Category: Politics

Like You and Me, Only Better

If you’re being attacked and you managed to call 911, a law enforcer will probably show up in time to draw chalk around your body and take some pictures of your corpse. Now when a law enforcer is attacked the whole goddamned world will be alerted so that other law enforcers can drop everything they’re doing, such as responding to your attack, so they can help one of their fellows:

Last week, while many of us were caught up by the internet getting ripped apart by the seams, FCC chairman Ajit Pai also announced a new national system of wireless emergency Blue Alerts, which will notify the public if police officers are threatened, “missing, seriously injured, or killed.”

However, there won’t be such a system to alert everybody in the area when we’re being attacked. I guess we’re just not important enough. Perhaps if we spent more of our time steal wealth from each other to give to the State, we would get our own national alert system.

Isn’t it strange how everybody in this country is supposedly equal under the law but the law continues to establish an environment where favored individuals, such as government employees, enjoy privileges that others do not.

We the People Site Shuttered, But Nothing Has Changed

Under the guise of better enabling the people to get their issues noticed by the federal government, the Obama administration started the We the People petition site. The site was celebrated by Obama’s supporters are a great step forward for the United States government. Now those people are upset because the Trump administration shutdown the site:

WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House is temporarily removing a petition tool from its website after 11 months of silence, promising to respond to public concerns next year.

The Trump administration said the platform, used extensively by critics and less frequently by allies, will be removed at midnight Tuesday and return in late January as a new site.

It remains to be seen whether the site will come back online as promised or not. However, nothing has actually changed. If anything the government has just become slightly more honest. While Obama’s supporters celebrated the We the People site, it accomplished nothing. Any petition that reached the required number of signatures to be addressed by the federal government were either dismissed with a wave of a hand or tossed down a memory hole.

The government doesn’t give a shit about what you think and never did.

This One Weird Trick to Make Alabamans Vote Blue

Last night America learned the one weird trick to make Alabamans vote blue. That trick is having the Republican Party choose a kiddy diddler as its candidate:

Doug Jones has become the first Democrat in 25 years to win a US Senate seat for Alabama, after a bitter campaign against Republican Roy Moore.

His unexpected victory deals a blow to President Donald Trump, who backed Mr Moore, and narrows the Republican majority in the Senate to 51-49.

Of course this one weird trick barely works:

Mr Jones won with 49.9% of the vote, to Mr Moore’s 48.4%. All votes from precincts around the state have been counted.

The margin of victory is well above the half a percentage point which would have triggered a recount.

Considering how big of a piece of shit Moore is, this race should have been a slam drunk for the Democratic Party. Its victory should have required nothing more than an option on the ballot that said, “Not Moore.” However, its candidate won by a narrow margin. Team loyalty can run very strongly in politics even when a team picks an absolutely deplorable candidate.

Almost Utopia

The Venezuelan government has announced that opposition parties will be banned from the 2018 election:

Venezuela’s President, Nicolás Maduro, says the country’s main opposition parties are banned from taking part in next year’s presidential election.

He said only parties which took part in Sunday’s mayoral polls would be able to contest the presidency.

Leaders from the Justice First, Popular Will and Democratic Action parties boycotted the vote because they said the electoral system was biased.

President Maduro insists the Venezuelan system is entirely trustworthy.

In a speech on Sunday, he said the opposition parties had “disappeared from the political map”.

“A party that has not participated today and has called for the boycott of the elections can’t participate anymore,” he said.

By my calculations Venezuela is just a couple of steps away from creating a socialist utopia!

Eliminating opposition parties is nothing new for democratic nations. It’s especially common in socialist nations where democracy is promoted the most. While socialists tend to talk a big game when it comes to democracy, the devil is in the details and while socialist nations often let the proles vote they only let them vote for parties that push a socialist agenda. Oftentimes the number of approved parties is whittled down to one so, while the proles do get to vote, there is only one candidate for any position to vote for (which is where Venezuela is probably heading).

The Pentagon Will Investigate Itself

Not too long ago it was revealed that the Pentagon has been unable to account for a few trillion dollars it spent. This revelation lead to a predictable outcome. Some critters in Congress feigned outrage, some hearings were held, and legislation was passed that claimed to be the solution to the problem. That legislation has instructed the Pentagon to investigate itself:

The Defense Department will conduct an agencywide financial audit for the first time in history, following requirements in the 2010 National Defense Authorization Act. In a conference yesterday, the Pentagon committed to annual audits, with reports to be issued in November.

Just as Congress’ respond to the Pentagon misplacing trillions of dollars was predictable, I’m sure the Pentagon’s investigation into itself will predictably find that the agency did nothing wrong. But the self-investigation will appease Congress so everybody can wash their hands of this without having to actually fix anything. Since this issue will remain unresolved the Pentagon will be able to continue misplacing trillions of dollars. In the end a lot of money and time will be invested into ensuring business will continue as usual.

Racist Socialists are Finally Admitting That They’re Socialists

Libertarians get accused of a lot of things. They get accused of hating the poor and elderly, having an unrealistic view on foreign policy, and being an arm of the alt-right. While I can understand where the first two of those accusations come from, most people mistakenly believe that welfare and defense can only be provided by the State, I don’t understand where the last accusation comes from.

If you spend any amount of time listening to the drivel that the alt-right calls philosophy, you will quickly concluded that they’re fascists. However, fascism has another name and that name is national socialism. While the alt-right has been keeping their socialist tendencies on the down low, and this has allowed some so-called libertarians to convince themselves that the alt-right supports capitalism and free markets, a few of its leading personalities are finally dispensing with the camouflage:

When we finally got to the winery that Spencer’s National Policy Institute had booked, Mike Enoch of the Daily Shoah podcast, who promulgated the slur “dindu nuffins” for African Americans, was holding forth on the horrors of “corporate neoliberalism.”

Then Eli Mosley of the campus group Identity Evropa, who calls Jews “oven-dodging…kikes,” took Enoch one further: “We need to be explicitly anti-capitalist. There’s no other way forward for our movement.” As 60 mostly young, male racists gathered around him, Mosley, whose real name is Elliott Kline, confidently predicted, “Twenty eighteen is going to be the year of leftists joining the white-nationalist movement!”

This is a smart strategic move for the alt-right. As any libertarian knows, there aren’t a lot of libertarians in the United States. Furthermore, libertarianism is at odds with fascism so the only “libertarians” the alt-right can reliably draw in are the edgelords who only claim to be libertarian because they think doing so is controversial. Drawing from a subset of a small group isn’t a winning strategy. However, there are a lot of anti-capitalists in the United States and, even though a majority of them probably aren’t white supremacists, drawing from a subset of a far larger group is likely to net more new members.

I hope discarding its anti-capitalist camouflage will also put the myth of Nazi capitalism to rest. It’s damned annoying hearing international socialists claim that national socialists as somehow supporters of capitalism. I want to see the fight between the national and international socialists return to its true form of an internal fight amongst socialists.

Watching the House of Cards Collapse

Al Franken announced his retirement:

Washington (CNN)Democratic – Sen. Al Franken of Minnesota is resigning following allegations that he touched women inappropriately, he announced on the Senate floor Thursday.

Considering all of the horrible things politicians do, from authorizing the continued death and destruction of people in foreign lands to refusing to punish murdering law enforcers, I’m a bit surprised that allegations of sexual assault have become the tool with which politicians can be dethroned. However, I’m glad these accusations of sexual assault against politicians are coming to light because they’re doing more to hold law makers responsible than all of the voting in the country has.

Start Popping Your Popcorn

After several women came forward and accused Al Franken of sexual harassment he has announced that he’s going to make an announcement this morning:

WASHINGTON – Democratic Party leaders united Wednesday in calling for Sen. Al Franken to resign from the U.S. Senate, an extraordinary rebuke to the Minnesota Democrat as he faced a new allegation of sexual harassment.

Franken planned to make an announcement about his future Thursday morning on the Senate floor.

His office said it would happen at 10:45 a.m. Central time, describing it as the senator planning to “deliver a speech from the Senate floor.”

This should lead to some good drama. On the one hand, most politicians in his position would be planning to announce their retirement, which is what I’m betting he’ll announce. On the other hand, he does have an overinflated ego so he might actually refuse to abide by the demands being made by his fellow party members to resign. Either way, this is going to be hilarious!

It’s Not Your Business

You don’t own your business, the government does. You just get to run it how they want you to run it:

PHILADELPHIA, Pa. (WTXF) – The push to remove bulletproof barriers inside Philly convenient stores just got past another hurdle.

The Public Health and Human Services Committee has passed a bill which enables the city’s Licenses and Inspections department to regulate the bullet-resistant barricade that stands between customers and cash registers in many neighborhood corner stores.

The officials pushing for this legislation are, of course, claiming it’s to fight “indignity.” Indignity is such a useful work in politics because it doesn’t have a fixed meaning. By citing “indignity” a politician can pass a piece of legislation aimed at shutting down some unfavored business without admitting to the purpose of the legislation. For example, if you wanted to shutdown a convenience store you could pass a piece of legislation that would put the lives of its employees in peril, which would either convince them to quit or lead to their demise. Either way the politician wins because without employees a convenience store isn’t convenient at all and will thus shutdown.

Mistaken Identity

“They all look the same to me.” —Trump Fans

LeVar Burton, the actor who’s best known for his past work in “Reading Rainbow” and “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” is getting bombarded with angry tweets from Trump fans who have mistaken him for LaVar Ball.

The most amusing thing about American politics has to be the fact that all sides have become such batshit crazy extremists that it’s trivial for opposing sides to act as one another. Take this case. Are the people mistaking LeVar Burton for LaVar Ball actually angry Trump supporters who are too dumb to know one black man from another or are they Trump haters pretending to be Trump supporters in order to embarrass their opposition? I’m guessing it’s really a bit of both. However, it’s impossible to know for sure because a lot of Trump supporters are stupid racists (I know it’s a redundant term) who enjoy publicly demonstrating their stupidity and probably can’t tell one black man from another so it’s easy to play them on TV (or the Internet in this case).

There is a drought of intellectuals in American politics, which has lowered the bar for political debate. Arguing over issues and philosophy is no longer the preferred form of political discourse in the United States. Instead character assassination has become the primary tool, which has created a focus on the most idiotic members of each party.