, and thusly the effort that goes into baking bread is a wasted effort.

The Cat went on to become an anarchist philosopher and would publish books decrying the Little Red Hen as a "slave of the system" and published books saying that bread would make itself all on it's own if we stopped participating in the making of bread.

The Dog muttered, "they're all crooks anyways" and went back to sleep.

The end.

I answer conservative talking point emails

On Sat, Nov 6, 2010 at 2:28 AM, John Doe wrote:
Note To Democrats

You lost. You lost because the country has seen the direction your party is headed and wants no part in it. You suffered your worst losses in Congress for 60 years. The Republicans won not because of their sparkling personalities or inspired policies, but simply because they're not Democrats.

If you're gloating because two or three of the Tea Party candidates didn't win, then at least you're easily pleased, something likely to stand you in good stead in 2012.

Also, you should probably look into cutting California adrift before it drags Nevada or Oregon down with it. Probably best to just tow the entire state out to sea and scuttle it.





A Progressive's Response to Republicans

Hi there Kregaaron. I don't know why you sent this to me.

First, I'm not a Democrat.

Second, the reason why Democrats lost is because the direction that the Democrats are headed in is the same exact direction as the Republicans, and has been since 2006. And the Democratic Party's progressive base finally woke up.

Nancy Pelosi said she was against the war, and when she had the power to end them, she didn't. In fact, she called special emergency sessions to approve additional funding to extend the wars and occupation for years to come-- all on the back of the taxpayer's grandchildren.

When Nancy Pelosi had the power to investigate the Bush Administration for approving torture, illegal wiretapping, black sites, and other nasty and illegal shit-- she chose not to.

When the American people were clamoring for Impeachment hearings against Bush for all the illegal nasty shit he and his administration were doing, she said firmly "NO!" ...along with the rest of the Democratic leadership. And she, like the rest of the Democrats and Republicans, continued to pass bills that gave Bush exactly what he wanted; Bills that gave the Federal Government more power to spy on us, to torture us, to deny is a trial by jury, to read our email, to monitor our purchases, to silence our peaceful protests. More power to lock us up for political reasons. More infringements on freedom and liberty.

Then Obama was elected. We were told by Demcoratic Leadership that this was the sort of change that we needed. We needed 60 votes in the senate, and the House, and the Presidency to get anything done. The American people gave them 60 votes in the senate, a majority in the house, and the presidency. And they did nothing. Mostly they blamed the Republicans for obstructionism, which is absurd.

Then they cowtowed to big business, blaming the Republicans. Then they started to lose seats in the Senate. And so they blamed the Republicans. The the President and his staff attacked his own progressive base, and called them "fucking retarded" for wanting single payer healthcare. They called them "Crazy" for wanting to end the illegal, immoral, and expensive wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Demcoratic base was completely demoralized. The more power that we voted to give the Democrats-- the more they started to sound like Republicans.

And so now the Democrats in DC get exactly what they have always wanted-- to not be in power any more, so that they don't have to make up excuses for why they are cowtowing to big business, so that they can once again sit on the sidelines and promise things to their base that they have no intention of ever delivering on.

Peace,
The Punk Patriot

November 3, 2010

Boehner sure did promise a lot...

Boehner certainly promised a lot in his speech. "Cutting spending," eh? So that means we're ending the 3 trillion dollar wars, right?

"Changing how government works, to make it responsive to the people..."
So that means you're pushing to adopt Mike Gravel's proposed National Referendum, right?

"Shrinking the size of government" are you? "Getting the government off our backs" are you?
So no more roving wiretaps on US citizens? Closing Guantanamo bay? Cutting the Pentagon's budget?

"Putting small businesses back to work" are you? You're doing that? Wouldn't that mean the government would have to intervene? Starting things out by contradicting yourself within the same paragraph: What a great start to the next congress.

PS Did he sound like he was half-in-the-bag drunk to anybody else but me? --Maybe that's why he started crying for no goddamned reason?

October 31, 2010

Vlogging Outtakes



What if there was an episode of The Punk Patriot where all you saw was the stuff I edit out?

Rally to Restore Sanity: What Sanity? (The Stupid Win)



So much for peaceful discourse. Deep down inside of everybody is a stupid chimpanzee who hits things that they disagree with. Some of them wear suits.

Here's the Daily Show's executive Producer assaulting a 9-11 Truth person.
Regardless of what you think about 9-11 truth folks: they're righteous/annoying-- they don't deserve to be asssaulted.



The best way to deal with something you find annoying, is to just walk away and ignore it.
That would be the sane, rational thing to do.

But then, we aren't sane or rational here in the USA. We love to hit things we don't understand or don't like. Like Iraq, Arabs, CodePink, anti-war protesters, hippies, journalists, or poor people.



I look forward to more from Davis Fleetwood's time at the rally. You can subscribe to his channel here:

Davis Fleetwood's channel

October 30, 2010

Solidarity 2.0



If you want to live in a country where We The People govern ourselves, all you have to do is start acting like it.

Every two years, there’s some election of some sort. Every two years, the corporate owned media reports the election results as being split between somewhere around 50%.

That’s not true. Because each year, about 60% of the population DOESN’T VOTE.

Mathematically that means that the people who vote only make up around 40% of the population. And since that population of people who actually vote is split nearly 50/50 between two pro-war, pro-corporate parties who don’t give a fuck about you, we are being ruled by the electoral decisions of 21% of the population.

People on the blue side of the 40% of people who vote love to talk about Ralph Nader as being a ‘spoiler candidate.’

With a majority of people not voting, I think we need to start looking in the mirror for who’s REALLY spoiling our elections.

Mathematically, if everybody who didn’t vote in 2000 out of apathy or cynicism had voted for Ralph Nader, Ralph Nader would have been our 43rd president. Not Bush. Not Gore. It wouldn’t have mattered that over a million people were illegally barred from voting due to fictional criminal records. It wouldn’t have mattered that the supreme court decided the election in Bush’s favor when Gore had won the most votes.

The election would have been a landslide for the Green Party, with 60% voting Green, and only 20% voting Republican, and only 20% voting Democrat.

So why doesn’t this happen? We’re told all the time by the Droopy Dogs of left-wing, the cheerleaders for apathy and cyncism, people like Noam Chomsky and Chris Hedges that we should try “not voting” as a way to protest, or that third parties don’t have a chance of winning because the corporate power over our lives is SO complete, blah blah blah, doom and gloom.

Here’s the truth-- we have the vote. We are the ones who are really in charge, but we either throw away our vote by supporting candidates that don’t support us, or we stay home in protest.

So what’s the real answer? This is my call to arms:

You need to get off the internet, and get into your community. You need to start working to build the third party movement into a force to be contended with. The Green Party is only 10 years old and at a national level is skeletal at best. We need people to organize in their communities, and build third parties like the Green Party up at the local and state level. Poland threw off Communist rule by organizing people all across the country in small local, decentralized groups. It was called the “Solidarity” movement.

We need a “Solidarity 2.0” here in the USA.

In truth, if you want a government where we the people govern ourselves, all you need to do is start acting like it.

VOTE.

Or, if you don’t mind being ruled by the will of 21% of the population, stay home.






October 28, 2010

KILL & EAT THE RICH (video)



Much thanks to Davis Fleetwood for making this video about my "Kill & Eat the Rich" campaign:


So I have this fable:

They told us when they took our jobs overseas, "No hard feelings. It's just business, you know?"
They told us when they destroyed our 401ks through gambling with our money, "No hard feelings. It's just business, you know?"
They told us when we fell behind on our mortgage and foreclosed on our house, kicking us to the street, "No hard feelings. It's just business, you know?"
As more and more people were forced on welfare, the government's budget started to look grim. When they cut welfare spending entirely so that they could enjoy bigger tax cuts to "stimulate the economy," they told us, "No hard feelings. It's just business, you know?"

Then the poor had nothing left to eat, and no place to go. So they had to kill and eat the rich.

They descended on Wall Street by the millions, stopping all traffic.

Their numbers were so large, the police couldn't do anything to stop the massive crowd of the disenfranchised. They flooded the buildings of Wall Street, the halls of DC, of the McMansions of Texas, and like a horde of zombies, they tore into the flesh of the horrified wealthy, who screamed and shat themselves, knowing that they were powerless to stop the oncoming mass of gnashing teeth and hungry mouths.

And as the poor picked the bones clean over the burning piles of money, the poor said to the bones:

"No hard feelings. It's just business, you know?"



Now, I want to explain, I don't actually advocate killing and eating the rich. It's just that, like Obama and Hillary talking about nuking Iran-- I just think we should "keep all options on the table."

Speaking of which, I recently saw an old advert for Scott Paper Towels, asking "is your washroom breeding Bolsheviks?"
Which went on to say how harsh paper towels and unsanitary bathroom conditions pissed workers off, and made them more likely to unionize and join the communist party, which one can only assume means that they're going to crash the gates and kill you and all the other board members.

Yes! Once upon a time, people were so scared of the poor that they were willing to do the most basic things to keep them happy.
Like keep the bathroom clean, and buy soft toilet paper.

Just think what the corporate elite would be willing to do for the betterment of humanity if they thought they had to prevent us from killing and eating them?

You can buy the t-shirt here:
http://www.etsy.com/listing/59971127/tshirt-kill-and-eat-the-rich

Wear it proud!

October 26, 2010

KILL & EAT THE RICH



They told us when they took our jobs overseas, "No hard feelings. It's just business, you know?"
They told us when they destroyed our 401ks through gambling with our money, "No hard feelings. It's just business, you know?"
They told us when we fell behind on our mortgage and foreclosed on our house, kicking us to the street, "No hard feelings. It's just business, you know?"
As more and more people were forced on welfare, the government's budget started to look grim. When they cut welfare spending entirely so that they could enjoy bigger tax cuts to "stimulate the economy," they told us, "No hard feelings. It's just business, you know?"

Then the poor had nothing left to eat, and no place to go.

So they had to kill and eat the rich.

They descended on Wall Street by the millions, stopping all traffic.

Their numbers were so large, the police couldn't do anything to stop the massive crowd of the disenfranchised. They flooded the buildings of Wall Street, the halls of DC, of the McMansions of Texas, and like a horde of zombies, they tore into the flesh of the horrified wealthy, who screamed and shat themselves, knowing that they were powerless to stop the oncoming mass of gnashing teeth and hungry mouths.

And as the poor picked the bones clean over the burning piles of money, the poor said to the bones:

"No hard feelings. It's just business, you know?"

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