{"id":18022,"date":"2013-02-28T13:37:11","date_gmt":"2013-02-28T21:37:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/teensleuth.com\/blog\/?p=18022"},"modified":"2013-03-01T15:22:45","modified_gmt":"2013-03-01T23:22:45","slug":"im-starting-to-wonder-if-the-mayan-apocalpyse-already-happened-and-we-just-didnt-notice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/teensleuth.com\/blog\/?p=18022","title":{"rendered":"I&#8217;m starting to wonder if the Mayan Apocalpyse already happened and we just didn&#8217;t notice."},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-18060\" title=\"SDC10360\" src=\"http:\/\/teensleuth.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/govtoutofmedicare_31.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"495\" height=\"353\" srcset=\"https:\/\/teensleuth.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/govtoutofmedicare_31.jpg 495w, https:\/\/teensleuth.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/govtoutofmedicare_31-300x213.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 495px) 100vw, 495px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Well done, 60 to 67,000 fat people on scooters, you broke the federal government. Bravo, morons, you&#8217;ve accomplished something every other enemy of America has failed to do, to date<\/p>\n<p>Jaundiced boozebag John Boehner\u00a0dragged his rich Corinthian leather hide in front of a room full of reporters to say that the House of Representatives had done all it would do to avoid the upcoming sequester, and now is the time for the Senate \u201cto get off its ass.\u201d From your mouth to God&#8217;s tanning bed, Smoking Man.\u00a0Nobody even threw their shoe at him! Or pointed and laughed. No one asked, &#8220;What, besides food stamps, meals on wheels and health care do you want to cut, Speaker? Specifics&#8221;?\u00a0Not even that. Maybe it\u00a0was just the booze talking and later he will get all sloppy drunk and tearfully beg forgiveness.<\/p>\n<p>Considering that the House has met for a grand total of <strong>fifteen days<\/strong> so far this year, Boneheader&#8217;s call for the\u00a0<em>Senate<\/em> to get off its ass is super hilarious. 15 days. During which they concentrated on the important stuff, right? How many Republican bills introduced to repeal Obamacare? &#8220;Done all they could to avoid the sequester&#8221; &#8211; I\u00a0don&#8217;t suppose he has one teeny example of something even remotely resembling such activity. They are looking for &#8220;compromise&#8221;?\u00a0But compromise means you have no principles and should be run out of town, even if you only represent one half of one half of one branch of the government.<\/p>\n<p>House Minority Leader and my dog&#8217;s namesake Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) responded to Boehner&#8217;s remark:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;The Republican leadership says we passed bills last year. I remind them, that was a different Congress. That doesn&#8217;t count in this Congress. The Republican leadership says let the Senate begin. I remind them that the Constitution says that appropriations and revenue bills must begin in the House.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>That whole &#8220;revenue bills must begin in the House&#8221; part of Boehner&#8217;s passing the buck&#8230;..perhaps that part of the Constitution doesn&#8217;t count, because it does not involve guns.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>The latest gimmick our leaders ginned up so that the Tea Party Caucus can continue holding its breath until it needs to eat fourth meal.\u00a0This gimmick is known as THE SEQUESTER and will cut federal spending by 2.5% over the last six months of the fiscal year, or somewhere in the neighborhood of $85 billion out of a $3.5 trillion budget. It\u2019s so simple, South Carolina&#8217;s\u00a0weird had sex with a blogger at a school-choice convention in Salt Lake city Nikki Haley says\u00a0<strong><a href=\"http:\/\/news.yahoo.com\/blogs\/ticket\/nikki-haley-slams-washington-meeting-obama-215206938--politics.html\"><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">even her kids<\/span><\/a><\/strong> could do it, but her kids are from South Carolina so I wouldn&#8217;t count on it.<\/p>\n<p>This is the latest Republican push: to claim that these cuts represent such a teensy amount of money while alternately insisting that Obummer initiate them <em>himsel<\/em>f so the Party of Personal Responsibility won\u2019t get blamed when friends and constituents find themselves laid off from jobs or standing in longer lines at the DMV. The <em>real <\/em>patriots, when laid off, of course will refuse all government assistance programs and spend their time burning science books.\u00a0The White House has countered by talking about how exactly non-trivial these spending cuts would be to people who rely on the federal government for income.<\/p>\n<p>The Virginia city that Obama visited this week, Newport News, was preparing for the USS Abraham Lincoln to arrive at its massive shipyard, for a multi billion-dollar, multi-year overhaul. The economy of Newport News is based largely on the tens of thousands of military personnel, contractors and veterans who live and work there, including\u00a0SEAL Team 6, and its\u00a0main industry is building Navy aircraft carriers and submarines. Due to the Washington budget deadlock, the Navy <strong> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/politics\/in-newport-news-shipyard-looming-budget-cuts-create-anxiety-and-anger\/2013\/02\/25\/281eb25c-7f51-11e2-b99e-6baf4ebe42df_story.html?hpid=z1\"><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">postponed<\/span><\/a><\/strong> the retrofitting \u00a0job\u00a0<em>&#8211;<\/em> which\u00a0would have provided 21,000 ship working jobs. The congressional idiocy has caused what can only be described as ideological incoherence from some of Newport News\u00a0locals:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<div>\n<blockquote><p>In the smoky bar, ideological lines get blurred. Somers is a union guy but not an Obama fan. He wants cash to keep flowing to the large military contractor that employs him, but he opposed the auto bailout. He needs Washington but feels manipulated by it.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey spend our money like a drunk sailor. .\u2009.\u2009. \u2018We\u2019ll give you a little bit of something, a little piece of cheese.\u2019 Dangle that cheese. We\u2019re pawns, that\u2019s what we are,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>But Somers has four kids and ultimately, he said: \u201cI\u2019m willing to accept anything to turn the country around. If it takes me getting laid off, so be it.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<div>\n<div>\n<p>This is quintessential Shock &amp; Awe. Keep the American people disoriented just enough with so much bullshit that they just tune out of the debate, entirely. Overwhelm them with manufactured crisis after manufactured crisis, and then &#8220;blame it on the black guy&#8221;and\/or hope everyone forgets the truth two years later. I mean, I\u00a0get the fact that most people don&#8217;t have the time or energy to follow seemingly complex political debates, but for something like this&#8230; Ah, man, I make myself laugh so hard.<\/p>\n<p>Don&#8217;t worry, Mr. Somers! Your GOP has the answer! They&#8217;re planning to build the CSS John Wilkes Booth in Newport News just as soon the dust around the sequester settles! Seriously Mr. Somers, you know that auto bailout you opposed? Well, those auto workers had the same pride in their product and in their city that you do. What\u00a0the military is to your region of Virginia, automobile making is to Detroit. Look upon the once thriving hub of the United States\u2019 manufacturing industry as a portent of your own &#8211; \u00a0how it has been reduced to being the source of material for second-rate comedians and \u201cruin porn\u201d for the\u00a0derivative portfolios of uncreative\u00a0art students and saturated Medicaid rolls (meaning everyone is poor) (but on the plus side, you can\u00a0buy a house for roughly the same price as a 2004 Corolla!) I look forward to the groovy gritty music that will come out of Newport News once the crushing generational poverty of unregulated sociopathic capitalism is combined with the hopelessness of existing as powerless drones in your glorious new era of authoritarian Social Darwinism.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s never the Republicans&#8217; fault, is it? Always The Government. Except when Republicans are running The Government.\u00a0Republican Voter = Mental Arthritis. Thanks for your consistency, conservatives who get their macroeconomic &#8220;knowledge&#8221; from radio talks show hosts who dropped out of college.\u00a0If the Socialist Kenyan Usurper in Chief would just give in to the GOP\u2019s demands that none of the spending cuts hit the defense industry, as demanded by local Congressional Rep Randy Forbes (R &#8211; Va), who introduced legislation Monday to exclude the Defense Department from sequestration and to cut the total savings target by that much.\u00a0He\u2019s glad Obama is coming to town, but when the smoke clears and the president\u2019s divisive advocacy ends, he said, they will realize he is to blame:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<blockquote>\n<div>\u201cWhen people are afraid of losing their jobs, and they see how poorly this has been handled, it\u2019s easy for them to be mad at everybody&#8221;.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Sometime in the gloriously chromed future, guys like Randy Forbes will be safely tucked away in their FEMA camp beds, and our overlords will have unfettered access to the defense money coffers and we&#8217;ll be able to due crazy things like rebuilt our nation\u2019s parodically crumbling infrastructure. But in the short term \u2014 like, before 5PM this evening\u2014 there is no plan to put those shipyard men and women to work fixing our crater-ridden roads, deathtrap bridges, primordial electrical grids and exploding sewer lines. There&#8217;s not even a plan to put these folks to work fixing up Newport News itself \u00a0&#8211; a dystopian hellscape of broken roads, boarded-up buildings, rotting housing projects, and abject poverty. <em>They <\/em>need the money that comes from government paychecks &#8211; not some mythical Cadillac driving welfare queen with big screen LCDs and free Obamaphones.\u00a0Mr Somers should note, \u00a0<em>he<\/em> will need his UI check if the aircraft retrofit money doesn&#8217;t show up from the government.\u00a0Can&#8217;t someone in the lamestream media point out that the sequester enables the GOP to inflict pain on working people? Nah, lets talk about Seth on the Oscars and the Pope&#8217;s retirement castle and the bionic man who whacked his girlfriend on the other side of the friggin planet.<\/p>\n<p>BTW I googlered state-by-state sequester-impact and the red states with their military bases, boy oh boy, gives more meaning to &#8220;live by the sword, die by the sword&#8221;, and\u00a0literally every county west of the Cascades depends on federal largesse because of a guy named Weyerhaeuser who successfully gamed the land grant system and totally hosed non-logging development west of the Cascades. Now the federal government subsidizes about half of the county budgets because we&#8217;re out of trees to axe down.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-18045 alignleft\" title=\"APTOPIX Boehner Ohio State\" src=\"http:\/\/teensleuth.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/110612_boehner_cries_ap_465.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"223\" height=\"199\" srcset=\"https:\/\/teensleuth.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/110612_boehner_cries_ap_465.jpg 381w, https:\/\/teensleuth.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/110612_boehner_cries_ap_465-300x268.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 223px) 100vw, 223px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-18046 alignleft\" title=\"a_560x375\" src=\"http:\/\/teensleuth.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/a_560x375.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"294\" height=\"208\" srcset=\"https:\/\/teensleuth.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/a_560x375.jpg 459w, https:\/\/teensleuth.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/a_560x375-300x212.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 294px) 100vw, 294px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Thanks to gerrymandered Congressional districts, the PeeWee&#8217;s Playhouse formerly known as the US House of Representatives is going to maintain this level of professionalism and productivity until outraged peasants (read: Democrats) finally seize control of some state legislatures. In the meantime,\u00a0other countries will continue to watch \u00a0our congress squabble like idiots and revel in the fact that we are a bunch of corn-syrup chugging Hot Pockets monsters.\u00a0China in particular is beginning to be scared shitless, and a scared shitless China means that it is time for those with real American dollars to buy stock in Dulcolax, Ipecac and all the other violent emetics. At that point, China may be worried more about itself and America can just sneak away to some desert island where Boehner can continue piling on his tangerine skin and the rest of us can pound sand.<\/p>\n<p>All of this is to tell the towering pile of whale blubber that is the GOP congressional caucus \u2014 again \u2014 that a governing philosophy of \u201cI got mine so fuck you&#8221; is not sustainable. Americans like things like \u201cmoney\u201d that can be exchanged for goods like \u201cfood\u201d and \u201cshelter.\u201d Unfortunately, it does not look as if the asshats in Congress will reach sentience before Friday. Shutting down Dulles and Raygun National tomorrow morning might help keep those rancid gizzards in DC this weekend, but it would mean another weekend of Crisis &amp; Stage Tears.<\/p>\n<p>President Obama, maybe just shut down Texas and Ohio.\u00a0States whose caucus has expressed enthusiasm for the sequester can have it, and the rest of us, in the reality-based part of America, can carry on. Maybe we can sell Texas to a Mexican Drug Cartel and pay off our debts with that?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Well done, 60 to 67,000 fat people on scooters, you broke the federal government. Bravo, morons, you&#8217;ve accomplished something every other enemy of America has failed to do, to date Jaundiced boozebag John Boehner\u00a0dragged his rich Corinthian leather hide in front of a room full of reporters to say that the House of Representatives had [&hellip;]<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1334],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18022","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tea-party-files"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/teensleuth.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18022","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/teensleuth.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/teensleuth.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teensleuth.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teensleuth.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18022"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/teensleuth.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18022\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18081,"href":"https:\/\/teensleuth.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18022\/revisions\/18081"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/teensleuth.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teensleuth.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teensleuth.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}