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Posts Tagged ‘Democratic Party’

Var-Mitt, Varmint and Endorsements

Posted in Approval, Disapproval, Politics, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on Saturday, 27 October 2012| Leave a Comment »

Now that retired General Colin Powell endorsed President Barak Obama the pressure on me has increased to issue my formal endorsement so here it is: I, Arliss Bunny, am endorsing President Barack Obama for a second term and I ask all those of you who were participating in the #ArlissForPresident meme to join me in supporting the President. In studying both the President’s past success in saving the economy and in evaluating his plan for the future, I believe his is the only logic-based, real world approach available to voters at this time. I am also a big supporter of ObamaCare as I feel that health care for my staff is essential to seeing to it that my needs can be amply met on a daily basis. Though there are many other reasons, several of which have been detailed in my previous blog posts, I have to admit that one of the biggest reasons I am supporting the President is because, unlike Governor Romney, he never said this:

I’m not a big-game hunter. I’ve always been a rodent and rabbit hunter. Small varmints, if you will. I began when I was 15 or so and I have hunted those kinds of varmints since then.•

VARMINT!!!  RODENT AND RABBIT HUNTER!!!!!

There simply are not enough thumps in the world to describe how insulted I, and I feel I can safely say, every Rabbit American remain about this remark. There was never a hint of an apology. Of course, all this comes from a man who tied his dog to the roof (in a carrier, but still…) for a long family trip so one must consider the source.

On the other paw, the spokesman for the Obama campaign, Ben LaBolt, clarified the President’s position and contributed to this episode by adding,

The president’s record makes clear the he supports and respects the Second Amendment. Mitt Romney is going to have difficulty explaining why he quadrupled fees on gun owners in Massachusetts, then lied about being a lifelong hunter in an act of shameless pandering. That varmint won’t hunt.

Okay, no one really thought that I would be endorsing the Governor. Rabbits really are liberals. We are vegans and when was the last time you met a vegan conservative? Ohhhh, that’s right,  he was that guy sitting next to the lesbian, black, Republican at the last $50,000 per plate fundraiser you attended. It’s simple folks. The Republican Party gets the gun crazies and the Democrats get the vegans. That’s how it is here in the real world.

The problem is, liberals have been pissed, really pissed, for a while now and as a liberal Rabbit American I think there was some question about my being motivated enough to vote in a way that makes my vote count – and by that I mean not for the Green Party. I want you to know that I am voting for the President not just because he is the lesser of two evils, which he most certainly is despite the great rhetoric to the contrary, I’m voting for him because in almost all areas which matter to me he has moved the country in a positive direction. Yes, that doesn’t mean I’m not pissed about the southern leg of the KeystoneXL pipeline or the re-letting of leases on federal lands and it really doesn’t mean I think he has gone far enough on LGBTQ issues but I do know that he stopped the northern leg of Keystone at the border, funding for green tech is way up, DADT is a thing of the past and DOMA is on its way out. Banking regulation is making a comeback and consumer protection already has. Holding fast to end the War on Women, the War on Workers and the War on Voting has occupied departments of his administration on an almost daily basis. For all that, he deserves your vote and another four years. I am proud that, as liberals, we feel unconstrained by our Party and free to call the President out on his litterbox habits but when the election is this close remember that Ross Perot and Ralph Nader have already cost our country enough and we must consider that a lesson learned. Governor Romney is a var-Mitt (and you can quote me on that.)

Congressman Joe Donnelly IS a varmint but I’m endorsing him too. It’s killing me to say this. Voting Donnelly is definitely a “hold your nose and vote” situation for Indiana liberals. While Donnelly does support abortion exceptions, he still believes that he, and a whole lot of other men in Washington, DC, whom you have never met either, should get to control the bodies of women. He also thinks that the parts of the Bible condoning slavery don’t count but the parts he thinks allow for legalized bigotry against the LGBT community are just fine.

Blue Dog

He is a member of the Blue Dog Coalition but ObamaCare and the massive fiscal savings it affords are a touchy subject because freedom. He does, however, support Obamacare/ADA as long as you don’t really call it that. Fortunately, Donnelly does accept that climate change is real and, additionally, he is pushing for a massive overhaul of the Mineral Management Service (which dropped the ball so badly in oversight of off-shore drilling rigs in the gulf). Unfortunately, along with that Joe supports drilling off the continental shelf. He is a significant supporter for renewable technologies, however, and understands that we can’t drill our way to the future. Sadly, he opposes all forms of immigration amnesty and I assume this includes the Dream Act though that is not specified on his website. Unions support Joe because he supports them and Joe is backing the President’s plan to bring the troops in Afghanistan home by 2014.

Here’s the thing – anyone who thinks oppressing others is fine is not fine with me. Rabbits have had enough of that and it continues to be a daily struggle for so many of my kind. (Unlike some religious communities of color, I don’t forget that we are not any of us free until all of us are free.) Still, the world is an imperfect place and Richard Mourdock is at the “Gift from God” Rape level of evil. Joe is the best that is available to us now and the race is VERY close. Additionally, picking up the Indiana seat in the Senate would be a huge win for the Democratic Party and, in most cases, work in our best interests.

Which brings me to my final point, liberals are stupid. The Tea Party mapped out a way to take over the country and we sat by and snickered. What were we thinking!?! The way they mobilized was smart. The way they spelled their signs was not. Still, the jokes on us. We know how to mobilize. We’ve done it before. In spite of the 2010 wave, Indiana remains a purple state under its film of GOP induced fear and bigotry. In all less-than-blue states we would not win immediately but running a few genuinely strong candidates in key districts around the state begins a process of education. Sitting quietly by and letting the Blue Dogs run the show gets us where we are now.

Take it from me, rabbits know a lot about fear. We are prey animals, after all. Our motto is, “Everyone eats rabbits. Rabbits don’t eat anyone.” So you know how we have survived? You know what has made us strong? We breed. We make sure there are always a lot more of us than there are of them. Sadly, liberals aren’t really big breeders but we can be big educators and information can be powerful. We can learn to shape and craft a message that appeals on an emotional level instead of just an intellectual one. We can learn that the next election started yesterday. We can learn that even running and losing is important if it serves the greater goal. And we can fight.

My name is Arliss Bunny. I am a liberal Rabbit American and I approved this message.

•Governor Romney said this on April 7 2007. Don’t think the other Republican Presidential candidates didn’t merrily roast him for it, just, apparently, not enough.

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John “Cheeto” Boehner has a Problem

Posted in Disapproval, Politics, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on Saturday, 25 September 2010| 8 Comments »

While you may be thinking that John “Cheeto” Boehner has nothing more to worry about these days than how he will be redecorating the Speaker’s office to get the Pelosi out of the carpet, let me to assure you, he has MUCH bigger problems. Allow me to explain. Remember earlier this week when you were at the grocery store to purchase a large cart full of wonderful produce to bring home to the bunnies in your life…or something close to that. While you were there a young human started to scream and cry. It didn’t matter the context because it is always the same thing, a single child brews up a tantrum which translates to, “I’m furious because you aren’t paying ALL of your attention to me, Me, ME!” To that child, the world revolves around them and whatever toy or treat they have fixated on at that moment. That child is ruining the shopping experience for everyone else in the store because none of those other people matter. Other people are not a part of that child’s microscopically small, warped universe. Now multiply that child by, say…the Tea Party and you have an idea of ol’ Cheet’s problem. John Boehner has been a bad parent and now he will have to live with the consequences.

I know what you are going to say, “The Tea Party is a grass-roots, populist uprising and in buying it a lollipop, Cheeto is just bowing to the will of the people.” Here’s what a little knowledge of grass (I believe I can be considered a specialist in that field.) and fact-checking* will get you.  As a, granted, self-avowed grass specialist, I know that populist grass is a mess and it isn’t funded by the Koch brothers. The Tea Party, on the other paw, has been heavily funded by major Republican think tanks, activists and donors. It was only made to look amateur by all the nutbars who came along for the ride. Watergate’s Deep Throat had it right all those years ago when he said, “follow the money.” Ol’ Cheeto and his buddies were just pushing the Tea Party around in his shopping cart thinking, “Wow! This is spectacular. TP, here, is giving all these Democrats a whopping headache,” but Cheet failed to notice, there were other people in the store too, namely, Republicans.

Oh, don’t get me wrong. The Democrats are going to lose this next election precisely because they exemplify that which can be found on oh-so-many grassy lawns, a

hot mess |hät mes|
a derogatory term describing a situation, behavior, appearance, etc. that is disastrously bad. Think “faux pas” but times ten. Possible origin is literal (think, steaming dogpile).
“She got up on stage and tried to sing Beyonce’s “Dangerously In Love” but her performance was a hot mess.” – the Urban Dictionary

Cheeto’s problem with the election is that he will actually lose some seats which could well have been won by a sane Republican in the general election because the sane Republican was soundly thumped in the primary. This, of course, is a relief to Harry “Closed the Gap” Reid and Chris “Double-digit Lead” Coons but not-so-much for ol’ Cheeto.

Still, it’s really the post-election nightmare that is keeping Cheeto awake at night. (Well, that and the bright orange glow in the room.) Just this week the Republican Party published their “Pledge to America” which featured, appropriately, their version of America…a whole bunch of white people. Literally. I challenge you to find a photo in the published document that shows otherwise. Of course, they could also have called this the “Dead in the Water Pledge” because the combination of trying to add more than $4 trillion dollars to the deficit and all of the actions which will be over-ridden by a simple veto means that, frankly, NONE of the Pledge will ever see the light of day. However, it will give the Democrats terrific campaign fodder both for this election-cycle (“Everyone repeat after me,  ‘trillion’?!?”) and for the next (the “2012 Do-Nothing Congress”.) The Pledge avoids making any of the genuinely hard decisions it takes to govern a nation. It’s cowboys and red meat and a whole lot of white folks – in other words, it’s a Texas Bbq – and, people, you’ve already been there. Which, is the point the Democrats are FINALLY using to gain a little traction.

Additionally, the Tea Party and its extreme backers will be successful in pushing the Republicans farther to the right than the majority of the Republican Party wants to go. Even the neo-cons (some of which are known to still have brains because just last week a mouse with a neo-con brain was spotted in Delaware) have to know this somewhere down in the heart of their polls and focus groups. I mean, it’s all very well and good for them to allow their Tea Party offspring to be a devolved, eternally angry pile of tantrum but once you are in charge, then you have to govern and the next thing you know, the Tea Party infants will be putting a Hitler-mustache on you. Cheeto is especially worried about this because, you know, orange with a black moustache will either make him look like a die-hard, Who-Dey, Bengals fan or a year-round celebration of Halloween, neither of which will make his party more attractive to voters in 2012.

Oh – and then there’s the government shut-down being threatened by the Tea Party two-year olds and their buddies. Just recently, in an interview, the still wildly popular President Clinton was noting, with glee, how well that worked for the Republican Party in 1995. Don’t think for a minute that ol’ Cheet missed that point.

The last thing that keeps Cheeto from joyfully sucking the juices out of the marrow of the bones of the children from whom he wants to strip health care is the knowledge that moving farther to the right in order to attempt to mollify the never-to-be-satisfied Tea Party is the sure knowledge that the farther he goes the harder he makes it for rational Republican Presidential hopefuls, like Indiana’s Governor, Mitch Daniels, to get elected. The Democrats may be barely as organized as a pile of poop on a nice green lawn but, when energized, there are still more of them and the fastest way to energize the Democrats in 2012 is to live with two years of Tea Party insanity between now and then. Cheeto may seem like a delicious snack and all the rage right now but he isn’t an idiot and I promise you, being awakened several times a night by a screaming kid during the next two years isn’t going to be any fun for him or for us.

Cheeto Boehner

*[Note: if you are from the neo-con media or work for any of the major news outlets, all of which are owned by conservative corporations, “fact-checking” is that suspiciously foreign thing the actual liberal media has been doing for years. For further information go here.]

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