Hbee Inc.

I need to channel my energy better.  I always mean to troll and end up engaging, instead.  There comes a point where distanced amusement turns to outright anger and OCDBPAC tends to find that point as easily as Deborah Jones finds the closet she keeps her strap-on hidden in so she and Joe can play Secretary.

The level of their denial rocks the brain and approaches Sinclairian standards.  Take the recent email sent by Mr. Jones (who, btw, has a thing going on).

According to the folks at YouTube, only 1,538 of you have listened to the new radio ad I recorded yesterday that takes Harry Reid to task for dishonoring our military men and women.  Friends, we have a lot more members than that so this means a lot of you have yet to listen to the ad.

Gosh, Lil’ Debbie, it’s almost like (how shall I put this) NO ONE FUCKING CARES.

I know that only a handful of people read this and I cherish every single one of you.  I might bitch about low numbers sometimes but, guess what, at the end of the day, it’s my problem.  I could write good old-fashioned earthy-crunchy “yay liberals” stuff.  I could jump on whatever band wagon Dkos hitched up for the day.  There are 12 gazillion ways to up the numbers to the point where the Google ad revenue would keep me rolling in clover.  The last thing I would do is send an email blaming you, my cherished readers, for not reading this enough.  Or not sending me money

Please take a moment to listen to the new ad below.  And if you agree with my message, then help me make sure every single voter in Nevada hears this ad next week, by making a contribution so we can purchase as much airtime as possible.

Translation, as if it were plain – “Waaaaaaah!  It’s YOUR fault if America turns into an athieistic, Socialist dictatorship because didn’t pay for my salary.”  But that’s not really the point.

Let me state that not all Republicans are wingnuts.  I know plenty of perfectly nice people who respectfully disagree me.  They don’t call me names.  They don’t besmirch my character.  As a result, we actually talk about things, which isn’t to say that things don’t get heated or that we’ll ever agree.

The classic wingnut just lies without any sense of remorse, conscience or fact.  Obama is not a socialist.  He does not hate the troops.  He is an American citizen.  He did not get blown in the back of a limo by a psychotic gay man.

The classic wingnut loves to call the left “Stalinist” implying that we insist on absolute and total fealty to the dogma laid down by the wingnut target du jour.  There are, of course, those who insist on lockstep adherence to liberal dogma.  I’ve heard plenty of conversations about how someone wasn’t “liberal enough”.  I have no use for those people.  However, they generally don’t take their dogma and go home.

Like OCDBPAC does.

I noticed a couple of days ago that the two copies of their emails that I usually got mysteriously became one copy.  Perhaps it’s because they read my responses to them and decided that I wasn’t on their list for the “right” reason. (Me so funny!)  All the more reason to subscribe with two different addresses.  It’s not the first time they’ve cut me off.  I’m kicked out of their Facebook group for pointing out that their math was heniously wrong when I came to interpreting polling data, a fact confirmed my wife who interprets data for a living.

Now, however, they’ve taken to deleting and banning comments on their idiotic YouTube radio ad.

It doesn’t seem to take much to get banned, either.  Just counter “Harry Reid hates the troops” with something true, like, say bush cut funding for veteran’s benefits.  Or that Walter Reed Hospital willfully and knowing neglected the veterans in their charge.  You’ll be banned in a heartbeat. In my case, I was banned after asking someone to read sources “outside your comfort zone if only to debunk them.”  How fucking incendiary am I?

To sum up – I was banned from Our Country Deserves Better PAC for

1) Disagreeing with them

2) Asking them to consider all sides of an issue

In short – I was banned for acting like an American.

Hbee Blatant Assholes, Fucking Foul Mouthed Goddamn Liberal, Obama, Our Country Deserves Better PAC, Political Whatever, Poor Stupid White People, Republicana, Vomiting in My Mouth, Wingnuts Blatant Assholes, Fucking Foul Mouthed Goddamn Liberal, Obama, Our Country Deserves Better PAC, Political Whatever, Poor Stupid White People, Republicana, Vomiting in My Mouth, Wingnuts

So here were are.  Democrats won pretty much everything they could win and yet it’s still not enough.  For some reason (and it holds true for Republicans, too) we’re compelled to eat each other.  I recently listened to a conversation where the..well…combatants went after each other for not being liberal enough.  This kind of  political pissing contest just doesn’t help.  I’ll say it again – too many people projected their own views onto Obama in direct contrary evidence to the facts.  “I’m not anti-war.  I’m anti-stupid war.”  Which part of “not anti” don’t you understand?

You could have backed Dennis Kucinich but you didn’t so with all due respect – STFU.  (And DON’T give me your rationalizations about needing to win the White House.  If you compromised your values then you compromised your values.  End of story.)

The latest “outrage” comes over releasing more photos of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib.  Yes, Obama reversed course on this.  No, it’s not a betrayal.  Why?  Because we already know what happened.  The reports say that there’s nothing new.  It’s just more of the same.

For the past couple months, Obama has slowly begun mending fences with the rest of the world and making it clear that the US is not some kind of closet-gay, date-rape jock.  We need to focus on that.  We need to make the apologies we need to make, take our lumps when they’re warranted and, to coin a phrase, “Move On”.  Look – the bush administration was evil – utterly and non-debatably evil.   They shredded the Constitution, ruled with unbridled hypocrisy and forced us to say that we were Canadians when traveling overseas.

So now that we’ve got a decent President that wants to fix it, why would we want to remind everybody of this fact?  We’re in a relationship with the rest of the world.  We’re just getting out of the dog house and you want to put us back in?

Allow me to go Bob Newhart here for a sec.

Hey, honey!

Good day at work?  Did you get the flowers I sent?

Well, I love you and I just wanted to show you.  I’ve been kind of a shit lately and I know how lucky I don’t have to sleep on the couch anymore.

Yeah, I know.  Fucking your sister was wrong.  Taping it was even worse.  I’m really sorry.  I’m so happy that we’re working through it.  I really don’t know what I was thinking.  Thank you for forgiving me.

Oh, while we’re on the subject, there’s something I wanted to tell you.  We did it more than once.  A bunch of times, actually.  Dozens.  I’ve got a lot more tape.  Hours.  Man, your sister is a freak!  There’s this one part where she wants me to put underwear on her head and chain her to -

No, I know you saw that part, but this was a different time.  You didn’t see that specific one.  That was on…just a sec, lemme check the time stamp on tapes.  Have a seat, we’ll watch them together.  I feel really good that we can do this together.

Why are you crying, honey?  I thought we were past this?

See?  It’s not helpful.  In fact, it’s cruel and unproductive.  It’s going to put the US back on the couch again.  We don’t need to be there.

This isn’t about denying the truth of what happened.  The truth is already out there, backed up with photographic evidence.  The US abused prisoners under the bush regime.  It’s not useful to release every single photo of every single instance.  It changes nothing. A photo of a dog attacking a prisoner at 21:38 holds the same weight as a photo of a dog attacking a prisoner at 21:39.  It’s abuse.

The only reason to release more photos is a self-serving one – for Democrats to prove we were right all along.  But we already proved that.  Repeatedly.

So, to use my recently coined phrase, let’s move on and get to the business of healing the wrongs we committed.

Hbee Democrats, Iraq, Media, Navel (Gazing At), News, Obama, Political Whatever, Republicana Democrats, Iraq, Media, Navel (Gazing At), News, Obama, Political Whatever, Republicana

Just a little background – The Family Research Council is the political arm of Dobson’s Focus on the Family comedy club that Tony Perkins (not the dead, gay actor) runs.  Tony (not the dead, gay actor) puts out the Washington Watch Weekly podcast which tells the base who to hate and how much to hate them.  Thanks to the podcast I now know that abortion discriminates on the basis of “age, size and place of residence”.  I wish I was kidding.

Like most xtians, Tony doesn’t care about the truth and doesn’t expect his guests to, either.  They’re free to spout whatever egregious lies pop into their head as long as it advances their agenda.  In fact, at the end of the last weeks podcast, John Sununu, former governor of New Hampshire, railed against the legislature for legalizing gay marriage.  He darkly told the base that homos and liberals (and, please, sit down for this) used money to help candidates sympathetic to gay causes get elected!  Didn’t I tell you to sit down?  Yes, they used the American political process to advance their agenda which is just about the sleaziest thing a person could possibly do.  I’d feel badly but I’m too busy thinking about the Muslim kitties I’m going to have sex with after I finish this.

Todd Tiahrt (pronounced tee-hart and thank you Google for understanding what I meant when I searched for him) gave a bravura performance demonizing national healthcare by either 1) not listening to his wife during the passing of Natasha Richardson or 2) outright lying.  Let’s let Todd tell us a very scary story about how the Canadian healthcare system killed her.

A Very Scary Story

Now let’s hear what really happened.

On 16 March 2009, Richardson sustained a head injury, when she fell while taking a skiing lesson at the Mont Tremblant Resort in Quebec, Canada about an hour and a half from Montreal. The injury was followed by a lucid interval, when Richardson seemed to be fine and was able to talk and act appropriately. Paramedics and an ambulance which initially responded to the accident were told they were not needed and left.Refusing medical attention, she returned to her hotel room and about three hours later was taken to a local hospital after complaining of a headache. She was transferred from there by ambulance to the Hôpital du Sacré-Cœur de Montréal in critical condition and was admitted about seven hours after the fall. The following day she was flown to Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, where she died on 18 March.

Tiahrt wants you to beileve that the evil Canadians refused her healthcare.  Except that she initially refused treatment and she wasn’t Canadian so blaming the Canadian healthcare system is (and there’s really no other phrase for it) fucking retarded.

But, wait, Todd’s not done.

Not only does the Canadian system suck but the Mexican system sucks, too, because it “hasn’t been able to cope with this swine flu”.

Another Evil Story

WHUH?

Let’s think of the swine flu as ants in your house.  You see a bunch of ants nibbling away at (in my case) the mound of cedar wood cat litter that gets scratched out of the box and onto the floor.  So you grab a broom, sweep the litter and ants into a dust pan and dump the contents into a plastic bag.  You knot the plastic bag, sealing the ants inside, and then throw it in the garbage.  It’s called “containment”.  Thus, the number of ants are significantly reduced.  If you just left them to their own devices you’d soon have a house full of ants.

Given that the swine flu was projected to kill every living thing on the planet and that Mexico pretty much locked everything down, killing of tourism for a week or so, I think the Mexican healthcare system did a pretty goddamn good job of dealing with swine flu.

It’s also interesting to note that Todd stresses that healthcare is 15% of our economy.  So it seems pretty clear that Todd doesn’t care as much about who gets help as he does about who’s going to finance his re-election campaign.  So that he can continue to advance his agenda.

Hbee Blatant Assholes, Christians, News, Obama, Political Whatever, Republicana, Ridicule, Vomiting in My Mouth, Wingnuts

Remember before the election I was saying some non-mean things about Faux Noise?  Hoo!  Dunno what I was thinking or even if I was thinking.  Anywho…

When I was 19-ish, I moved back home (and this was before it was trendy).  I’d done a year of college in a theater program and gotten an offer to keep on with the children’s theater I’d worked with over the summer.  The theater was in the town my parents lived in.  Serendipity!  Even more so, my mom had moved out temporarily leaving my dad to fend for himself.  So if I wasn’t exactly welcome, I was useful.  For a while, at least.

Then there came the day where I got the ultimatum or the GTFOOMH speech.  He yelled.  I yelled.  Conditions and counter-conditions flew.  I couldn’t put up with him.  He couldn’t put up with me.  I still kinda needed his money, though, and he hated grocery shopping and doing the dishes.  In the end, he gave me a month to get out.  I got out in two weeks.  I’d lost that symbiotic feeling.

The moral?  Where there’s a will there’s a way and no matter how broke you are, there’s more than one way to skin a cat.

I buckled down, stopped drinking my money away (for a little while) and made it work.  It wasn’t that hard.

So, now we have AIG that wants to leach off the taxpayers much like I leeched off my dad.  And they’re all pissy because we asking them to be in by midnight, make sure the car is gassed up and not piss away millions of dollars on retention bonuses for the people the fucked up the company and then left rich.  But they still want our money.  Even though other sections of the company are doing fine.

And along comes Chris “I’ll Have The Reagan Black Hair Dye” Wallace who, despite theorectically understanding capitalism, still thinks like a socialist.  Or a really bad parent.

Listen to Chris Wallace:  Suuuuper Genius

Chris – listen up:  No private company has to take money from the government.  Ever.  If it does, though, it is beholden to the government and therefore the people, because it took our money.  Corporatons should NOT get free, no-strings-attached money to do with what they wish.  That’s called “welfare”, Chris.  And as you and the rest of Fucked News love to point out – it’s a dis-incentive.  Give corporations free money with no responsibility and the next thing you know, AIG will be hanging out on streets corners, getting girls pregnant and then leaving them without a father.

Chris – you should know better than that.  No company needs to “do business” with the US Government.  For you to suggest they would want to suggests that you don’t even understand the whole conservative “small government” thing.  Let me explain – if you screw up you shouldn’t look to the government bail you out.  That’s not what the government is for.  You can’t disparage Obama for running up a deficit bailout loser companies and then complain that said losers have to do something stupid like follow rules.  M’kay?

Chris – put the football helmet on and apologize to your dad.

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Facts are stupid things.
Ronald Reagan

Ok, so Reagan really said it but probably not on purpose.  He was quoting (or tried to quote) John Adams.

Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.

I could, of course, have just started this off with the quote without providing any context and we all could have had a good laugh at Reagan’s expense.  But then I would be doing what Our Country Deserves Better PAC does.

I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but we have a new president and there are some people that believe that he will DESTROY AMERICA (emphasis NOT added).  Despite a wealth of evidence to the contrary, they believe he’s a radical communist, a soclialist, that he’ll sell us out to Africa, that he dealt drugs, that he’s on the down-low and (though I’m sure it’s a joke) that he’s a voodoo priest.  These are the same people that crow that after 30 days he’s “changed nothing” and that sneer about him not being “bi-partisan”.  This would imply that they would EVER consider working with him, period.  It’s the same as saying “I’ll stop punching you in the face when you stop asking me to stop punching you in the face.”

Before I go on, I want to acknowledge that latte-sipping liberals such a myself engage in the same disingenuous fiddling that dickheads like OCDB PAC does.  (See, that was a little meta-joke there!)  The main difference, I think, is that we generally cave in like Pelosi and Obama have over the Patriot Act.  Democrats will actually vote for what they believe in as opposed to the ‘licans who’ll skunk the stimulus bill despite the fact that it was reported they wanted it to pass.

Ok.  That’s out of the way.

Take a look at the most recent volley from the stomach of OCDB PAC.

As opposition to Barack Obama’s collectivist, big-goverment economic policies & confused and weak national defense/foreign affairs policies grows, support for Obama has taken a hit in the polls.

The Gallup polling organization has been conducting a daily tracking poll and in the past month Obama’s job approval ratings have plunged by 19%.  The drop in support has been particularly noticeable among Independents and Republicans (one month ago a narrow plurality of Republicans approved of the way Obama was handling his job, now a majority of Republicans say they disapprove).

Down 19%??  Holy shit!  If, as they say, his approval rating is down 19% he’s in pretty big trouble, isn’t he?  It sounds like the entire country has deserted him!  Buyer’s remorse, as the wingnuts’ new talking point says.

Not surprisingly, it’s not true.

I’ve been…let’s call it “monitoring” the OCDB Facebook page and chiming in occasionally.  So, I left this on their message board

Numbers are fun! Obama down 19%! He’s gotta be sunk now! 19% is a really big number! It’s a lot. But you’ll notice that the actually poll numbers aren’t used.

According the Gallup (and, please remember, if you don’t back up your statements with links, nobody will check because he’s hated SO MUCH that nobody cares if it’s true or not) Obama started off with at 67% approval rating. (http://www.gallup.com/video/113977/Obama-Job-Approval-Ratings-High-First-Days.aspx). The new poll has him at….63%

It’s much more dramatic to say that his numbers fell by 19% than he dropped 4 points.

You can also just make up a number that sounds good, too. Do the math, folks. Here’s the Gallup graph – http://www.gallup.com/poll/113980/Gallup-Daily-Obama-Job-Approval.aspx

For the sake of math-iness, let’s say Obama had a 70% approval rating and and it fell 20%. 10% of 70 equals 7 – double that to get 20% and you’ve got 14. 70-14 equals 56.

That’s not terribly close to 63.

Dissent IS patriotic and there’s much to dislike about Obama on both sides of the aisle. But, please, don’t be dishonest about it.

To which Joe responded.

Paul: We take issue with, “Dissent IS patriotic and there’s much to dislike about Obama on both sides of the aisle. But, please, don’t be dishonest about it.” Especially since we provide the graph with the number scale showing the poll results at each interval.

I’ll help you out with specific numbers on specific dates, but I’d ask in the future if you have a question about something we put out, simply ask and we’ll be happy to provide you with clarification or supporting material. But we don’t appreciate people suggesting we’re somehow dishonest. I surely think you’d want us to treat you in the same accord and fashion, yes?

OK, so here we go:

Gallup Daily Tracking Poll
1/21/2009 – 1/23/2009:
68% Approve
12% Disapprove
Net Approval Margin: 56%

Gallup Daily Tracking Poll
2/16/2009 – 2/18/2009
62% Approve
25% Disapprove
Net Approval Margin: 37%

That’s a drop in Obama’s job approval rating by 19% in less than one month.

OK – we’re good now?

HUH?  Wait.  Go and look at the link to the email they sent out.  I see “approve”.  I see ” disapprove”.  What I don’t see is 1) any numbers at all and 2) any reference to “net job approval”.  Sooooo…how, then, do you use numbers that don’t exist to make up a metric that you never defined?  Wouldn’t you call that…um…what’s the word I’m looking for…dishonest?  Isn’t this the same math that got us into the economic debacle that we’re in now?

If you’re looking for some fun, you’d could do worse than join their Facebook group.

Hbee Blatant Assholes, Democrats, Flame, Fucking Foul Mouthed Goddamn Liberal, Liberal Faggot, Obama, Political Whatever, Republicana, Wingnuts

Before the election, my friend Roy Zimmerman wrote a song called “How Can We Lose” with the lyrics – “Everybody’s asking/how can we lose?/No – I’m serious – how?”

As with the Red Sox, I was one of the doubters who felt certain that the Democrats would find some ingenious way to shoot themselves in the foot.  And they came pretty close a few times.  Somehow, though, they managed to scrape by.  Theoretically, it should have been an actual landslide, but, whatever.

Now that we’ve won, let the losing begin!  Really, party unity is TOTALLY over-rated and we’re just going to let the Republicans walk all over us anyway, right?  So, fellow Democrats, pick up your pitchfork and jump on the bandwagon and join in the Alternate Invocation!  Nevermind that Obama just picked an openly gay for director of the Office and Management and Budget.  THAT’S NOT GOOD ENOUGH.

Again, I don’t like Rick Warren and I think Christianity is pretty silly in general but until such time as the non-religious form an actual voting block then we’re just going to have to cope with the fact that there are plenty of bible-thumpers out there and, sad to say, we should allow them to be under our big tent.

Democrats love talking about having dialogues.  I’m going to admit that I don’t always mean it.  Some people are just assholes.  Rick Warren is an asshole – there’s no doubt about it.  But ask yourself what the real significance of Warren giving the invocation.  Without googling it, who gave the last bush invocation?  Or the first one.  Did [name of preacher] who gave Clinton’s invocation stop him from getting a blow job?  Or instituting don’t-ask-don’t-tell?  bush didn’t really give a shit about the religious right.  Why would you believe that this means that Obama is a homophobe and he sold out his base?

Stop sniping.  Please.  Stop screaming about how YOUR cause has not gotten it’s perk because you didn’t vote for McCain.  There were plenty of other candidates you could have voted for.  It’s just plain passive-aggression.  Sorry.

We have the majority.  Let’s act like it and stop fracturing ourselves into infinite, almost indistinguishable sects…like the christians do.

Hbee 2008 Debacle, Democrats, Grumpy Old Man, Navel (Gazing At), Obama 2008 Debacle, Democrats, Grumpy Old Man, Navel (Gazing At), Obama