Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Category Archives: Political rants
They don’t make Republicans like that anymore.
Every gun that is fired, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed . . . . This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
And there are precious few Democrats who would be caught dead echoing this idea.
D.
On this Thanksgiving Day . . .
So nice to know that there really is no one going hungry in America:
Only one child in 75 went “hungry” for even a single day during 2009 because of a lack of food in the home.
Love the quotes. But it gets worse. See, the hungry are to blame for their hunger, cuz they just don’t know how to budget:
Interestingly, the USDA report shows that millions of families that are judged “food secure” have lower incomes (relative to family size and age) than do many homes that are “food insecure.” This same pattern appears in each annual food security report. It indicates that “food insecurity” is, to a considerable degree, dependent on how efficiently a family allocates its food dollars and how it distributes its available food over the course of a month.
This guy goes on to claim that the “food insecure” are, in fact, obese, and
Virtually no food-insecure adults are underweight.
No one starves to death in the US of A. No one.
Or at least, virtually no one.
Here’s to William S. Burroughs, who recognized as well as anyone alive the hypocrisy of America.
D.
I love this guy
Alan Grayson, you are a hero.
Sadly, he was targeted by the Right with Citizens United money, and he lost his election. I hope he will be back soon — we need this man.
D.
Olbermann suspended
Today, Countdown host Keith Olbermann was suspended indefinitely, ostensibly due to political donations which were made without permission of the network:
Olbermann acknowledged the donations in a statement to Politico, saying he gave the maximum legal donation of $2,400 to Arizona Reps. Raul Grijalva and Gabrielle Giffords and Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway, who waged an unsuccessful campaign for the U.S. Senate against Tea Party standard-bearer Rand Paul.
Said MSNBC President Phil Griffin, “I became aware of Keith’s political contributions late last night. Mindful of NBC News policy and standards, I have suspended him indefinitely without pay.â€
Apparently not all that mindful. The relevant rule is that Olbermann was supposed to have asked permission. Joe Scarborough donated to Republicans but he asked permission. However — and here I’ll defer to Jed Lewison at Daily Kos:
It’s implausible that the issue here is that Olbermann didn’t ask permission. First, the policy in question doesn’t appear to apply to MSNBC — it’s for “impartial journalists” on NBC News’ staff, and nobody would claim Olbermann or Scarborough are impartial. They are opinion show hosts.
You can sign the petition to reinstate Keith here.
D.
Well America, I hope you’re happy now.
GOP evicts Democrats from House Majority.
But at least now I have my Governor Brown back 🙂
D.
Pegged to a tee, and don’t forget the contest
My music contest is still running. Where are all my gentle readers? Or do you all hate Jonathon Coulton?
From today’s Daily Kos, front-pager Laurence Lewis has me pegged to a tee on the question of why I’ll be voting in November:
Recent polls show more and more Democrats coming home, but it is not because they are suddenly much happier with the way Democratic leaders have handled the issues, it’s because they recognize the danger of an increasingly extremist Republican Party. It’s because they won’t be dissuaded from fighting for their own values and principles, even when they believe their own party’s leaders aren’t always joining them in the fight. In some cases, they will vote for more Democrats not because of the Democratic leadership, they will vote for more Democrats despite the Democratic leadership. In short, this is a moment for the Democratic base to prove that it is above the pettiness and the political games, a moment for the Democratic base to make its collective voice heard by saving the Democratic leadership from the political fallout of its own shortcomings.
Read the whole thing, it’s worth your time.
D.
Best. Campaign commercial. Ever.
Often I wonder why scandal-plagued Senator Vitter is still in office. Do people wink away extreme kink in Louisiana? But as the following ad points out, sex with prostitutes is, well . . . I don’t want to steal their thunder.
D.
Jerry Brown 2010
I finally got (get) to vote for Jerry Brown! That’s right, twice — once in the Democratic primary, and again in the general election. I wasn’t old enough to vote in his first gubernatorial election and I think I was just shy of 18 for the second gubernatorial election, too. I suspect I voted for him in one of his ill-fated presidential campaigns. But at last I get to vote for him in a race he can win.
You have to understand that Brown is something of a hero to progressives. Here’s a guy who once left the Democratic party because it wasn’t progressive enough. (He came back, of course, I suspect for pragmatic reasons.)
Here’s Brown’s announcement. Can you believe this guy is 72?
Here’s a bit from Wikipedia on his tenure as governor (1975-1983):
Opposed to the Vietnam War, Brown had a base of support from California’s young liberals. Upon election, he refused many of the privileges and trappings of the office, forgoing the newly constructed governor’s residence (which was sold in 1983) and instead renting a modest apartment at the corner of 14th and N Streets, adjacent to Capitol Park in downtown Sacramento. Instead of riding as a passenger in a chauffeured limousine as previous governors had done, Brown was driven to work in a compact sedan, a Plymouth Satellite.
During his two-term, eight-year governorship, Brown had a strong interest in environmental issues. Brown appointed J. Baldwin to work in the newly-created California Office of Appropriate Technology, Sim Van der Ryn as State Architect, and Stewart Brand as Special Advisor. He appointed John Bryson, later the CEO of Southern California Edison Electric Company and a founding member of the Natural Resources Defense Council, chairman of the California State Water Board in 1976. Brown reorganized the California Arts Council, boosting its funding by 1300 percent and appointing artists to the council.
In 1975, Brown obtained the repeal of the “depletion allowance”, a tax break for the state’s oil industry, despite the efforts of the lobbyist Joe Shell, a former intraparty rival to Richard M. Nixon . . . .
Brown appointed more women and minorities to office than any other previous California governor.
He’s liberal on social issues, but a fiscal conservative, so the Palinesque “tax and spend big government” smears are going to slide right off. Watch:
And here’s Brown’s interview with Diane Sawyer, commenting on the upcoming race against gazillionaire Meg Whitman:
We’ll be digging deep on this one to put back into office the last competent governor we had in California. Jerry Brown for Governor, 2010.
D.
Rentboy’s clientele
Difficult not to chortle when one of America’s more vocal anti-gay activists was found in the company of a man. A young man. A really young man. The kind of young man who advertises his services at rentboy.com.
(Hat tip to Joe.My.God.)
On April 13, the “rent boy” (whom we’ll call Lucien) arrived at Miami International Airport on Iberian Airlines Flight 6123, after a ten-day, fully subsidized trip to Europe. He was soon followed out of customs by an old man with an atavistic mustache and a desperate blond comb-over, pushing an overburdened baggage cart. That man was George Alan Rekers, of North Miami — the callboy’s client and, as it happens, one of America’s most prominent anti-gay activists.
Rekers claims he only found out the rent boy was a prostitute halfway through this vacation, and that he hired him to “carry his luggage.” No word in the original article as to the rent boy’s age, but both he and Rekers claim nothing sexual happened on the trip.
Rekers is co-founder (with James Dobson) of the vigorously anti-gay Family Research Council and board member of NARTH, National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality, an organization that thinks it can turn gay people straight. Perhaps he thought he could bring the rent boy over to the team of straight-shooters. Since he no doubt thinks gay people are doomed to eternal hellfire, this might have been a mission of mercy!
UPDATE: Rekers responds to Joe. Nope, not gay. Nothing to see here, move along!
My hero is Jesus Christ who loves even the culturally despised people, including sexual sinners and prostitutes. Like Jesus Christ, I deliberately spend time with sinners with the loving goal to try to help them.
Did I call it or what? Line this man up for sainthood.
D.
Nine scary (and clueless) old (and not so old) men (and women)
Our Supreme Court Justices are living in the 1950s.
“What’s the difference between email and a pager?”
Read the article — this was not the only question indicating a mind-vacuum. Scalia and Kennedy tripped over each other’s boners*, and of course Thomas never asks questions.
I could understand if it was one or two of the older Justices who were ignorant, but no — Chief Justice Roberts asked the email v. pager question. And he’s only 55!
It’s frightening that the highest court in the land is making decisions on matters they understand as well as I understand quantum chromodynamics. I told Karen they should recuse themselves from the case; Karen thinks they should recuse themselves from the human race.
D.
*Obligatory apology for that image.