Irregular Times Diaries: Unfit Discussion

A couple nights ago when pointing out that IrregularTimes.com seems to be focusing so much on just a handful of topics like Americans Elect (good lord, look at all those entries) that we seem to be missing other topics of interest. Well, here is one of those topics that seems to have been missed.

Michigan Republican Senator Bruce “Douchebag” Casswell has introduced a proposal that would ban children in foster care from using their state clothing allowance to buy cloths from any place other than thrift stores. What is Senator Douchebag’s reasoning?

“I never had anything new,” Caswell says.

He gave some more reasoning, but when all is said and done, this is what it boils down to. I’ve seen this with so many parents that it makes me want to weep. Instead of wanting better for their kids they figure “I didn’t have it that good, why should they?” Only, with Senator Douchebag, instead of doing this to his kids, he’s doing this to the most downtrodden kids we have; those who for whatever reason have biological parents who have given them up. These kids have next to nothing and now Senator Douchebag wants to give them even less. And note, he’s trying to justify his douchebag move by claiming it’ll save the state money, only, it won’t. These kids are getting a state clothing allowance; the only way he’d be able to honestly say it’d save the state money is if he cut the amount the kids were getting. Telling them they can only shop in thrift stores won’t do dick because the same amount of money is being spent, regardless of where they go to spend it.

All he’s doing is telling these kids; “we can’t give you a stable home to call your own with a family who wants you aside from your Foster Parents who you can be taken away from at any time, and now we’re not even going to let you have nice cloths.”

Behold the mighty asterisk:

“FedEx Home Delivery serves 100 percent of residential addresses even on Saturdays (at no additional charge) and evenings, and is supported by a money-back guarantee.*”

* “Saturday is not a service day for all areas.”

Expect to hear some huffing and puffing this morning about the impending loss of Huffington Post’s integrity with its sale to AOL.com. I’m not buying it. For years now, the Huffington Post has been a corporation, with a Chief Executive Officer, a Chief Revenue Officer and all the rest. Its job was to make money and now its job is still to make money. Only the name of the overlord has changed.

This is not to say that the Huffington Post won’t write any stories worth following. It may. It’s only to say that what the Huffington Post read needs to be considered with a grain of salt. Is the story properly cited? Can you check the claims made in the articles against outside sources? If so, great. If not, don’t be so sure.

That’s the same standard you should apply everywhere you read something, I think. Irregular Times is included.

Today, in his weekly radio address, President Barack Obama said, “We cannot afford to continue these tax breaks for the wealthiest taxpayers – especially when we know that cutting the deficit is going to demand sacrifice from everyone.”

Hey, that sounds like the old Barack Obama! Has he finally got his mojo back? Has he decided to back out of his decision to help Republicans pass tax cuts for billionaires?

Nope. Right after Obama admitted that his plan to help Republicans pass tax cuts for the rich will put future generations in unacceptable debt, Obama declared that he’s going to go ahead with the plan anyway.

Why? Obama says he just doesn’t have any choice but to cave in to the Republicans’ demands. He says that George W. Bush’s old economic plan, the one that led to disaster, is just too important.

Obama says that he doesn’t have the strength to do anything but allow those unaffordable tax cuts for billionaires to become law.

It’s not like he has the power to veto the deal and force the Republicans to come back with something better.

Oh. Wait. He does.

The most telling line from Barack Obama’s speech today came when President Obama was trying to convince people that he had achieved a hard-fought compromise with Republicans when he agreed to help them push through tax cuts for billionaires.

Obama said that tax cuts for the rich were “not a hundred percent of what I want or what the Republicans want”.

So, neither the Republicans nor the Democrats got 100 percent of what they wanted in this tax cut deal? I suppose that’s true, strictly speaking.

Republicans only got 99 percent of what they wanted. Democrats got about 1 percent of what they wanted.

You can call that a compromise, sure, but not in the sense of the word “compromise” that Obama meant.

They say that the economic recession has ended. When they say that, they’re talking about the reality of wealthy investors on Wall Street.

In the rest of America, the recession continues. That fact is illustrated by the following graph, recently released by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office:

This graph shows the rate of long term unemployment – people who have been looking for work, but unable to find any, for over 26 weeks. In the last half century, the long term unemployment rate hasn’t been anywhere close to where it is now – not even under the economic disaster America suffered when Ronald Reagan was in the White House.

Today, I found a dollar for Ron Paul, and a dollar against Ron Paul. They’re the same dollar.

Who is Ron Paul? A loser.

Way to waste a vote! RonPaul2008.com

As you can see, this dollar bill is also against the eye at the top of the pyramid. That’ll stop the New World Order!

Barry C. Black the government-appointed, tax-paid high priest of the United States Senate, spoke yesterday of the evils of self-sufficiency. Praying to his Christian deity, which he wrongly presumes is the deity of every American, he preached, “Deliver us from the self-sufficiency that will not recognize our need of You.”

In these times of record-braking budget defecits and general economic disarray, is a message against self-sufficiency really what our nation needs to hear? Has the problem with Wall Street been that it was too self-sufficient? Do we need more corporate dependence on taxpayer bailouts?

Is corporate welfare the message Barry C. Black intended to communicate, or does he merely want the United States to become dependent upon his religion?

In spite of the economic stimulus package, for people who don’t work on Wall Street, the economy has continued to get worse. Lately, they’ve moved from worse to… worserer. So, what are we to do?

We’ve tried working harder to keep our jobs, or to get a job, but we’ve been working harder for a long time now, and nothing’s getting better.

I say we turn to drink. I’ve just discovered a wonderful liquor that tastes absolutely fabulous: Disaronno. It’s an italian liquor with a kind of sweet bitterness to it.

I find it to be a remarkable stimulus during this time of economic troubles.

How about you? What’s your alcoholic coping mechanism of choice?

Last Thursday, Florida’s Republican Congressman Ander Crenshaw issued a press release in which he condemned “big government spending”. He worried about how government spending would create more debt, and promised “spending cuts”.

So, guess what Congressman Crenshaw did last Wednesday: He acknowledged that he had submitted two earmarks to increase big government spending.