To follow up from yesterday’s post where the GOP was suing Obama for using an Executive Order to slow down implementation of Obamacare (the law they had been trying to not have implemented for four years) — today they demanded that Obama do something about immigration “without the need for Congressional action.”
Let’s let that sink in for a minute.
The Republicans are upset that Obama uses Executive Orders (even though he’s used them less than any President since Grover Cleveland). They sued him over it, and it was for postponing parts of a law they had been trying to kill forever.
Today, Speaker Boehner issued a statement demanding that he use his Executive Order power to do something about the immigrant children.
No, no. I still can’t wrap my head around it.
Executive Orders are bad — and he should use them more often? Executive Orders are bad when Obama does things we agree with and good when he does things we agree with?
Cannot … comprehend … does not compute … can’t make sense …
Can anyone take these guys seriously at all? Is there anyone out there who really thinks the Republicans are doing anything other than political theater?
They tried 57 times to repeal Obamacare. They appealed it to the Supreme Court and lost. They shut down the government to get him to not implement it.
Does this man look worried?
And now they’re suing because — ready? — he postponed part of the bill to give employers more time to adjust to it.
Yes. They are suing him because he is not implementing the bill they have spent four years trying to get him to not implement.
Obama treats this lawsuit with the seriousness it deserves. He laughs, calls it a “stunt”, and says mockingly, “You’re going to squawk if I try to fix some parts of it administratively that are within my authority while you’re not doing anything?”
So, even though I shake my head at the Republicans, I am happy they are doing this, because (a) the suit has absolutely no chance of prevailing and (b) it just angers moderate and liberal voters who may be motivated to kick these bozos out office. This “Impeachment Lite” should be about as effective as the Clinton impeachment was (which led to the Democrats winning big in the midterms).
It’s hard to see where it will end. Here’s one example. A highly dishonest anti-govt hysterical website called USPatriot just put out yet another claim that “Obamacare” will put “chips” in “All Americans” by the year 2017. Claimed it was reported on NBC. NBC did not report this. It’s a lie.
There are countless sites like this and what their followers don’t realize is that they’re being exploited for money. If you put up a big headline that says “Obama plans to Turn Americans Into Zombies with Chemtrails”, say, it’ll be shared a zillion times, mostly by people who gaspingly react in a kneejerk way — sometimes by people who think it’s ironically funny. Either response gives the site lots of “hits”, lots of likes, a higher rating on Google. This in turn allows the site hucksters to sell advertising at high rates — or to sell the website itself after it gets enough following. For big money. Perhaps the same thing happens with some of the more crazed “left wing” (pseudo left, really) sites.
The New World Order fantasy, the “government is herding us all into FEMA camps this year for extermination” babble, the “We’re Sovereign Citizens Who Wouldn’t Know the Actual Constitution If It Bit Us In the Ass” crowd — they believe all this stuff because it’s stimulating, it makes them excited, it makes them feel special. But they’re special suckers.
They’re being used so other people can make money.
This faked up verbal-meth for hicks is designed to be jolting to get quick and dirty attention. It doesn’t have to be believable, because site followers don’t actually think about it, they just react. And it’s in a familiar pattern of disinformation, spread by the Timothy McVeigh spawn, the David Koresh sheep, that has been shown to work.
Paranoia works. So they use it again and again and again … and there are countless sites of this kind. Paranoic social lies are viruses, of a kind; paranoic social lies are poison memes. And what is the long term effect? How many confrontations in Nevada over someone’s imaginary “grazing rights”? How many “Oklahoma City bombings”?
How many attempted Presidential assassinations? How many children, raised by these people — to live in fear?
John Shirley was the co-writer of the film “The Crow”; he is the author of the A SONG CALLED YOUTH trilogy, DOYLE AFTER DEATH, HIGH, SILICON EMBRACE, DEMONS, and other novels. His web page is john-shirley.com
Nice to see my old home state of Virginia discovering that marriage should not be a privilege for heterosexuals. 100% of all the cases that have come before the courts have decided similarly, and it’s really taking the wind out of those who want to discriminate.
I’m happy that Virginia’s Attorney General, like the one we have here in Pennsylvania, refused to defend a law he knew was unconstitutional. And better yet that the federal courts upheld the ruling of a lower court earlier this year.
What is even better is how the courts are using reactionary Supreme Court “Justice” Scalia’s own words against him. Scalia, who literally believes any decision that goes against him is because the actual Devil is behind it, argued in a previous decision that struck down laws that discriminated against gays and lesbians based on their sex practices that logically, if you agree with that, then you’d have to allow gay marriage too! He wrote that to shock people into realizing how terrible it was that we no longer discriminated, but many current judges have used those very words to agree with him and strike down anti-gay marriage laws. (Scalia also said that this is a decision that should be left to the majority to decide democratically, but he has been very silent now that the majority of Americans are in favor of gay marriage.)
“Over the decades, the Supreme Court has demonstrated that the right to marry is an expansive liberty interest that may stretch to accommodate changing societal norms,” wrote one of the judges in the majority. This is something some people just cannot abide.
The dissenting judge (appointed by GWB) once more made the ridiculous claim that the government has the duty to prohibit same sex marriages because they do not promote society’s goal of procreation. You know — the argument that gets you laughed at when said in intelligent company.
Weird Al just had his first #1 album thanks to a brilliant internet marketing scheme where he posted a brand new video every single day for a week before the album came out.
I was never a huge Weird Al fan like some of my friends, because making up new lyrics for already existing songs is interesting only the first time to me. After that, I’d rather hear the originals again.
However, a while ago, I started noticing the originals he wrote, and especially fell in love with the songs that parodied the style of another artist without copying any specific song. It appealed to me in the same way The Rutles appealed to me with their songs that are almost Beatles songs but not quite (and the fun is in figuring out which bits are from which songs — sort of an “insider joke” treasure hunt).
Weird Al is about my age (and in fact is born on my wife’s birthday) and he grew up listening to the same music I did. We apparently have very similar tastes in music based on the styles he has done. Seriously, this list below is like a greatest list of my favorite music.
Most of these songs are not promoted and are album cuts only, but if you like the bands he is imitating, these can be great fun.
As far as I can see, the only one he ever did a video for was the Devo-inspired “Dare to be Stupid.”
My favorite is this fan-created video for “Virus Alert” done in the style of Sparks, back when they were making good music. (The cartoon even features Sparks keyboard player Ron Mael in a cameo just in case you missed the influence.)
They Might be Giants gets the treatment in “Everything You Know is Wrong.”
Not surprisingly, Weird Al is a huge Frank Zappa fan and in “Genius in France” you can hear bits from some of Zappa’s greatest hits. It even features Zappa’s son playing lead guitar.
Talking Heads get the treatment in “Dog Eat Dog.”
Elvis Costello gets his in “I’m So Sick of You.”
Danny Elfman and Oingo Boingo inspired “You Make Me.”
Then there’s the Police-inspired song “Velvet Elvis.”
And “Mr. Popeil” in the style of the B-52s.
And finally, “I Remember Larry” in the style of Hilly Michaels.
These aren’t all of his style-parody songs, but merely the ones he’s done of the bands I really like. So here’s to Weird Al, the Allen Sherman of the next generation.
ventrellaquest.com 