crap

Something going around Facebook right now really got me thinking:

Entitlement? I PAID cash for Social Security insurance! Our benefits aren’t charity or a handout! Congressional benefits—premium federal health care, outrageous retirement packages, 67 paid holidays, three weeks paid vacation, unlimited paid sick days—now THAT’S welfare! And they have the nerve to call retirement an entitlement! Repost if you are sick of their crap.

In all this talk of government cuts, have we once heard anyone in Congress say "hey - maybe we should cut congressional pay"? How about cutting staffs or perks while we are at it? The answer is no!

And the more I thought about this, the more my blood would boil. I finally decided to compare the average salaries of workers to the salaries of our members of Congress. In doing so, I created the following graph:

(Data sources: Wikipedia and SSA)

While Americans struggle to pay the bills and feed their families, members of Congress continue to live the good life. They receive a salary most of us can only dream of and benefits many of us would kill for.

The nation’s largest private employer is seeing troubling times:

Wal-Mart's core shoppers are running out of money much faster than a year ago due to rising gasoline prices, and the retail giant is worried, CEO Mike Duke said Wednesday.

"We're seeing core consumers under a lot of pressure," Duke said at an event in New York. "There's no doubt that rising fuel prices are having an impact."

If this goes on, Wal-Mart could be faced with either cutting hours and laying off employees. That too will add to our economic doom and gloom. It’s just a shame that our leaders in Washington, on both sides of the aisle, are to worried about petty crap and not focused on jobs or rising costs.

With all the debate over Cordoba House in New York, something we never hear about is actual concerns. I’m not talking about the “all brownies are terrorists” kind of crap the GOP and FOX News pushes, but rather if there are any serious zoning type complaints.

An example of this can be seen in Connecticut, where there is some genuine concerns about a mosque being built:

A Muslim group that wants to build a mosque and community center in a Connecticut neighborhood says most of the plan's critics appear genuinely concerned about potential parking and traffic problems, but there has been some anti-Islamic sentiment.

Now these are serious concerns for a neighborhood. Don’t you wish you could actually hear some serious concerns like this about the Cordoba House? Put all the crapspiracy theories, hate mongering and religious insensitivities aside, and let us hear honest to God logistical concerns about the project.

But this is America. We are a nation gung-ho on outrage. Our lust for reality television has overflowed into our actual lives and that is fueled by a never ending urge by the media to increase their ratings. We can’t be serious at all, and that will lead to the eventual demise of our once great nation.

I finally get a morning to sit here, drink some coffee and watch a little early news. I turn on Morning Joe and have heard one theme all morning – the White House fell for an edited video posted on the web by Andrew Breitbart. Joe Scarborough has been on fire blasting the White House for this.

Good! They deserve to be blasted for falling for some crap posted by internet-fraudster Andrew Breitbart, but isn’t there more blame to go around? How about the media? How about Joe’s own employer or even Joe himself?

I’m sitting here reliving 2002-2003 and the lead up to the Iraq War. The media gets a story and runs without, fact-checking be dammed. It’s like high schoolers thinking “oh I got some juicy gossip to tell”.

It hasn’t been that long ago that the country fell for another Breitbart edited video, one against ACORN. I remember watching Morning Joe and them blasting the Democrats and White House for not taking it seriously. Now that they did take a video seriously, they are blasting them again.

When it comes to the media talking about the Shirley Sherrod story, only one has the right to talk about it now and that is Keith Olbermann, who gave this special comment last night and even apologized on behalf of the media. He did the right thing, while the other’s, including Joe Scarborough, are to chicken to even admit that they did some wrong.

This is the kind of news that should be plastered on every network tonight:

The U.S. Senate voted overwhelmingly on Thursday to confirm Martha N. Johnson as head of the General Services Administration, nearly 10 months after she was first nominated to head the federal agency.

Upon assuming office, Johnson "will become the first permanent Administrator of the General Services Administration in nearly two years."

Earlier in 2009, Johnson was unanimously approved by members of the Senate Homeland Security Committee. But a single senator, Republican Kit Bond from Missouri, has used his symbolic 'privilege' to hold up consideration of Johnson's nomination since last summer. The delay was meant to pressure GSA administrators to approve a $175 million federal building project in Kansas City.

A nomination held up for 10 months because a damn Republican wanted his pork. Why isn’t the tea baggers or Republicans calling out this crap? Because they are damn hypocrites – every single one of them.

There was so much outrageous crap coming from the right wing extremists yesterday that I totally missed this one:

LIMBAUGH: Would you trust the money's gonna go to Haiti?

CALLER: No.

LIMBAUGH: But would you trust that your name is gonna end up on the mailing list for the Obama people to start asking you for campaign donations for him and other causes?

CALLER: Absolutely.

LIMBAUGH: Absolutely right.

CALLER: That's the point.

LIMBAUGH: Besides, we've already donated to Haiti. It's called the U.S. income tax.

This is the reason the world would have been better off if Limbaugh didn’t walk out of that hospital last month. So many acted like we should have compassion for him when he was down. Well you know what? Fuck him. Those of us, who wouldn’t have minded Limbaugh being fitted with a toe tag, remember the kind of man he is. He proved it again yesterday. He doesn’t give a shit about the lives of others, so why in the world should we care about his?

And check out who it is:

This week, John's exclusive guests are Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) LIVE from Jerusalem. We'll get their insight on the foiled airline terror plot and President Obama's strategy on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

As Benen points out:

Hmm, McCain and Lieberman, talking together about foreign policy and national security. Now that's a balanced pairing.

CNN – The worst rated name in news! Keep this crap up and before long CNN will lose the ratings game to public access.

Chris Matthews just said people who don’t like this crap health care bill are not real Democrats – they are netroots. He then went on to accuse us of not voting our whole lives or doing anything for the party.

Fuck you, you fat pompous ass hole.

I have spent the last 22 years of my life involved in politics. I have always voted. I have gone and busted my ass for countless elections and held party positions. How dare you accuse me of not being a real Democrat.

Do you really think that it is easy for me to oppose this bill? Do you think I’m doing it for fucking money or something? This blog makes less than $100 a year.

You have no right to sit there and accuse me, or any other Democrat going through the pain of watching something we wanted all our lives go down the toilet of not being real Democrats.

And forget about me. What about Howard Dean? This guy was a governor, presidential candidate and chairman of the DNC. You’re saying he isn’t a real Democrat?

No apology will be accepted this time. You have gotten off with saying outrageous things like this too many times and then just going “oops” the next day. It’s past time for MSNBC to show you the same fate as the old horse that just got done running his last race.