Wednesday, March 25, 2015

Reality Check

A few notes about so-called reality TV. I'm not a regular viewer, but the Discovery Channel show, "Alaska: The Last Frontier" stars the father of real life entertainer, Jewel. I had no idea. The shows kinda fake in that the participants live outside of Homer, Alaska and while they farm and fish and hunt for food, if they need anything, they can just drive into town for groceries. The narrator always implies the folks will die if they don't get a moose to carry them through the winter but, that's not quite true. They live pretty much like a lot of farm families in the lower 48 might live. It's pretty common for hunters and fishermen to bring home what they kill or catch. But, ya know, most folks depend on the Piggly Wiggly to survive.

Another Alaska show; "Alaskan Bush People" turns out to be pretty damn fake too because because a family living on five acres in a subdivision is not quite roughing it in the bush. I learned about this when I saw that the stars- the Brown family- were busted for fraud involving the Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend which goes to full-time Alaska residents from a deal they cut with the oil companies exploiting oil reserves, back in 1976. It varies but the year involved was $1,884 just for living in Alaska. And that's whether you're a Palin or a normal person. But the emphasis is on full-time. If you live out of state or leave for more than 180 days without a good reason, you don't get the cash. Evidently this family did fudge a little. The show is pretty weird. The family is pretty weird. The kids all talk with odd accents which, at first, might make you think they talk that way because they were raised in the wild and only learned to talk from each other and from forest animals, not TV like the rest of us. I noticed too that they dress more homeless than ready for an Alaskan winter like you'd suspect. If you're really out trying to survive in the bush- on purpose- I'd recommend at the the Carhart starter kit. I believe winter comes early and often to most of Alaska and these people dress like they are in Arkansas. Well, they are not in Arkansas but they are not living in the bush of Alaska either. Just sorta visiting, I guess.

Alaska dominates the reality TV landscape because of that state's generous tax advantages for the film industry. Like Vancouver, Canada stands in for New York and other American cities because they welcome film crews, Alaska welcomes them too. They may show people living like folks you know in Iowa live, but, Alaska is much prettier what with mountains, moose and all. Plus it's possible to get eaten by a bear, You can stretch the truth in Iowa too but, with mountains in the background people might not notice as much.

Evidently "Amish Mafia" is still on the air. Though not filmed in Alaska, it too features people who talk a little odd. There ain't no goddamned Amish Mafia with Amish thugs running around with AR-15's and shaking down their brethren in protection rackets and warring with Mennonites for control of the Shaker furniture market. It's just a dumb show that was funny for a couple episodes but lasted something like 4 or 5 seasons. They try so hard to portray it as real that you'd think it was something important like brother and sister *twins* who post on Topix. Yeah, it's that fucking stupid.

Ax Men takes a lot of liberties with truth, if not safety violations. I looked at some message boards discussing it and the logging community seems to think the stars are a poor representation of the reality of loggers. I'm no logger but, I'm inclined to agree. I reckon that if any of the outfits in the Northwest were serious businesses, they'd act like it and probably wouldn't mess with the show and might have better equipment. The participants on the show range from tough and ruthless to rough and toothless. Mostly the latter. The folks that find the long lost logs in the swamps and rivers down south all seem like they missed the cut for the gator-killing' shows. It coulda gone either way for some of them.

I looked at the Mike Holmes, "Holmes On Homes" the other night. Since my well-publicized feud with Nicole Curtis ended so bitterly, I thought I'd get a new favorite blonde. I don't think it's going to work out. He does good work and he doesn't seem at all fixated on subway tile and rescued floors like Nicole, he is more focused on mold. (That may be spelled mould in Canada. Not sure.) Mike seems like a nice guy but the show seems kinda hokey. My guess is it's all insurance work because he seems to find people who have been so abused by contractors that they literally have no recourse but to pay him thousands of dollars to undo and/or finish what others did not complete. He does seem to help people who are seriously stressed emotionally and financially. He doesn't hang out at Lowes to give *random* people their new kitchens/baths/yards. Nor does he restore old houses on the cheap in sketchy neighborhoods like the other blonde. I looked at a site where folks were noting that they never see Holmes swing a hammer. Well, he's got people who do that for him. I do not doubt he has a hammerin' background but I'm thinking his show is a fraction of what he's got going on in the home-fixing business.

Finally, "Dual Survival". Barefoot Cody is gone. If you never saw the show, he was kind of a hippie, desert survivalist who doesn't wear shoes, like ever. I think he only wore shoes once when they were in the mountains in two feet of snow. Frankly, I found that annoying. I just don't admire hard-headedness in a person. There was some drama about Cody refusing to do something in an episode. Maybe it was putting on shoes. His partner is one of those guys who seems to eager to drink his own piss. The guy, Joe, is also possibly given to embellishing his 'special forces' background, from what I heard. Cody's first partner evidently did that too. Lying. Now, that is reality!




Shame on you!

One afternoon at break, Jimmy W. was asking Pennington how long he had been a painter I think the response was 15 years. "I'm sure you have personally done some pretty fine work in those 15 years. No doubt! And though you consider yourself a painter, no one else here might call you one and, in fact, maybe no one in the world might acknowledge your efforts and call you "a painter". However, you go out in that parking lot and suck ONE dick at lunch, and everybody will call you "a cocksucker" That's a fact." That entertained the crew. Even Pennington laughed.

This came to mind when I read that Monica Lewinsky gave a recent Ted Talk about her fame and how it affected her life. Let's face it- being a cocksucker is what she is famous for. The world will never-mind anything else she does short of curing cancer as long as she lives. She was 22 years old, an intern crushing on the then President of the United States, and she had the presidential penis in her mouth. She blew the president. It was in all the papers. Well, how do you top that?

When the story broke, it was on the front page of the Commercial Appeal, the paper of record in Memphis when you can't get the free weekly, Memphis Flyer. I was in a gas station in South Memphis getting smokes and that paper and the black gal behind the counter looked at the front page and said: "I don't believe dat". I asked her if she didn't believe presidents had desires just like regular men. "No", she replied, "white men don't like sex dat much!"

I looked her over. Maybe 50. Five feet tall. 160-70 pounds. "Soooo...how many white guys have you been with, young lady?"

"None!" she declared proudly.

"Always good to talk to an expert" I replied, as I gathered up my change and left. Hers would not be the dumbest response to the Lewinsky Affair but I had to include it because it was delightfully stupid and racist, an angle that was so Memphis, really. This was before my world view of idiocy was so expanded by the internet. Monica's too. She called herself "patient zero" of online abuse. I wasn't anywhere near the internet at the time but, I can imagine it was rough for her there as it was in the bars and gas stations of the day. It was an embarrassing time for America, mostly because we were talking about it as giggly construction workers and poorly prepared store clerks. Europe laughed at us.Their presidents have always had mistresses. They wondered why we cared. I'm not a big fan of adultery but I wondered why we cared too. I mean, I knew why but, did it have to be a slut like Newt Gingrich leading the way against Clinton and Lewinsky? The shame of America over that episode was really that America had no shame in Newt's pontificating despite his own history of divorce, mistresses and non-wife blow jobs. At least he had practical experience.

I always felt sorry for Monica. She was young. It must have seemed like the thing to do at the time. It was a nice thing to do for a man she cared rather deeply about. I'm sure she never dreamed the world would know...

Lewinsky had been suicidal herself after her extremely public ordeal. She stepped out of the darkness of her personal humiliation when in September of 2010, an 18 year old college student named Tyler Clementi took his own life after being humiliated via the internet by his college roommate who used the webcam on his computer to 'broadcast' Tyler having sex with a man. Humiliated, his young life ruined, Tyler jumped off the George Washington Bridge and drowned.

Where she may have been "Patient Zero", he was yet another in a long line of people publicly shamed via the internet. It wasn't getting any better. It wasn't going to stop. We all know it never will. But, Monica is trying and she deserves a lot of credit for that.

There are real people behind the scandals. The public usually never sees that. It's easier to see the woman in the blue dress or the shy young man on the computer screen, We don't have to know them as someone's daughter, and someone's little boy. They're just cocksuckers to be laughed at, right? Yeah, just them....

Tuesday, March 17, 2015

Anti-Social Media: Ashley Judd Edition

Now, Ashley Judd is having Twitter trouble!

She's a University of Kentucky fan and, with them rolling into the NCAA's March Madness as (I think) the number 1 seed, she should be hated just for that, some believe. But, recently when UK vs'ed Arkansas, she opined on Twitter that perhaps Arkansas was "playing dirty". A spirited discussion followed and several tweets claimed that she was a dumb, fucking cunt that needed to be killed or raped, words to that literal effect.

That seems to be sports talk these days. Evidently people learned nothing from the Curt Schilling tweets of two weeks ago.

still don't tweet so I read about these things on Facebook. I believe Ashley's troubles were more honest than Schilling's. This did not strike me as her wanting to get attention. She's already a famous movie star and she has dabbled in politics but, I don't think she's at all into baiting trolls for political gain. I think that, like a lot of fans, she thought the other team got away with playing rough. Sports fans of either team can look at the same game and be absolutely certain the refs or the announcer favor the other team. This happens all the time. Everyone in the world hates Joe Buck, for example. I don't like him either but, I don't like him because I think he's an annoying announcer, not because I think he hates the Cubs or the Bears. Fans in Green Bay think he hates the Packers. I bet there are Cardinal fans who think he's anti-them and he grew up in St. Louis as daddy Buck was a Card's announcer. That's sports! Sports has always been where politics is right now. It's excessively partisan and vulgarly so. Just like it's not enough to root for your party, you have to root against the other party, all the time.

So, Ashley tweets a simple observation on a game and, all nasty hell breaks loose.

That's social media! It doesn't matter what the forum or the subject is, if you disagree with someone you too might be a dumb cunt, deserving of death and/or rape. As it turns out, this getting-trolled shit doesn't just happen to Ferrerman. Who knew????

Well, me. There's a lot of ugly people out there. Not all of them have anti-Ferrerman sentiment. They hate others too and for *crimes* as innocuous as anything I've ever done on the 'net. Yeah, like thinking the Arkansas men's basketball team plays dirty. You wouldn't kill for that. You wouldn't even joke about that. You would not call somebody a c-word for that. But, untold thousands of people would and they are doing it somewhere, right now.

It's simple: People are mean. There are more of them. Social media makes it very easy to be mean and anonymous. And, of course, people are assholes too.

If the mark of character is what you do when no one is watching, on the internet it can be how you treat people when no one knows who you are. If you walk away from your computer or phone, beaming at yourself for having called a famous actress a cunt, you might need to walk away for good. You're not really doing it right. You may not be better than that but others are.

Personally, I think Ashley Judd deserves a moderate to severe spanking just on general principles. But, that's just me being Ferrereman. It's not based on her musings about a basketball game or really anything else beyond her well-preserved spankability. It's nothing to tweet about, I guess, if I tweeted that is. But, it is worth mentioning because somebody has to do something to counteract the nastiness and negativity of Anti-Social Media. A Ferrer can only do so much....

Saturday, March 14, 2015

Bark like a big dog, bitch!

I remember the day my old boss showed up on the job site with a brand new, BMW. I told him how nice the car was. I'll never forget the words of wisdom he blessed me with:

"Ferrerman, let me tell ya- if you set goals, work hard and act determined, next year I can get a convertible!"

Well, actually that's a current meme making the rounds as most bosses stop just short of being that obvious no matter how prickish they are. It did remind me of a co-worker, Crackhead Tim, (not his real name) who was a contemporary of mine who just had delusions of leadership grandeur.

One day we were sitting down at lunch and Tim was giving us a pep talk that no one had asked for. He was running the job. At that company there were no foremen because that might make people think they were valuable and/or deserving of more money. To 'run' a job, you basically had to be the first one to set foot on the job. The superintendents, either 162 IQ Lou or Little Jimmy (not their real names) would walk the job with you, go over what needed to be done, tell you that it needed to be done "last week", hand you some paperwork and then be off to either a 2 hour lunch or the casinos in Tunica, Lou liked to eat and Little Jimmy liked to lose money. Neither liked to actually do their job. Much of the time it was the commercial painting equivalent of "Lord Of The Flies".

There was some method to the madness. I'd get a call the night before and either one of those mopes would ask me to meet them at a site thus giving me the authority, but much of the time it was first come, first served. Bottomline: Crackhead Tim was no more a foreman than I was.

However, this day at lunch he was fluffing himself and I don't think whoever else was there was listening either until he said: "The better you guys do, the better bonuses Danny and I make."

I was taken aback. That was par for Timmy's course but it was so obscenely blunt that I was momentarily speechless. Tim was poor white trash. This was in Memphis, Tennessee so, it was a fair and politically correct assessment of his being. The guy once had bragged about having spent $40,000 on cocaine in a year. It was his way of saying: "YOU can't spend $40k on blow in a year!" But, he could. And he snorted it and that made a difference to him and was supposed to make a difference to you. And that's why we often called him Crackhead Tim, because it made a difference to him that he snorted rather than smoked.

So, I laughed. And I asked him why the fuck his or Danny's bonuses should be a career goal of mine.

Tim was clearly flustrated at my indolence. But, wasn't that just like a Ferrerman to be so non-Timcentric?

He offered up nothing else in explanation. There was no elaboration saying that what he meant was that the better we perform, the better it was for him, Danny and us. Nope. The fucking asshole really thought to inspire us by citing the benefit to his own wallet. Who outside of a phony minister like a Reverend Ike or the more contemporary, Creflo Dollar, is so brazen about their selfishness?

Timmy was nuts but, often entertaining. On another job he had called us all outside for some reason to explain something to all of us and his brother, Carlton, complained that Timmy was always talking to him as if he were "a dog". Well, Timmy replied as he got down on all fours and began barking. Carlton was a dog and Timmy showed him.

I recall Big Brian and I losing it. The others just kinda wished they were somewhere else. Indulging Timmy by reporting outside to the parking lot as if he were our commanding officer and it were the parade deck had annoyed Big Brian as much as me but, watching Tim on the ground barking like a redheaded pooch made it all very much worth it!

Crackhead Tim was a major rat in a company full of rats. Thus, the name of the company was Ratmo, (not its real name) for the purposes of this blog. Paint companies everywhere are rat's nests- probably all jobs are though. Somebody is always looking to be a slightly bigger fish no matter how small and scummy the pond. That's human nature, I guess. Sometimes it's very embarrassing how petty people can be. Well, you know how it is. We have the same congress in Washington...

I know that in the shop they first admired his work ethic almost as much as his snitching. Eventually he wore out his welcome in the shop because they tired of him coming in arms waving, freckled-face-flushing (all the things we found so entertaining) every time things weren't going his way. They told him to quit coming to the shop. Eventually it was no longer endearing that Timmy would work seven days a week for weeks at a time, and then take a couple of weeks off. I don't know if they knew he was binging on coke though. They just knew he wasn't showing up to work.

In the end, my hard work and that of others couldn't save Tim. My hard work didn't do me any good at Ratmo either, come to think about it. Tim had gotten a vehicle out of the company. It wasn't new though. It was a vintage Nissan mini-truck with untold miles on it that, in a secret drawing, he had won the right to buy from the company for $600. It actually wasn't a bad deal as those little fuckers were runners. I wouldn't make a meme out of it though and it's not like I helped him get it.

Wednesday, March 11, 2015

You'll always have a friend wearing big, red shoes!

McDonald's, upset at Seattle, Washington's new law that will (eventually) make the city's minimum wage $15 an hour, is suing the city, citing the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution. That's the "Equal Protection Clause", if you're scoring at home. That Amendment followed up the 13th which freed the slaves, It was more than just chronology it was to make sure people understood that they had to start paying black people now. Gotta dot those t's and cross those i's especially after brutal wars fought over people just not thinking things through. Really now, if you have to ask why you shouldn't own people, you just haven't thought things through. Maybe you can't?

Well, McDonald's thought things through inside out, upside down and backwards. That is why they can cite an amendment largely designed to protect black people after slavery, to protect current corporations from being cheated out of profiting from the current form of slavery- the barest minimum wage currently allowed by law. Corporations are people too, my friend. It's insane but, the law isn't always sane. We'll see if this works but, even before Citizens United, corporations tried to make it look like the 14th applied to them too. "Citizens United"? Golly, doesn't it just sound like it's about us folks? Yep, but only because it's supposed to. It's like "right to work" doesn't suddenly grant people who had previously had no right to work, the right to work. It simply means stupid people have the right to make less money with fewer or no benefits. Not too many people go for that but, if you label it as "right to work"  and tell people that democrats hate it, they'll sign up for it whether they like grits or cheese.

Seattle didn't raise their minimum overnight. I think it's gradual over three years. So, no one's payroll department imploded the next day. Republicans hate the minimum wage and always have. They've predicted the end of the world with each meager increase and have spent untold millions fighting it. The minimum clearly has not kept pace with inflation. I think republicans were smart enough to realize that making it lag woefully behind the cost of living, they could more easily fend off the inevitable big jumps that democrats might try to pull off in the future. Well played, you fucking assholes- well played!

See? Doubling the minimum all of a sudden freaks people out. I can see that. It makes college educated people cry about such a raise adversely affecting the price of their Big Macs. It makes those people say also that the people who put together their Big Macs "aren't worth that money". They don't even actually pay these people out of their own pockets but, they want a say in what they make. I reckon it's the thought that counts with these thoughtless fucks.

Real republican conservatives don't want their to be a minimum at all. Fifteen is too high and the $10.10 that Obama is pushing is too high, and the current $7.25 is too high but, $2 an hour would be OK...if that's what the free market dictated. They are all about the free market. Hey- the free market could decide it's worth $20 an hour to assemble Big Macs and they would cheerfully go with that- because the free market made that call, not a government. That's how they claim that works.

Well, the free market is kinda like believing in God. He looks good on paper but you can't see him. He gets credit when things go well and he gets the blame when things go bad. And he works in mysterious ways. And everybody wants to be THE authority on what he has to say. God answers to no one.

Eliminate the minimum and see how fast wages drop. Remember- they tell you that wages could go up without the minimum.

Um, they can go up now. Are conservatives confusing "minimum" with "maximum"? Or are they expecting that you will?

You are free to go to your boss at this very moment and ask for more money. He's free to not give it to you. What's he's not free to do is pay you 98 cents an hour instead because that's what he and the other bosses who now compromise The Free Market  think is a fair wage. It's a pretty safe bet that they will get together and discuss the parameters of wages and that those parameters will work in their favor about 100 percent of the time.

So, to that end they are suing to see if that will work in case assholes posting on the internet doesn't convince enough Americans that fellow Americans just aren't worth being paid a living wage. People argue that every day on the internet. They think that anyone working for the minimum fucked up and they don't deserve more. Nor do they deserve taxpayer assistance such as welfare or healthcare. So they want to take that away too. Oh, these losers can go to college and get a better job  but that's on them too. There's always that option...

But, take away the minimum and the government assistance and how then do these people get on? Well, they don't care about that. Least ways, no one has told them what to care about that. They haven't thought that through. Somehow, that is above their intellectual pay grade.

It's not above the pay grade of business though. They long ago sat down with their calculators and figured every angle of this. It all came out to cheap labor- the cheapest possible labor- yielding what economists refer to as, massive motherfucking profits. 

The way I see it is, if McDonald's business plan only works if they can pay their workers sub-living wages, maybe McDonald's out to give up the fast food business and go to college and learn another trade. College is expensive though so, good luck with that. And watch out, Ronald McDonald, that somebody doesn't shove a big, red foot up your ass. Life does that to people at times.  

Monday, March 9, 2015

The Party Of Treasonous Assholes

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2015/03/09/republicans-are-beginning-to-act-as-though-barack-obama-isnt-even-the-president/

Well now, how do you like them rotten apples?

This is a week after Congress invites Netanyahu to come and address them without involving The President in the invite. Congress is not supposed to be doing that. Nor are they supposed to be writing letters to foreign countries about how they'll undo stuff that Obama does. I think Iran is well aware they'll be dealing with Hillary Clinton after '16. They are probably glad of that. They may be crazy but, they're probably not stupid. This isn't the party of Reagan willing to deal arms. This is the party of Armageddon.

But, ya what? It's the the thought that counts. Where did we get these fucking asshole republicans?

This is the self-proclaimed "party of personal responsibility" yet their approach to politics is lawsuits, endless, hopeless votes in the House about Obamacare, the notion that everything President Obama does is an impeachable 'offense' and now- that they just don't have to listen to him. Treasonous fucks.

Regular non-readers know of the weirdos I've written about over the years, the obsessed freaks with their sad, anti-Ferrerman sentiment. Well, it's as if these assholes leaped from these pages, landed in Congress, and mistook Barack Obama for Ferrerman. Denny Crain, for example, if you've ever seen his magic videos on Youtube, might as we be Lindsay Graham. No need to break down all these freaks as many are redundant, given that they are totally fabricated socks. The point being, these mopes in congress are no better than chat room mopes like Sublime1 and various incarnations of Sam's, Susan's and Crunchy Bacons. They are trolls. Congress is trolling the President!

The whole country should be embarrassed. Certainly anyone connected with the GOP should be. My trolls don't have to face anyone in real life and own up to their trollish behavior but assholes like Ted Cruz, Graham, Rubio and Rand Paul can go on the Sunday shows and defend their petulance.

If you don't ever look at Topix, it is as if every troll you've ever read on the comments of anything ever on Facebook or any other venue on the internet got elected as a teapublican to congress. These congressmen really do represent those idiots. And, they do it with a passion, and with no shame whatsoever.

I don't know how America can show it's face to the rest of the world as these fuckers show our ass. They truly are pathetic and treasonous. Fucking assholes.

Thursday, March 5, 2015

Twits for tweets

Like a lot of people, I don't tweet. That is to say, I don't use Twitter. I don't understand it. When I read tweets posted on the internet, like on Facebook, I'm lost as to who is saying what and who is re-posting or re-tweeting. I don't get how you follow people and, if you are one that is followed, how do those people find you? I don't get how, if I were to make a tweet, where it would go. Twitter, I guess but aren't there like a billion people tweeting at any given moment? It boggles the mind! Well, mine at least.

Anyways, I was reading about a Twitter war between ex-ballplayer, Curt Schilling, and Twitter users who don't like him. Kurt tweeted about his daughter being accepted at some college I never heard of, where she'll play softball. She's a pitcher like her dad. Curt had an impressive career, winning over 200 games and striking out over 3000 guys and earning 3 World Series rings. He put up Hall Of Fame numbers but, so far, has failed to make the HOF cut. Schilling says this is because he's an outspoken republican. And you know how in an Obama-ruled, socialist, fascist, Islamic state like America, the guy is lucky to even be allowed to breathe....

Anyway, Schilling's simple tweet about his daughter brought out some very nasty trolls. People were tweeting about wanting to rape his daughter. Lots of disgusting stuff. Beyond trollish. No good excuse for it. No good excuse whatsoever.

No real good excuse for him mentioning his daughter on Twitter either, actually.

I'm not blaming the victim here. I'm maybe blaming her dad though.

If you've already been in twitter feuds  with trolls because of your politics, why go on the same venue and mention your daughter? Is that a smart thing to do? It seems like more of a Facebook thing, something you do among friends rather than strangers and enemies.

It reminded me of a poster on Topix who frequently makes disparaging posts about other people's children, then makes posts about his autistic son...and is outraged when people make disparaging comments about his kid. Yep, the same guy who has gone into excruciatingly detail about him and his wife's extramarital swinging, Yep, that guy. He wants people to know about his autistic son but is offended and surprised when they post about it.

Sounds a bit of a set-up to me. Whereas the Topix poster is an attention whore with no apparent purpose, I think Curt Schilling is an attention whore with an eye on a political future. Being a victim fighting back will get him a bit of attention....

It's a seemingly odd avenue of approach for a republican. Their response to, for example, black folks getting harassed by the police is, "If you don't want to get harassed by the police, stop looking guilty!"

Um, if you don't want creepy trolls saying they're going to ass rape your daughter, don't post anything about your child to those creeps. Ya think?

Well, some might counter, this is America and Schilling has a right to tweet about his kid and he didn't actually ask for those comments in return. That's true.

But, Black people walking down the street are not asking to be harassed by the police either. See what I did there? Why should Blacks or Schillings adjust their activities to circumvent the responses of others?

Well, they should and they should not. Republicans are big on personal responsibility and how it applies to tens of millions of people but, when it comes to their own, individual very personal responsibility, they just can't always manage that and, worse, don't think they should. Others should adjust to them. Look at abortion. If they don't want one, they shouldn't get one....

If you're Curt Schilling and you're an arch conservative republican regularly fighting with people on the internet about your politics, maybe you should leave your family out of that venue at least. Wouldn't that make sense? There's always your Facebook page, the one with friends and family on it.

What do you want to bet that Schilling runs for some office in the next year or so? He's working on that following, it seems, testing the market of outrage. And we know he's a family man! That always helps.

Tuesday, March 3, 2015

The Party of No Return

http://egbertowillies.com/2015/03/03/reagan-adviser-on-tea-party-republicans-they-are-really-rather-stupid-and-not-very-well-read-video/

Funny, isn't it? The Party Of Reagan would tar and feather the actual Reagan if he showed up and spoke at CPAC.

I've long suspect that if Jesus did return, as per The Second Coming, Christian leaders would demand: "Well, who died and made YOU boss??!!"

Jesus, of course, would reply: "Me."

But, I digress. Though they revere him as a god, Reagan was more a myth- like a god. And like Jesus, they worship and adore him but they do little to actually emulate the man. He's just very quotable, in certain context's and with certain quotes. Like: "I'm from the government and I'm here to help." Essentially, that's the quote that defines him and sets the stage for the myth of Reagan. There are people today who believe he never raised taxes. And, except for the 8-9 times he raised taxes, he never did. I don't know if these people don't google or can't read but, you can look this up. It's like Jesus saying thou shall not kill but you always wanting to go to war and to stand your ground against your neighbor. It's a bit incongruous but you believe what Jesus said, you just don't believe it applies to you.

I joked earlier today that we liberals/democrats/progressives should hijack Reagan's memory, if for no other reason than to piss off the republicans. They are not using him correctly. They would not welcome him today no matter what they say. He would never get elected. He raised taxes and gave amnesty to illegals. You can look it up. Name a republican candidate advocating that today.

He wasn't a bad man, I think. He meant well and, having been a B-movie actor, I think he saw politics as just another role. You read lines. You play a character. Other people put it all together and people pay to see it and, hopefully, buy it. You can easily trace the dismantling of America back to his administration but, not really to him. He wasn't the architect that owned this building. He just played the role. I can't believe the man was that clever. He just had good writers.

The GOP continues to riff off of his success though, just because it seems to work. GW Bush was no actor but, do you think for a moment that idiot actually ran the country? He was just another role-player in the franchise. It's a franchise that still makes money but hasn't really been a hit in years. This is to say, the republicans have not straight up won an honest presidential election since GH Bush succeeded Ronald Reagan. And he only lasted one term. His boy had to be appointed by the Supreme Court and his second term was nowhere near a mandate either. He cheated.

Numerically there are more democrats than republicans. The only reason we have republican presidents is because we're cursed with this sense of fair play in America. After a democrat has his two terms in The White House, you figure it's time to let a republican have a try. What's the worst that could happen? Well, see George Bush.

Then, consider the horrors of the Obama administration. No, Ferrerman hasn't taken leave of his political sensibilities. I'm referring to the horrors committed by the republicans against Obama. We can't trade off anymore. With Bush they quit offering suitable candidates for their turn. With their treatment of Obama, they quit deserving a turn.

In what system does it make sense to fight, sandbag and sabotage every motherfucking thing the president tries to do- totally screwing the country itself- just so you can maybe secure your turn a little faster? How many families actually turn the keys to the car over to the six year old kicking and screaming in the back seat and spend the rest of their lives at Chuckie Cheese?

It's an odd tactic. But, The Party Of Reagan that wouldn't welcome Reagan if he were alive and running today, wants people to believe that slashing and burning the country is a good thing so that they can make it better. There is no republican candidate remotely Reaganesque in their line up but each of them will quote him as if they were his second coming. That's all they have to do.

After the way they've treated Obama, and with the nuts they offer to replace him, there's no reason to go on taking turns. We as democrats can't take our turn as the torch-bearing, gasoline-toting American arsonists if a republican were to be elected. We the people are better than that.These petulant children shall not be acknowledged or rewarded.  Someone has to be better than that. It can only be us. For us, for the country, living well is the best revenge. They will never get that. We have to realize that.