So THIS is what it felt like in Tuscany, in the late 300s–early 400s, with the barbarians at the gates and weeds growing in Hadrian’s wall. All empires, having risen, eventually fall. Take Great Britain; total badasses for several hundred years then all their European wars and failed colonies finally take them down a notch or two. As their influence wanes, they spend more time taking care of their own and end up with a nifty package of social safety nets and basically no-cost healthcare.

Sure, they’re not kicking ass anymore, they’re especially proud these days, but it’s not like they have rioting in the streets or anything.

We’ll go out like the broke drunk booted from a dive bar, doing our best to trash the place while the bouncer pushes us out, slurring curses and daring anyone to come outside and try and kick our ass. Also the bouncer will be Chinese.

For example:

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Katherine Ross, Stepford Wives (1975)

This is why America can’t have nice things, and why we don’t deserve them.

Bowe Bergdahl is from Hailey, Idaho, population 8,000. In a show of small town solidarity and patriotism and love of our Troops, the good people of Hailey have held a “Bring Bowe Back” rally every June.

Now, if Bowe Bergdahl had just had the good sense to stay imprisoned another 20 or 30 years until a white Republican man was in the White House again and was somehow able to get him released, everything would have been fine. But, since the POW insisted on getting himself released during the reign of the tyrant Obama, he and his family and his town should bear the punishment and cancel the damn gathering this month.

You heard me, now that Bowe is being released, they are canceling the Bring Bowe Back celebration.

See, angry racists and teabaggers were planning on Westboro Baptisting the the tiny hamlet of Hailey, Idaho, during the annual June event, previously called “Bring Bowe Back.” I am truly dumbstruck how quickly these fuckers turned on their own. Hailey, Idaho has probably all of two Obama voters, but the quaint, little, god-fearin’ town had the gall to celebrate the return of one of their own at the hands of the Kenyan Usurper who wanted poor folks like themselves to have some health insurance, so they might as well have been throwing a party for the Taliban, right?

“We just don’t have the facilities,” said Hailey Police Chief Jeff Gunter after a press release Wednesday announced the event’s cancellation.

Hailey doesn’t have the means to accommodate a bunch of dumbass, non-serving, open-carry, pretend veterans who have been calling and talking tough about how they were gonna ride into town bringing their army of millions to protest they release of an American soldier. Hailey is a town of 8,000 and therefore has a whopping 17 police officers and there was going to be no way to control these roving, armed bands of goobers if they actually made good on their threat to come bother everyone.

Remember how we never heard the end from these folks about how Vietnam vets were treated when they came back? I guess that same concern doesn’t apply, here. Remember how we welcomed the other vets back with a recession and an under funded VA and a nation they risked their lives for that is politically bereft?

If you listened only to the RW echo chamber, you’d think that all of the military is against what Obama did and that Bergdahl should have been left to rot. Well, I have many jarhead friends to inform me that even IF this fella was a deserter, he still is a US soldier first and foremost and any stupid chickenhawk who questions whether we should have left one of our own to die in the captivity of the Tailban has not one goddamn right to say a single fcking thing – the rule is and forever will be, we leave no one behind, and we sort out the rest later. What American people sitting in their comfy chairs opining on subjects on which they are completely ignorant have to say about the matter is completely irrelevant.

As despicable as the Westboro asshats are, they actually showed up to be mocked and ridiculed, these shitstains don’t even do that. I guess they learned well from the GOP, the THREAT works, no need to actually leave your comfy chair, or your hove round, to actually DO it.

Could it really be that somehow the GOP thinks this is an opportunity to grab the military vote in 2014 and beyond?? I know this idea is not playing amongst younger vets, but the guys/gals who generally could see thru Shrub but bought the whole Clinton derangement thing, are they actually buying into this crap? I think we can safely say the Teabaggers are shooting themselves in the foot here (probably to avoid serving).*

*The prescribed method to avoid military service is defecating in one’s pants.

Four members of the Wal-mart Walton family are collectively worth more than $140 billion— more wealth than the entire bottom 40% of Americans. That’s right, four members of the Walton family have a combined wealth of $140 billion. They are the richest family in the world. They are the new Rockefellers, the modern synonym for “vast wealth.” And indeed, income inequality in America has reached levels not seen since John D. Rockefeller roamed the earth. The Waltons are the kings and queens of our new Gilded Age.

But surely they do a lot of “good” for their communities, right? Sure, Wal-mart has big impacts on the surrounding areas’ quality of life – for the worse. Not only does Walmart drag down local economies by stamping out local small businesses and then hiring workers for less than a living wage and thereby driving up local taxes and creating more and more people dependent on government assistance, but their stores themselves have extreme negative impacts on the surrounding environment as well. There is a lot else that Walmart could be doing to support local communities that they refuse to do for no other reason than unadulterated greed.

But surely folks with that kind of wealth are philanthropic, and give back?  How much do they give to their charitable foundation? Let’s take a look The Walton Foundation (set up as a tax dodge (ie welfare for rich folks) to fund their own stupid art museum), A new report (funded by labor groups battling Walmart over its wages) examined how much money these Waltons donated to The Walton Foundation, in the past two decades. The answer: an exceedingly small amount. In the past *23 years*:

The total contributions from Jim Walton, Christy Walton, and the Walton family holding company (Walton Enterprises) to the Walton Family Foundation amount to $58.49 million,which is equivalent to:

−.04% of the four Walmart heirs’ net worth.

−Less than one week’s worth of the Walmart dividends the Walmart heirs will receive this year.

−Less than the estimated value of Rob Walton’s collection of vintage sports cars.

Contrast that with fellow billionaires Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, who have given 27% and 36% of their wealth to charity, respectively.

I concede that stewarding a juggernaut can be pretty daunting. Doing so should be duly rewarded! The reward probably should not be equal to the collective monetary value of 125 million Americans. The reward should not be such that your family could spend a million dollars every single day for 2,740 years. Nothing is worth that much, not even building a whole bunch of crap peddling super stores. While the ladder of success technically still exists, many that have climbed it (or been born at the top) have devoted their lives to greasing the bottom rungs. It’s repugnant and you’re reprehensible to defend it. And, even in my disgusting distributive hypothetical, I left the family- SEVEN people- a billion dollars. A billion dollars! Fuck, let them each keep a billion dollars, I don’t give a shit. But I’m just some wacko “eat the rich” lefty, what do I know. Maybe the Waltons will save the world someday. Then won’t I feel dumb!

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How times have changed! When Obama sold missiles to Iran and gave the money to the Muslim Brotherhood, Congress threatened impeachment. WAIT! I got that wrong. They want to impeach Obama for not implementing Obamacare fast enough. Or for advocating immigration reform. Or for writing the Benghazi talking point. High crimes and misdemeanors all.

My experience has been whenever wingnuts are confronted with Iran Contra, they act like Reagan didn’t know about any of it, even the parts he himself did personally or admitted to knowing about in private documents. Reagan was basically paying back the Soviets for Vietnam mostly by supplying the Mujahedin with one weapon – handheld surface-to-air missiles. These nullified Soviet air superiority, leaving their ground forces at the mercy of suicidal fighters who knew every nook and cranny of the terrain. Sound familiar?

The real problems began after Reagan left office, when his political heir, George H. W. Bush, decided that the Soviet exit from Afghanistan marked the end of having to pay attention to it. Afghanistan was left a smoldering ruin, the deep concerns expressed by the Americans and others for the Afghan people exposed as lies. As the Afghanis, impoverished and left to starve, realized they’d been used by the West as proxies to fight the Soviets, bitterness sunk in. Polygonal civil war and chaos ensued, until the Osama Bin Laden-funded Taliban took over most of the country, and imposed a horrific sort of order.

Their treatment by Bush the Elder in the 1990’s guaranteed how the Afghans would react to Bush the Younger twenty years later – cynically, interested only in exploiting 9/11 and its aftermath, just as they had been exploited as pawns in the conflict between the West and the USSR. Afghanis aren’t people you can fool more than once. We didn’t give a shit about Afghanistan, other than as yet another opportunity to play our cold war reindeer games with the Ruskies. We left their country a chaotic disaster zone with a serious power vacuum and a ton of unused weapons laying around, then acted surprised when it turned out they had a bit of a chip on their shoulder about the whole disgraceful mess. Remind me again how much longer we’ve been in Afghanistan than the Russians? Considering that the last person to successfully invade Afghanistan was Alexander the Great, I don’t know why other empires keep trying, and keep losing, for 2,500 years.

Of course, the U.S. had an embargo in place against selling arms to Iran, and of course Reagan was merely acting to help the hostages because He Cared. When the shit hit the fan, they managed to keep Saint Ronnie well away from any hearings. Just like when W refused to cooperate, IOKIYAR. It’s only stonewalling when a Dem refuses the second dozen rounds of hearings before Issa’s kangaroo court.

Because Democrats in Congress had foolishly called Ollie North to testify before them, his subsequent convictions were overturned because the prosecution was unable to show they weren’t at least in part due to evidence derived from his mandated Congressional testimony. Even scoundrels have the right not to be coerced to self-incriminate.

There’s never discussion of whether St. Ronnie was lying or senile when he kept repeating “I do not recall…”? during his deposition in the Poindexter trial. No mention of how the “freedom fighters” in Afghanistan would later become the Taliban and Al Qaeda? Or the Contras’ drug running into the US, which the CIA turned a blind eye to?

What if those armed asshats trolling the stores and fast food joints were black? Starring Omar from The Wire

Hey, fellers,  let’s all gather at Home Town Buffet tonight to demonstrate our privilege to drive! Hang your license plate around your neck and have your drivers license, registration and insurance card prominently displayed on your dash! We’ll drive around fer hours and hand out the state DMV drivers test booklets!

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