Politics – Page 36 – A Geek With Guns

How Six Years Changes a Political Party

I’ve been riding Republicans pretty hard on this blog. That’s not because I hold any love for the Democrats but because my RSS reader consists primarily of gun blogs and gun blogs generally report more on Republicans and therefore I’m more exposed to that parties stupidity. But it’s time for me to give the Democrats some much needed criticism.

Let’s rewind to September 12^th, 2001. The dust hadn’t fully settled from the previous day’s attacks but rumors were already circulating that American was going to bomb somebody in retaliation. Eventually that somebody became the countries of Afghanistan and Iraq. Shortly after the wars began the anti-war left in name only (LINO) began protesting. The protests were loud and the anti-war movement was relentless. Then 2008 rolled around. George W. Bush was swapped out with Barack Obama. Obama, and many of his fellow Democrats, ran on an anti-war platform. His campaign even netted him a Nobel Peace Prize. The anti-war LINO settled down and awaited their savior’s demonstration of his love of peace. That demonstration never came. In fact Obama declared new wars. But the anti-war LINO never reappeared in force.

Now it’s 2014 and the Democrats are no longer running on an anti-war platform. Instead they are beating the war drum just as hard as the neocons:

A host of Democratic Senate hopefuls who rode anti-war sentiment into office in the past decade are running for reelection now as hawks, staking out hard-line positions on the latest upheaval in the Middle East. The candidates are quick to note the differences between then and now — a years-long military mission with boots on the ground versus the airstrikes President Barack Obama has launched in Iraq and Syria in the past month.

In six short years many politicians in the Democratic Party have gone from protesting the war to cheering it. I guess their opposition wasn’t to the fact that bombs were being dropped but only to who was dropping the bombs. At least the Republican Party is consistent. It has a gigantic hard-on for war and never lets you forget it. Democrats, on the other hand, only become erect from war when they’re running it and complain loudly about their erectile dysfunction when they’re not running it.

Republicans Don’t Have a Monopoly on Voting Related Conspiracy Theories

Here in Minnesota the Republican Party has been banging on the Voter ID drum since they started losing some very high profile elections by pretty narrow margins. If you listen to their claims the Democrats supposedly have buses full of people that a driven from precinct to precinct so they can claim to be new voters and vote for Democrat candidates. Of course when pushed for evidence to support these claims the most you receive are anecdotes. They all know somebody’s father’s brother’s nephew’s cousin’s former roommate who saw these buses in operation and even followed them around to a couple of precincts but were somehow prevented from recording the escapade or calling the police (because shit like that is pretty illegal).

Democrats have no issue making fun of Republicans over this and rightfully so. But Republicans aren’t they only people who have conspiracy theories related to voting. As it turns out the Democrats have some real whoppers of their own. Take this one for example:

A militia group in Wisconsin is planning to target African-American Democrats at polling places in order to suppress the vote and keep Republican governor Scott Walker in office.

Ah yes, a nebulous militia is not only going to intimidate Democratic voters but African-American Democratic voters! Like the Republicans, the Democrats have ironclad evidence to support their claims:

Here is a Twitter exchange where the group details their plan:

There’s no way to refute that! Not just anybody can make an account on Twitter and post whatever the hell they want. If somebody on Twitter claims to be a member of a militia group in Wisconsin that is planning to intimidate African-American Democratic voters then that is absolutely what is going to happen.

It continues to amaze me how much time people waste on bitching about voting. Voting is the most meaningless thing to argue about. Your vote doesn’t even count. And the only options available on any ballot are people who want lord over you. Since there’s no option to abolish a position you are simply voting for the master you would prefer to submit to out of a small list of potential masters. Considering that fraud is irrelevant because no matter who wins you lose.

Another Good Reason to Not Vote

Besides statistical reasons there is now another good reason to not vote. As the number of people who show up to polling places goes down the need to entice voters will go up. After all a democratic state’s “legitimacy” depends entirely on people voting. If the number of voters gets low enough the state will become desperate to maintain its legitimacy and attempt to buy voters’ participation:

Alarmed that fewer than one-fourth of voters are showing up for municipal elections, the Los Angeles Ethics Commission voted Thursday to recommend that the City Council look at using cash prizes to lure a greater number of people to the polls.

On a 3-0 vote, the panel said it wanted City Council President Herb Wesson’s Rules, Elections and Intergovernmental Relations Committee to seriously consider the use of financial incentives and a random drawing during its elections, possibly as soon as next year.

Los Angeles may be a preview of things to come. The number of people participating in this sham called democracy has been steadily decreasing. In Los Angeles there are so few participants that the City Council is entertaining the idea of bribing people to show up to the polling places. Imagine if the rest of the country follow suit. It could lead to voting becoming a productive activity as state agents, in their desperation to appear legitimate, begin to offer us money just to show up to polling places from time to time.

All we need to do is hold out and the state may give us some of the money it stole from us back.

They Grow Up So Fast

It was only 66 years ago that Israel was born. But is has grown up so fast! Since its inception it has basically condensed the progress of most westernized nations into less than a single century. Israel is now catching up to its family members such as the United States and Britain by moving to severely restrict the freedom of speech and association:

The bill proposed by MK Pnina Tamnu-Shata (Yesh Atid) would forbid discrimination in providing a product or service or in entering a public place against soldiers and members of other security and rescue forces such as the police, firefighters, prison guards and Magen David Adom staff.

Tamnu-Shata presented the bill to the Knesset, saying that in recent years, discrimination against people in uniform has become a growing phenomenon.

[…]

“Unfortunately, we all saw the demonstrations in which people held signs with hollow slogans against IDF soldiers or articles by people like [farleft Haaretz columnist] Gideon Levy [who wrote that all IAF pilots are war criminals],” Tamnu-Shata said. According to the lawmaker, there is “wild incitement” against soldiers that could turn into actions.

“We must set limits for words of incitement against soldiers.

Military worship? Check. Restrictions on the freedom of association? Check. Stomping on the freedom of speech? Check. And it’s all compressed into a single piece of legislation! That’s the type of government efficiency you don’t see anymore.

It’s Good to Be the King

As Mel Brooks told us in History of the World: Part I, it’s good to be the king:

When you’re the king you get to enjoy a lot of benefits that mere serfs do not. For example, you don’t have to deal with traffic because you can just shutdown entire stretches of highway that you want to drive on. It doesn’t matter if you’re traveling on it during the weekend or rush hour because you get to tell all of the little people to get the fuck off of your road. And if a woman is apparently in labor that’s just too fucking bad for her:

A pregnant woman in labor Wednesday afternoon reportedly was not allowed to cross the street to get to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center by authorities in Los Angeles because President Obama’s motorcade was going to come through the area.

I guess she should have went into labor after the king left. Hopefully she learned her lesson and will plan accordingly next time!

The Fix is In

Speaking of democracy Afghanistan apparently doesn’t understand how to do it. The country recently had a presidential vote. It was a close election, as elections between two worthless twats often are, but the Afghan people apparently chose incorrectly because we had to send John Kerry in to fix things:

Afghanistan’s current President Hamid Karzai, who came to office after the US-led overthrow of the Taliban, is stepping down after more than 10 years.

He has welcomed the audit and agreed to delay his successor’s inauguration to allow time for the review, which is expected to take several weeks.

At a news conference with the two candidates, Mr Kerry said that every single ballot would be audited.

“This is the strongest possible signal by both candidates of a desire to restore legitimacy to the process and to Afghan democracy,” he said.

The thing I don’t understand is that the supposed winner, Ashraf Ghani, seems pretty pro-American. Perhaps we’re just unhappy that he won by such a small margin and are looking to make the margin larger. Who knows. Either way it appears that Afghanistan doesn’t know how to do democracy how we want them to do it.

More Democracy

Somebody started a campaign to put a meaningless item on the ballot in California. That meaningless item is a proposal to split California into six states:

SAN FRANCISCO — A plan backed by venture capitalist Tim Draper to split California into six states has gained enough signatures to make the November 2016 ballot, the plan’s backers say.

A Twitter account belonging to the nonprofit Six Californias tweeted on Monday that “#SixCalifornias will be submitting signatures in Sacramento tomorrow for placement on the November 2016 ballot. Stay tuned for coverage!”

On Tuesday, Draper told USA Today the campaign had garnered 1.3 million signatures, well over the approximately 808,000 needed.

I say that the ballot item is meaningless because even if it does pass the California and federal government will never allow it to happen. But that hasn’t stopped people from getting their panties in a bunch over this. Not surprisingly lovers of democracy have demonstrated once again that they will only love so much democracy because the biggest debate surrounding this proposal is the fact that it would create 10 new senators. This is apparently bad because, well, I don’t fucking know.

I just don’t understand most advocates of democracy. They spend a lot of time talking about the need for choices to vote for but when you give them a lot of choices they complain. When Minneapolis had 35 mayoral candidates people started bitching because there were too many and demanded that the filing fee be increased to $500.00. People here are also bitching about the governor race. As it turns out the fact that the Independence Party has fielded a candidate has pissed off a lot of people because they only want a choice between a Democrat or a Republican. Again, they spend a lot of time talking about the need for choices but when they get choices they complain.

Now a proposal that would create 10 new senators is being put to a vote and fans of democracy are again complaining… because it would create more senators. I guess this could tip the scale of balance between the two party facade in this country or something. Like I said, I don’t understand it. What I do understand is that everybody loves democracy so long as the only choices available are the choices they personally approve of.

In regards to the proposal itself I think it falls a bit short. I believe California should be split up into approximately 38.04 million separate states. But cutting it into six is a start.

GOP Stupid Train Stops in Minnesota

I’ve been documenting a major problem for the Republican Party (GOP), the mouths of its candidates, under the headline the GOP stupid train. Admittedly it’s not a particularly clever name and when I chose it I mean to use it as a one off. But Republican candidates keep saying absurdly stupid things so I’ve been forced to continue running with the theme.

After making a tour around a good chunk of the country the GOP stupid train has finally stopped here in Minnesota. I give you Bob Frey who has this to say:

Frey then explained his view: “When you have egg and sperm that meet in conception, there’s an enzyme in the front that burns through the egg. The enzyme burns through so the DNA can enter the egg. If the sperm is deposited anally, it’s the enzyme that causes the immune system to fail. That’s why the term is AIDS – acquired immunodeficiency syndrome.”

There you have it. According to Mr. Frey anal sex causes AIDs. This man better be trolling us because if he managed to get through our school system and still believe this shit then all hope is lost.

People are Very Upset About Imaginary Lines

OK, I lied. Here’s some content for today. Never let it be said that I’m not benevolent. Following Hobby Lobby’s stranglehold on the news last week the topic of “illegal” immigration has been bombarding every fucking news source I have this week. I was just going to leave the topic alone. After all everybody who is bitching about it this week will cease caring next week since this is America and we have the attention span of goldfish. But all of the outrage has lead me to believe that talking about “illegal” immigration is good for page hits. Also people are making some very strange assumptions that I feel need to be addressed.

Let’s consider what “illegal” immigration is. There exists a bunch of imaginary lines. I know that these lines are imaginary because I can’t see them when I go to where the map supposedly says they exist. Supposedly when somebody crosses one of these nonexistent lines without first receiving permission from some petty bureaucrat in a far away marble building it’s an illegal act. That’s a very strange concept to me.

Now let’s consider the thing that has most peoples’ panties in a bunch: costs. The main criticism I hear about the state failing to enforce immigration laws is that us Americans have to pay to care for these “illegal” immigrants. Apparently the people making this criticism believe that they will be required to pay less taxes or that their tax dollars will be used for better purposes if the state does a better job of enforcing its immigration laws. Guess what, that’s now how things work here.

First we need to acknowledge that the state doesn’t use actual money it uses debt. None of the money Obama has requested to deal with this situation exists. Second if we want to be honest with ourselves we should accept that our taxes wouldn’t decrease if people entirely stopped crossing the imaginary lines without permission. The state is already taking less from us than it’s spending so it’s not going to suddenly take even less. And the amount of money being spent on immigration related issues is a microscopic drop in the bucket. Third, even if we assume the money being used to care for “illegal” immigrants is real, we need to understand that money won’t be redirected for anything helpful if “illegal” immigration suddenly went away. It would just be moved to fund other parts of the police state we live in. Cops would get more armored personnel carriers to use on no-knock raids, the military would get more bombs to drop on the Middle East, and the politicians’ cronies would get more money to build worthless shit that doesn’t work.

Basically what I’m trying to get at is that arguing about “illegal” immigration is pointless. It’s a non-issue. Nothing would change if “illegal” immigrants suddenly disappeared tomorrow. This is just another fairytale created up by the state and it’s corporate media partners in an attempt to split us into two warring camps and distract us from the actual problems we’re suffering from.

The only thing I take solace in is knowing that nobody will care next week when our media overlords issue us our next weekly crisis.

I’m Not the Only One Who Sees Hillary Clinton as the Ideal Republican Candidate

I’ve been saying that Hillary Clinton is the perfect Republican presidential candidate and have been telling people that she may be the first candidate in history to receive the endorsement from both the Republican and Democratic parties. As it turns out I’m not the only one who thinks this:

Other neocons have followed Mr. Kagan’s careful centrism and respect for Mrs. Clinton. Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, noted in The New Republic this year that “it is clear that in administration councils she was a principled voice for a strong stand on controversial issues, whether supporting the Afghan surge or the intervention in Libya.”

And the thing is, these neocons have a point. Mrs. Clinton voted for the Iraq war; supported sending arms to Syrian rebels; likened Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, to Adolf Hitler; wholeheartedly backs Israel; and stresses the importance of promoting democracy.

It’s easy to imagine Mrs. Clinton’s making room for the neocons in her administration. No one could charge her with being weak on national security with the likes of Robert Kagan on board.

One thing is certain, the Republican Party has had fallen on hard times during the last couple of election. It can’t seem to find the magic formula of war monger, social conservative, fiscal irresponsibility, and electability. McCain was fielded because he was the war mongers war monger but he lacked the charisma (which is probably 90 percent of electability) of his opponent. Then the Republican Party fielded Romney who didn’t stand a chance of appealing to the war mongers after Obama completed his extremely bloody first term.

Now we have Hillary Clinton. Her war mongering credentials are fantastic. While she’s not a social conservative in the traditional sense her hatred of Middle Easterners more than makes up for it. She has no problem being fiscally irresponsible as her recent claims of being broke demonstrate. And she is certainly electable considering how well she appeals to people in both parties. There is no way the Republican Party will find anybody better within its own ranks so it might as well endorse her and call it a day.