The SoapBoxers

Usually at the end of my post each month I list the three “bad nuts” of the month.  This month’s posting will basically be nothing but the bad nuts of the past few days.

Health Care reform has now become law of the land and despite my own questions on whether it is actually enough done, it is a big effing deal to quote the Vice President, and a step in the right direction for the country that has been a long time coming.  However, it is now abundantly clear if it was not before that conservatives completely lack any sense of dignity, humanity or civility within their course of actions and the words they use. There will be many examples I leave out, as there are far too many to put into the space I really want to take up here.

Tea Party protesters on Capitol Hill last weekend repeatedly shout the n word at members of the Black Caucus as they walked by the protest and shouted other obscenity laced rants as well.  They also threw out homophobic slurs at openly gay congressman Barney Frank. This is the least threatening example of the loss of control the right has made a turn towards in the final days and aftermath of healthcare reform, but is still a shiny example of the ignorance and intolerance on the right.

At a Rochester, NY Democratic Party office a brick with a note with this quote attached, “Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice,”  was thrown through a window. No one was harmed other than the window in this instance, but it is another quite fitting example of what conservatives really are looking for these days as many other offices across the state of New York and around the county have had bricks with such revolution inciting quotes attached to them.

While House Republican leader “Hell No You Can’t” John Boehner passively spoke out that the climate needs to change to a positive to get his party back in power as that will get the real job they want done. It’s is a little too late for his change of heart over the flames he and his party has stoked for well over a year now. In the past few days he has also made countless references to many Representatives in congress who have been getting death threats as being a dead man for how they voted. More than likely he was hopefully meaning politically speaking, but it is the passive aggressive stoking the flames of hate in his masses to get them to seek violent action over civil discourse over issues. So in reality his actions in the recent pass fully outweigh the passive rebuking of threats of violence in the aftermath of the bill passing.

Congressman Bart Stupak hasn’t just had to deal with Congressman Randy Neugebauer shouting “baby killer” as he spoke on the house floor, but has become the poster child for the right wing nuttery’s rage. Here’s a sampling of what he has had to go through. Endless voicemail messages to his office and home many simply stating, “I hope you die.” others with a more prophetic viewpoint. “There are millions of people across the country who wish you ill and all of those thoughts projected on you will materialize into something that’s not very good for you.” 

Also his office received a fax depicting him on a noose with the caption “All Baby Killers come to unseemly ends either by the hand of man or by the hand of God.”  All this for deciding to vote for healthcare because he got his exact wording put through in an executive order instead of holding up the process any further by having it inserted into the text of the bill. Despite the fact that in reality the wording did not need to be there in the first place because well it was already law and nothing done was changing that anyways, but I digress.

Never to be absent from stoking the flames of anger, the queen of the nutjob right, Sarah Palin, continues to be her usual self. The two main instances of note of the past few days have been commenting that Republicans don’t need to regroup after healthcare had passed, but need to reload the gun and take more shots at Democrats. There must be some continual obsession with guns for Sister Sarah as she also depicted the pictures of 20 House Democrats and the states they represent with crosshairs of a gun and mentioned that these seats in states won by her (i guess she forgets that McCain was the head of the ticket) as targets to dispose of in the next election. I get the cute play with guns and everything, but when your supporters obviously aren’t playing with a full deck then you probably do not need to continue to put this kind of imagery.

Even though his network now only allows about two minutes a day of actual coverage of the passing of the healthcare reform bill, Glenn Beck has not been absent from the fanning the flames on the right. He has now referred to the passing of healthcare reform as a mother spanking a child. And now our decision as a is whether we love our mother and want to hug them or to we want to pick up guns against them. Beck was more for the guns approach to getting back at “mother” approach. So if you hear any news of tea party people shooting their mothers in the next week or so you know who to blame on that one.

Like I said before there are too many examples as of late of incivility from conservatives, leaders and followers to list here. It is clear that the Republican Party has reaped what they have sown over the past year in these past few days as the climate has boiled over even more. They may shy away from it in public light passively now, but in reality it is what they have wanted all along. In the end it is clear that one thing for conservatives is, that civility has been lost and I don’t think they’ll find their way back to it any time soon.

A week ago today an act of domestic terrorism occurred in Austin, Texas, when Joseph Stack flew a plane into an office complex housing an IRS field office. That’s right I called it a terrorist act, which is what it is. Maybe those of you on the right feel that no it can’t be terrorism. After all he’s not muslim or doesn’t have a funny sounding name, or that he’s one of us. Call it whatever you want and live in your own reality, but the fact of the matter is that it was a terrorist act.

The American Heritage Dictionary defines terrorism as “the unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons.”

A dictionary definition not good enough for you? How about the legal interpretation of it under United States law – “premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against non-combatant targets.”

The argument here from the right would be that it isn’t terrorism, he was just someone disgruntled with the IRS, don’t we all hate the IRS? However the truth of the matter Stack’s actions were well premeditated and against a non-combatant target with the express intention to coerce people and government to change their action through his own political and ideological reasons. Sounds like terrorism to me. We have a winner.

Where’s the premeditation and ideology you ask? Well its quite clear in is manifesto of a suicide note he decided to post on his business website. Looking into the source code it became clear that the note had been originally written two days prior to the incident and revised a whopping 27 times before its final draft status to be posted that day before he decided to stick it to the man. The little piece has the usual ramblings of the right wing loon, government bailouts, tax laws, the Catholic church, big government, 9/11as the reasons things come to this. However also in the ramblings is a call for violent revolt hoping that his actions that day will cause other people to take such action against the government as well.

Sounds like premeditation and clear coercion based on political idealism to me.

It’s nothing new that we don’t like to call a spade a spade in these circumstances when a white man in America does an act of terrorism, heck Newt Gingrich and others sympathised with Timothy McVeigh.

Looks like history repeats itself as just earlier this week Iowa Congressman Steve King decided to come out and score points with the fringe nutjobs by sympathizing with Mr. Stack and his views and his actions and declaring they were justified because it will be a “happy day in America” when the IRS is gone. He also noted that Stack would not have had a target if we just would have abolished the IRS when he stated they should and Stack’s actions were noble. Granted the Congressman later came out with the usual my words have been taken out of context defense, but they were not as there is video evidence of it. Thanks for playing Congressman. The noble action I think should come out of this is for the voters of Iowa to vote his pandering arse out of office in November.

Anyways it is clear to me that someone spouting “violence is the only answer” and calling for others to do the same is just as much of an incitation to terror as Alalhu Akbar. Call it what it was TERRORISM.

And now for the bad nuts of the past month, other than Rep. King in no particular order…

Bad Nut No. 1: Former Republican Congressman Tom Tancredo

In his opening address to the Tea Party Convention he stated amongst many other idiotic and appalling things, that if we would have still had literacy test like they used to in the south then we would not have to had to deal with a President Obama, because if it was not for non white people he would not have been elected. For one thing Mr. Tancredo I would love to have an actual civics literacy test as a requirement when one registers to vote, because 99.9% of the teabaggers would fail. However the literacy tests you speak of wanting to return had nothing to deal with literacy of government and more of something like how many bubbles are in a bar of soap? And white people didn’t have to take the test.

Bad Nut No. 2: Lauren Ashley, Miss Beverly Hills in the 2010 Miss California Pageant

Move over Carrie Prejean. There is a new new flavor of the week in nutcase beauty queens seeking their fifteen minutes now that yours is well up. In a statement on same sex marriage Ashley stated that homosexuality is wrong because God says so and those who do will be put to death and then went on to quote a passage from Leviticus. “If man lies with mankind as he would lie with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination. They shall surely be put to death and their blood shall be upon them.” I guess God is all for boob jobs and swimsuits though? Ah the religious right, so picky and choosy with the biblical references that count.

Bad Nut No. 3: Politicians and People who joked, statused, tweeted, etc about the recent snowfalls in DC.

Not really a surprising thing, but it seemed to be the favorite thing of everyone on the right to do lately. Stuff like “Where in the World is Al Gore when global warming is debunked.” For one, a single occurence does not prove or disprove anything on the subject. But “Global Warming” is more the catchphrase put on the more basic terminology of climate change. Which a shift towards amounts of snow not seen before (if it were to be a continuing trend) in an entire season would be. Or maybe something like an unseasonably warm period wrecking havoc for Olympic organizers at the start of this years games. Didn’t see many tweets from the left about this proving global warming.

Welcome to the second edition of my rant that appears here once a month on The Soap Boxers. My first post was on Christmas Eve and now this my second is on my 32nd birthday. So Happy Birthday to me and let us move on to the main topic of this months rant, The State of the Union.

Now I am not one for taking too much out of speeches like this and would rather just see the results of what is said happen, but last night’s address was a quite telling and interesting one. For one if one were just to glance upon it and not have any knowledge that the President was a Democrat, the tone of most of the speech was more conservative in nature. Remorse for deficit spending, praising cutting taxes, planned cuts in further taxes, and freezes in spending. Wow this is that socialism all the teabaggers have been all up in arms about? Anyways, let’s break down a few components addressed on the night.

Bank Bailouts:

I think this was a big populist piece of the speech that needed to be said and in the end really made the Republican party look by their reaction on the surface what they really are loud mouthed, hypocritical corporate tools. Bailouts were bad, needed to be done, most of the money has been returned and the rest is in the works to be returned through charging the banks a fee is the topic from the speech in a nutshell. It was the last part I am referring to that appeared on the surface to paint the Party of No for what they really are and not the populist voice they are trying to use.

The right side of the aisle sat in silenced with grumbling faces and muttering to each other as the President stated that the rest of the money would be returned through charging the banks a fee. It was one of many points on the evening where the President put the opposite party on notice on the night.

SCOTUS Decision:

The one almost “You Lie” moment of tonight’s speech came as the President addressed last week’s decision in the Supreme Court that allows Corporations no restrictions upon advertising for or against or donation to candidates for office.

When the President stated that this decision was wrong and opened the gates to corporate interests both domestic and foreign to control our electoral process, Justice Alito was seen shaking his head and mouthing that is not true. With all do respect to Justice Alito it is entirely true. The decision allows corporations to no loner have restrictions on the amount of money they can spend for a candidate for office and they are also allowed to run their own ads for or against a candidate any time they wish. Thus turning our elected officials into nothing more than corporate prostitutes.

Now I am not naive, corporate interests have dominated Washington and local elected offices as well for many many years and that was not going to end regardless. However this decision basically means corporations can basically buy their own candidates to run for office that will run solely on putting their interests first and the actual interests of their constituents last. Welcome to the Corporate States of America in 2010. Now the President did state that he wanted to see Congress address this, but honestly without a change in the makeup of the court I don’t see anything being able to stick with the wording of the majority opinion in this case.

“Politics as Usual”:

One moment I really enjoyed was when the President talked about even in light of recent election of the 41st no vote on everything the Democrats still had one of their highest majorities in congress in decades and basically told them to grow a pair and get things done for the American people. Then on the other hand told the Republicans if they want to sit there and block and delay ever single thing that comes before Congress then they need to own up to it themselves and they are the sole reason that nothing is getting done.

Bipartisanship is a two way street, not where one party completely stands their ground while the other makes every concession they can just to continue to have the other side say, well that is not good enough still. Should be interesting to see how this unfolds by the midterm elections. Will the Democrats actually gain the muster to just bear down and things done on their own? Hopefully so. Will the Republicans decide that their actions of doing nothing be seen in that light finally and decide to actually do the job of elected office and actually doing something? Probably not, but I can always hope.

Job Creation:

I would have liked to seen a more laid out point of job creation. It was a nice start in what was laid out, but the approximate 30 million jobs to be created is just a minor repair to the damage that has been done, but then again it is only the forecast for the upcoming year.  [Editor’s note: I’m verifying the 30 million figure with Angry Squirrel]

Student Loans:

Being a person paying off student loans it was a nice thing to hear about increasing Pell Grants, creating further tax credits and also the provision to forgive student loan debt after a certain period of time.

Don’t Ask Don’t Tell:

I wish it would have been done as promised in the first year in office, but better late than never guess. I’ll believe it when I actually see it, but the repeal of this insane and useless policy will be a great day when it comes. A recent report from NPR stating that 1/3 of women in the U.S. Military are raped while in the military is just one of the many more things threatening to the morale and discipline of the armed forces then the sexual preference of your fellow officer.

Well those are just a few of the points I will touch on from the speech, all in all it was a nice speech with some actual meat to it in proposals. Might not be entirely memorable down the line but for his first State of the Union address it was done well.

Now for a monthly tradition to start for my posts, The “Bad Nuts of the Month”. Our trained squirrels are busy each month figuring out the good ones from the bad, and the worst three nuts will be placed on display here before they go where where all the bad nuts go, down the garbage chute.

Bad Nut #1: Pat Robertson and Rush Limbaugh on the Haiti Earthquake

The evangelical christians’ equivalent to the Pope and El Rushbo the Cracker Drug Addict were really off base on the disaster in Haiti. Robertson stated that the Haitians got what they deserved and this was some sort of wrath for a deal they supposedly made with the devil to gain their independence from France long ago. Rush on the other hand stated that people should not give a dime or a minute of their time to help the Haitian people as it would only be playing into Obama’s hands in garnering respect form the light and dark skinned blacks in this country.

Then again nothing out of either of these two guys mouths really shocks me, but they are a couple of the worst nuts of the month. Rush would also make the list for his comments about Obama attacking Jews because he is going after the banks comments, but there is no need to list the same person more than once on the list.

Bad Nut #2: James O’Keefe and Friends

I guess the joke’s on James O’Keefe, the officials in Mary Landrieu’s offices were not gullible to believe he was actually a phone repairman as the idiots at the ACORN offices were to fall for him actually being a pimp. Now after entering the offices on Federal property under false pretenses to perform a felony O’Keefe and his buddies are now going to be facing some mandatory federal prison time.

Bad Nut #3: South Carolina Lt. Governor Andre Bauer.

One of the frontrunners for the Republican nomination in the next gubernatorial race in the state as well, Bauer stated that aid to the needy should be cut for some very interesting reasons. Me paraphrasing it does not do the idiocy of the man justice so I’ll just put the quotes from him on this issue in full context.

“My grandmother was not a highly educated woman but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals. You know why? Because they breed. You’re facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don’t think too much further than that. And so what you’ve got to do is you’ve got to curtail that type of behavior. They don’t know any better. You see, for the first time in the history of this country, we’ve got more people voting for a living than we do working for a living.”

He then goes on to rant about requiring parents to take drug tests and if they don’t pass then their children don’t deserve anything from the state at all because of that and that parents should be required to attend every PTO meeting or school event or you shouldn’t receive any benefits and that we should take away the huge monetary draw public assistance is (LMAO) by reducing benefits the more children you have.

Today, we welcome The Angry Squirrel to the staff of The Soap Boxers.  He will take a liberal stance as a writer for the Political Observers segment.

Christmas Eve is here and “Hooray!” the Republicans decided that they needed to beat the weather to get home to their families instead of continuing to stall the vote on a healthcare bill. Granted, the Senate version is now a whittled down piece of crap with other sweeteners added in to get the last few conserveadems on board for the “needed” 60 votes. The current bill passed by the Senate will now go into conference with the House when Congress resumes after the holiday break and will more than likely look similar to what the Senate is passing or look even worse than it does now.

I mean do we really need to cover costs in Nebraska, Louisiana, and so on just to get this piece of crap through? I think not, but that’s not what they decided to have done.

The only real piece of reform in the entire bill is not allowing insurance companies to deny or drop coverage because of pre-existing conditions. Granted they will be allowed to charge you a nice chunk of change more to be ale to have the privilege to be covered by them now, and guess what you’ll have to suck it up and pay whatever they want to charge you because you are required to.

That leads me to why this is really no reform at all, or more aptly put reform in name only. Mandating coverage without having a competitive mechanism in the system to keep costs down or in check is just asking for the situation to get worse, and it will. More people will go bankrupt because the costs of healthcare will go unchecked still under this bill. If you can’t afford to pay the premium which is required of you will be forced to pay a penalty right now of 2% of your income. Granted like everything else in the bill it won’t even go into effect until a year or two after the next presidential election, but still, just like everything else in the bill the only real benefactor of this is the health insurance industry. Because it is not the government that will pocket these fines it will be the health insurers that will get the penalty.

What really is needed is some sort of non-profit entity, privately owned but government regulated that provides coverage at cost to people. This would be an affordable option for those who would want it and would also keep the costs of premiums across the board in check if they wanted to keep people buying their own product as well. If such an entity would exist it would also be cheaper because it keeps things like profit, executive salaries, a large amount of overhead, advertising and lobbying costs out of your health insurance premium. Granted Washington is tied and likely will always will be to the almighty lobbying dollar of the insurance industry so this would never happen, heck they can;t even get a remotely salvageable “public option” together that passes by the in the insurance industry pocket congressman’s approval.

The health insurance industry makes out like a bandit in this bill, I really don’t see why they are so up in arms about it. Probably faux-outrage on “principle”, but still. They’ll be getting money from every single person in this country, whether you have the coverage you purchase on your own, the subsidy given to them by the government to help lower income families purchase coverage, or the fines you’ll have to pay if you still can’t afford to live and carry their product because the price is still too much and still rising with each passing breath. They also get to keep their antitrust exemptions, and also be allowed to sell policies wherever they want to from wherever they want to. So they could go to a state with extremely loose insurance regulations and sell that policy to a place that has more strict regulations. It’s no wonder why as soon as passage of the current leg of the reform bill in the Senate that health insurance stocks rose.

Then you have the side of the debate that goes into stuff not even in the health care reform bill in the first place. Abortion funding for one, was not a real issue in the bill in the first place, Republicans and Democrats from Republican leaning districts create a false outrage that abortion would be provided on demand on every street corner and the government would have to pay for it if we passed this healthcare bill. This is utterly false and had no place in this discussion.

Federal law already bars the federal funding for abortion, so the need to put wording in the bill for it was entirely unnecessary. However they didn’t feel this was so and went above and beyond their initial call to make wording was in there to not allow for federal dollars to go for abortion. This one of the places where the House and Senate have a difference and the conservatives actually like the House plan more. Under the House bill’s wording no insurer could provided coverage for abortion as part of any policy they offer to the public if they were to receive federal funds, and well since they will be getting a 2% penalty if you don’t purchase their product or receive the subsidy to provide insurance to lower incomes, then they are all going to be receiving federal funding. In the Senate however they have wording to allow for people to purchase entirely separate coverage for abortion, but on the other hand it also will allow states to block insurance companies from offering such plans.

Wholesalely denying something that is still a legal practice is just wrong. If people want to have that as a part of their coverage and insurers are offering it, then so be it. How are you going to say that such and such dollar of such and such premium went to pay for abortion coverage anyway. Hey I might be against people getting coverage for plastic surgery, maybe we should deny people from having that in the bill as well.

In the end tough the bill that looks to be passed in Congress whenever that may be will be a complete piece of crap that is a gift to the insurance companies and will actually lock out any chance of real reform for many years to come after that. I am all for healthcare but this bill is a piece of trash and should be scrapped until we have a group in Washington that actually will reform healthcare instead of making sure it continues to be a problem for generations to come.

On a lighter note, since this is Christmas Eve I would like to wish everyone celebrating it Merry Christmas and hope all is well with your family and friends. Safe travels and well wishes to everyone this holiday season.

Next month my column will be a little more structured than just a free-flowing rambling that it is here today, kind of ended up with less time to put things together than my “grand” plans I originally had thought. Well once again have a safe and happy holiday season.