January 2, 2011
November 21, 2010
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March 15, 2010
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December 30, 2009
December 14, 2009
The Tattlesnake – A Stake Deep in the Heart of GOP Texas Edition
Judging by this, Lone Star state Republicans may have much to fear in the future.
I’ve made plenty of fun of Texas and that breed of Texan that keeps electing crooks and nitwits like Tom DeLay and Junior-clone Rick Perry against their own best interests, but it seems things have gotten bad enough down there that even Houston, the nexus of Bush Oil Country, has elected a lesbian Democrat, former City Controller Annise Parker, as Mayor rather than face a corrupt and/or dumb Republican. (Albeit that Houston has been trending Dem for some years and the last mayor was a Democrat.) Although Parker has some past ties to the energy industry, her most recent non-political gig was running a bookstore and she is regarded as fairly liberal, at least by Texas standards.
It’s no secret the GOP has raped the state from one end to the other, giving massive tax breaks to the wealthy and corporations while cutting social safety-net programs to the bone, eviscerating the educational system, and putting workers at the mercy of employers – it was the neocon corporatist blueprint for what King Junior tried to do in Washington, but didn’t quite succeed at entirely. Now that the economy has gone all to hell, fed-up Texans are worse off than most of the nation, and they have no one to blame but the laissez-faire policies of the Republican Party.
Sure, the voting machines have been rigged and districts redrawn to keep the GOP in perpetual power, but even that may not be enough to underwrite the Republican Party’s future in Texas.
The Tattler’s prediction: Within ten years all the major state offices will be held by Democrats, as well as the two US Senate seats. Texas was, at one time, a populist state; I think it will be returning to those roots – who knows, maybe the great Jim Hightower will end up in office again, if he can stomach campaigning one more time.
Houston biggest US city to elect openly gay mayor
Monica Rhor, AP Writer
December 13, 2009HOUSTON – Houston became the largest U.S. city to elect an openly gay mayor, with voters handing a solid victory to City Controller Annise Parker after a hotly contested runoff. [...]
Parker, 53, has never made a secret or an issue of her sexual orientation. But it became the focus of the race after anti-gay activists and conservative religious groups endorsed Locke and sent out mailers condemning Parker’s “homosexual behavior.”
Read the rest here.
“Anti-gay activists and conservative religious groups” couldn’t defeat an openly gay woman in TEXAS?! Oh, yes, the doom come soon for the GOP.
© 2009 RS Janes. LTSaloon.org
November 16, 2009
October 18, 2009
October 11, 2009
The GOP’s Golden Showers
Fair use of the ‘Classics Illustrated’ logo for satirical purposes. Besides C.I. went out of business in 1998.
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June 25, 2009
June 11, 2009
June 4, 2009
The Tattlesnake — No One Left to Care Edition
With apologies to the late Pastor Martin Niemöller:
No One Left to Care
When they extended work hours and cut wages across town
I didn’t speak up –
After all, they were strangers and I was doing fine;
When they got rid of the unions at my company
I didn’t speak up –
After all, I wasn’t a union member;
When they shipped the jobs of half the employees in my company overseas
I didn’t speak up –
After all, I still had a job;
When they cut my wages and made me work longer hours for less pay
I didn’t speak up –
After all, times are tough and something’s better than nothing;
And when they finally fired me, closed the plant, and shipped my job overseas
I tried to fight back, but there was no one left to back me up –
After all, I didn’t care to speak up for anyone else in trouble,
why should anyone care to speak up for me?
Pastor Niemöller’s original poem:
April 14, 2009
Fox News Teabags America
Headline: FOX NEWS TAKES OWNERSHIP OF TEA PARTIES…
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April 5, 2009
The Tattlesnake – Rushing to the Bottom-Feeders Edition
Who Else is There Left for Limbaugh to Influence?
Rush Limbaugh is a phenomenon of the ’80s and ’90s when he still retained some ability to shock, and the entire regressive Republican agenda he insistently trumpeted daily, which fundamentally amounted to electing Republicans to throw money at the rich and permitting corporations and Wall Street to act without regulation, had yet to be proven by events, such as our present Great Depression redux, to be the recipe for mass disaster it has historically been.
Limbaugh had quite a time back then kicking around FDR’s liberalism that had brought the nation out of the last Republican-generated economic crisis of the 1930s, and counted on the uneducated knuckledraggers, attention-deficit cretins, McCarthyite jingoists, terrified shut-ins, imperial chickenhawks and outright cases of brain damage that populate his audience to trust his hooey-fied history lessons and giggle at his class-clown racism and sexism.
Rush often claims his talent is on loan from God but, since he’s never clear as to the identity of his personal deity, it might very well be one with two horns and a scaly tail who causes young girls to prodigiously vomit pea soup. (A reaction Rush is no doubt accustomed to from women by now.) Conservatism has often been used as a respectable ideological shield for the darker aspects of the human character such as greed, selfishness and cruelty, and Limbaugh evinces all of these flaws is his daily three-hour howlings at the moon.
What does this spoiled self-serving multi-millionaire mostly gripe about on his show? Those in the upper-10 percent tax bracket such as himself paying higher taxes. He makes $50 million a year and he’s complaining bitterly over paying a few percentage points more in taxes to help his country out of the mess caused by the Republican ‘principles’ he’s ardently promoted of deregulating markets, banks, investment firms, real estate, and unfettered corporate expansion, while lowering taxes for the rich and running enormous deficits. Instead of taking responsibility for what he’s advocated, Rush blames it on Obama and the Democrats. What a mighty good man.
Before confusing Limbaugh’s brand of patriotism with the dictionary definition of that word, it’s instructive to heed the underlying message of his broadcasts: Money before country — particularly Rush’s own sacrosanct bankroll.
The Tattlesnake – Debunking Five Current Media Myths Edition
“Those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.”
– George Bernard Shaw
1. The Republicans are going to end earmarks. Ha, ha! Both parties, but especially the GOP, thrive on earmarks – not only does it bring home the bacon, but it’s a nice covert way to reward their corporate sponsors. The typically devious Republicans, with the help of some Blue Dog Dems in the Senate, are just going to change the name to something like ‘help American families add-ons’ or ‘freedom appropriation inserts’ and continue to happily earmark away.
2. The Republican Party is now strong. Another laugher. The GOP had to rebrand as the ‘new Tea Party GOP’ in 2010 and none of their candidates dared campaign with Junior Bush. In TV ads, many GOP candidates did not even mention they were Republicans. Rand Paul, the only true Teabagger in the Senate, is now making noises like a “go along to get along” guy, and various naïve Teabaggers in the House, like the anti-government-paid health care dimwit who demanded his government-paid health care ahead of schedule, have begun showing their strong streak of stupid, even before January’s official swearing in. Most of us have noticed it’s not the mid-90s anymore, with the booming economy of the Clinton years, except for Republicans like Rep. Darrell Issa. Tying the House up in endless attempts to impeach Obama is not going to endear the GOP to a crumbling nation dealing with what is really the second Great Depression. And some of the Teabaggers may be gravely offended to discover that the GOP has been lying to them. It’s going to be a fractious two years in Congress that won’t come out well for the GOP in 2012.
3. The Republicans have a plan to restore jobs. Related to the item above, and every bit as hilarious, the GOP has nothing except ‘tax cuts’ (spin and repeat, ad nauseum), and that isn’t going to create any jobs except at corporate PR firms trying to peddle the fraud that tax cuts are working to create jobs, and that’s not nearly enough to refloat the fast-sinking economy. As the fading middle-class notices its nails are ripping off trying to hang on to what they have left, brand ‘Tea Party Republican’ will become a political curse as loaded with negative connotations as ‘Communist’ or ‘Cheney’ is today.
4. The Republicans can balance the budget. The GOP hasn’t been able to balance the federal budget since Reagan took office, and without Clinton-inspired tax hikes and a few turns by Big Bill, there wouldn’t have been a surplus in 2000. Since the GOP doesn’t want to end two over-priced wars from which their corporate supporters are getting wealthier, truly reform our wastefully expensive health care system, remove corporate tax loopholes, separate commercial and investment banks, and cut the defense budget drastically, that leaves social spending like Social Security and Medicare on the block. The unvarnished truth: Even if the GOP junked all federal social programs, which they won’t be able to do, they still wouldn’t be able to balance the budget. In fact, with their tax cuts for the wealthy of prime importance, along with preserving corporate tax loopholes, they’ll be adding another trillion dollars to the debt. They’ll remain the ‘put it on the credit card and blame the Democrats’ party they’ve been for 30 years.
5. The Democrats lost because they went too far left. Au contraire, mon frere, as George Carlin used to say. Think of it: In spite of the corporate millions that poured into the Senate race in Nevada, the GOP couldn’t score what should have been an easy victory. In California, progressive and GOP target Barbara Boxer prevailed, and the Tea Party proved its basic worthlessness in the “I’m not a witch” fiasco that was Christine O’Donnell in Delaware. Only in those areas of the country dominated by Fox News and AM radio right-wing talkers, and not much counter-balancing local media, where the Teabaggers could work without serious scrutiny, did they score wins, mostly against Blue Dog Dems. The reason a lot of Dems stayed home in 2010 is that they were tired of voting for progressive Democrats and getting Republican Lite. Obama and the Dems should listen to the wisdom of Harry Truman, a Democrat who prevailed during a bad time for Dems in the late 1940s, “Given the choice between a Republican and a Democrat who acts like a Republican, people will vote for the real Republican every time.”
Obama and the Dems might also heed this advice from Give ‘Em Hell Harry: “Carry the battle to them. Don’t let them bring it to you. Put them on the defensive and don’t ever apologize for anything.”
But let’s not expect too much.
© 2010 RS Janes. LTSaloon.org.