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Posts Tagged ‘Tea Party’

Mint the Coin vs the Debt Ceiling

Posted in Disapproval, Economics, Politics, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on Tuesday, 8 January 2013| Leave a Comment »

Memes are a strange thing. One never can really predict what will catch on and what will die with a mingy wimper. Still, economist Stephanie Kelton has to be pretty thrilled that #MintTheCoin has gained traction. She, and the entire rest of the Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) community of economists, have certainly been waiting long enough. #MintTheCoin is Dr. Kelton’s (@deficitowl) current contribution to Twitter and it’s an important one but I’ll bet you don’t know why.

Hint: the answer isn’t “debt ceiling.”

The meme has caught fire and is being promoted by the likes of both Paul Krugman and Salon (…’nuff said) as a solution to the debt ceiling via the hastily lashed together vehicles of the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution and Title 31 of the United States Code Subtitle IV, Chapter 51, Subchapter II, Section 5112. I am not going to repeat the basics of the meme because they are splashed all over the web. If you have been dead for the last couple of weeks and somehow missed them you can catch up here, here, and here. There is also, of course, the idiotic GOP response codified, for the moment, in the bill being introduced by Congressman Greg Walden (R-OR) to prevent the President and Secretary of the Treasury from taking the option of the now infamous platinum coin. My favorite part of this legislation is that it tacitly acknowledges that the Secretary of the Treasury really does have the right to mint the coin making any argument to the contrary just that much more difficult. Derp. The part of this legislation that makes me want to put my face through glass is when the Congressman drops his pail down into the my-small-business-can’t-print-money-well to which I respond,

Listen up, Dimwit, the US Federal Government is NOT a business or family and it CAN and SHOULD print money.

Now, I’ll grant you that the world is a big place and some of you thought you had better things to do than to read my post on Modern Monetary Theory vs the Fiscal Cliff (this link is to the Daily Kos cross-post because the discussion thread was excellent there) but if you do not understand the statement above, stop now and read the older post. I’m not kidding. Stop. Now. Thump!

For everyone who did not stop I am going to go forward with the assumption that you fully understand the following things:

  • The budget of the Federal government is in no way, shape or form like that of your family or of any business and likening the Federal budget to the budget of a small business is the same as likening kittens to helicopters. (Ok, both look pretty funny when they are flying through the air but other than that….)
  • The Federal government is not balancing a budget, it is balancing an economy and the delimiters of that balance are unemployment, exchange rates and inflation. Period. End of story.
  • Deficits mean NOTHING. Debt means very, VERY little.
  • The US economy has nothing what-so-ever in common with any country which uses the Euro so comparisons to Spain or Greece or Italy are, again, kittens to helicopters.

Again, if there are any of the above which are unclear to you, go back to the older post. I mean it. *glare*

What has to be thrilling the MMT community to the tips of their pointy little heads is the fact that the platinum coin is breaking into consciousness at all because they have been talking about it for a long time for a whole different reason.

Zeroing Out the US Debt

News Flash: the platinum coin could be used to zero out the entire US debt held by the Fed. Done. Gone. I’m going to nibble on some hay while you think about that. … … … … … … Done? I didn’t think so but no one has ever credited me with patience.

There are, of course, two things to know about this approach and the most important is that it is totally unnecessary because given the current (stronger than you realize) position of the US economy and the fact that we have a fiat currency, debt actually means very, VERY little. It is, essentially, a matter of an internal balance sheet adjustment and if someone wants to make a pretty little coin or two or fifty to make it more real, well isn’t that just precious. What this would do instead is allow the funds which are being spent in service of our current debt to be pumped back into the private sector, in a controlled fashion, until we have reached full employment, at which point the spigot would be reduced to a normal flow.

What’s that? I can hear the anguished screams all the way from here. No, inflation is not a factor. Inflation is caused when demand exceeds supply and our economy is no where close to that margin. There is huge room for growth and capacity utilization rates remain exceedingly low. There, there. *pat, pat* I know. It’s a shock because those GOP bullies have been pushing the Debt-bad/Inflation-nigh meme for so long and you actually had started to believe it. If you need more solace on this issue, go to Bill Mitchell’s Billy Blog, for an excellent explanation.

Snipe Hunting

The real truth is that debt isn’t bad. At least, not at our current levels and in our current financial position. Still, we have listened to the GOP and the Tea-baggers rail on it for so long that it is as if we, as a nation, have been on a snipe hunt and we actually believe there are real snipes out there. Let me do you this favor and smack you upside the head, *SMACK!* Wake up!!!

There are not now and there never were actual snipes and because it does not serve our nation and economy for the private sector (all US individuals and businesses) to be in the red and because we will absolutely have a trade deficit for the foreseeable future (which is the international sector), the laws of accounting (if confused, refer to both my previous post on MMT and my previous *glare*) say that the public sector (the Federal budget) MUST be running a deficit . If we just can’t make ourselves comfortable with that than let’s pretend otherwise by zeroing out the debt with a magical coin. Here’s the bottom line. The debt means NOTHING and the coin means NOTHING and using them to cancel each other out so that we feel better is silly but not necessarily a bad thing. Plus, of course, it frees up all the money necessary to get everyone who wants to work back to work… oh, and to invest in the changes necessary to address climate change, invest in education, rebuild our national infrastructure, solve the long-term healthcare crisis…among a few other little things.

The IMF’s Giant Facepalm

…and then there’s the International Monetary Fund (IMF.) These genius’ have been at the head of the austerity bandwagon for years as they have dutifully strong-armed (and worse) economy after economy into the ground with their iron-clad commitment to austerity. …except they were wrong. Totally and completely, absolutely and irrevocably (in some cases) wrong. Now, it’s one thing for me to say this. What is one rabbit against the all-powerful genius of the IMF? So I had to laugh (and cry a little) when they finally acknowledged that they have been wrong all along. As it turns out, when an economy is struggling and it implements austerity, things get worse. Conversely, when countries, like Germany, Austria and the US (thank you, President Obama), use stimulus, they experience improvement. Why? Because (and here I apologize for repeating myself) a country is not balancing a budget, it is balancing an economy. WHO CARES what a ledger says! What matters is that people are working, the temperature of inflation is cold and the exchange rate is reasonable. Those are the only three things that matter. Everything else is just a snipe no matter what the Tea Party or the GOP or the IMF has to say.

In Closing

The Giant Platinum Coin IS an interesting concept. It IS worth thinking about but it is wasted on an imaginary “problem” like the debt ceiling. Oh, it’s not that it can’t or shouldn’t be used there. It’s just that if we really want to get the GOP to shut the thump up and we really want to change the future of our country and the lives of our citizens, we won’t just stop there. But that is, of course, just one rabbit’s opinion.

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Mary Matalin Eats a Fly – My 2012 Election Wrap-up

Posted in Approval, Disapproval, Politics, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on Sunday, 18 November 2012| Leave a Comment »

You should chisel this moment into stone. In fact you should probably sit down because the shock of my admission may just be too much for some of you.

I was wrong.

Oh, I was not wrong about what I said about Mitt Romney, who will now be consigned to the litterbox of history for failing in a manner so cataclysmic that the entire GOP will be forced to take time away from blaming the black guy to blaming each other for not being able to do arithmetic. I was not wrong about what I said, more than two years ago, about John Bohener having an irreconcilable (and hilarious) problem with the ever-widening solar system of a gap between the Tea Party and reality. I was also not wrong about what I said about about the last fiscal cliff as it applies to the coming so-called “fiscal cliff.” (Personally, I agree with David Waldman, KagroX, that the term “fiscal curb” is more correct.) What I was wrong about was thinking that the GOP would wake the hell up once they had gone splat on the windshield of the Democratic party express.

Republican FAIL

Sure, there are a smattering of GOP pundits talking about substantive changes in message but they are being drowned out both by those who have been unable to get past loudly blaming Mitt Romney for being a candidate who daily demonstrated all the backbone of a windsock and the rest who are madly zeroing in on a few surface issues. Have faith, none of them will get to the core of their problem for three BIG and PAINFULLY OBVIOUS reasons which, of course, the entire bubble-based GOP will overlook and into which Dick Morris will likely do another faceplant.

I will summarize here:

1. If you don’t respect differences and people in general, your policy will reflect that and those people will (eventually) notice.

2. They built it, a base of angry, terrified, white, bigoted, evangelicals who aren’t going to change…ever. It’s going to be impossible to work these folks into a “big tent” platform and waiting for them to die will take a while.

3. Citizens United isn’t really a friend of the GOP. Corporations are their own friend, first, last and always. Corporations will spend accordingly. The demo has now made a huge swing in the direction of the Democrats. Corporations have made a note. They won’t be betting exclusively on the GOP to win from here on out.

The GOP did build a “nuclear option” but they aimed it at themselves because these guys really weren’t kidding, they believed their own spin. Karl Rove’s melt down on FOX News, which will live on in infamy, or, my personal favorite, Mary Matalin’s epic FAIL on CNN, wherein she spends the entire time looking like she just swallowed a fly, are both perfect examples of a simple truth. The GOP had no idea that their message was not landing. They have been locked in their own echo chamber for too long (too long, too long, too long…). As it turns out, only eternally pissed-off white men and a narrow majority of married white women think that a platform of “I’m entitled and the rest of you can go screw yourselves,” is an appropriate way to run a country. The rest of the electorate thinks that things like having a strong and well-coordinated FEMA during a major national crisis, as opposed to a few people handing out canned goods here and there, is essential to maintaining a strong and vibrant nation.

Dems Fail

Still, there are things the Dems should be learning from all of this. (Though, given the fact that we have had Karl Rove, the Dark Lord and Master of the first two items noted below, on our ass for multiple elections and still have not managed to learn these lessons, I am somewhat lacking in hope.)

1. Narrative matters. Yes, our kith and ken all worship at the alter of reality-based information but we tell our story terribly – really, really terribly. President Obama had a strong first term and even now almost no one knows that. Hello! Short, simple, glossy, heartwarming narrative. I mean seriously, people, the very best narratives of this election were provided by the other guy including Big Bird, the pre-1917 Navy and, the corker of them all, the 47% video. Y’all have a year and a half to figure this thing out. If you do, we have a shot at taking back the House and then running the tables for two years.

2. Naming Shit Stuff. WOW. We are so very, very bad at this. The “Affordable Care Act”  – really! Who thought of that? The GOP is a superstar at naming stuff. “Pro-life,” “Obamacare” and “Defense of Marriage Act” these are works of art. Can we please hire one damn Mad Man from Madison Avenue to handle this for us? Where is Don Draper when you need him?!?!?!

3. Self Doubt. During the weeks leading up to the election Republicans were sure they were going to win and Democrats were sure they were going to lose. Dems are genuinely bad at knowing when they have the upper paw and then taking advantage of that fact. Dems are also bad at being who they really are. For years the party has been moving to the right while the country, the electorate, has been moving left on issues while still voting right because *facepalm.* Democrats need to be Democrats.

Democrats have allowed the GOP to run away with the individual freedoms narrative but the fact is that individual freedom is exactly what Democrats support and Republicans oppose on almost every level. Democrats also support the strength of community. These things are not mutually exclusive. Republicans want the world to be either this or that. Democrats understand that there can be a balance where both exist together. (Though, I have to say, in a tip of the hat to BlueGal and DriftGlass, there are not two sides to facts and presenting so-called “balance” on matters of fact is when the media needs to be taken out to the Internet Kitty litterbox and firmly rolled in the material therein.)

On election night all the networks showed coverage of the crowds at the Obama and Romney headquarters. The Obama crowd was all ages, ethnicities and socioeconomic groups. It was all of us. The Romney crowd was white and, based upon the outfits seen on the women, sorely in need of fashion advice. I also think that removing the sticks from up their posteriors would be helpful but that’s really a personal decision.

The Last Word(s)

And finally, that moment for which you have all been waiting, the gloating. These are my favorite thoughts on the subject.

• If you are one of those thinking is that God is involved in each and every little thing that happens to us than His choice is pretty obvious – the black, Kenyan, anti-colonialist, Muslim, socialist, communist, WON. Hahahahahahahaha!

• I’m sending a special “thank you” out to those on the Team Romney who designed Orca, their beached-whale-fail of a get out the vote app . I’m glad those bottles of tequila I sent over while you were in the programming stages proved to be effective. You are welcome.

• Speaking of voting, Florida doesn’t get to vote anymore. They must now turn in their electoral college votes and move to the back of the line, behind Wyoming.

• And this compliments of Second City…

 Through election night God himself was hitting refresh on FiveThirtyEight. He just made the universe, (Nate Silver) turned it into a graph. 

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The Ties that Bondage

Posted in Disapproval, Politics, tagged , , , , , , , , on Monday, 18 April 2011| 4 Comments »

Rabbits are, by nature, prey animals and trust me when I tell you that it is a difficult cross to bear. As such, it has taken untold generations of my kind to evolve into a rabbit, like myself, who is entirely capable of managing a household of predators (ie dogs and humans) for my benefit and to do my bidding. So hear me when I tell you, we don’t get it. Why would a human as powerful as the President of the United States or the most numerous political party, the Democrats, relinquish power as if it was a simple thing to get it back?

Touching John in the Naughty Place

Is it possible that these “leaders,” and here I will use that term in the loosest possible way, are thinking that the pendulum will swing back, that the conservative tide will crest, fall and some sort of sanity will be restored? Have they not been paying attention! The Tea Party crazies have been making John Boehner look like a centrist.  I will remind you that I predicted this  (see “John ‘Cheeto’ Boehner Has a Problem“) well before the last election. John Boehner has found himself having to work with actual Democrats, just to keep the doors of government open. It probably makes him feel like he has been touched in the naughty place. Poor John. I digress (and laugh, but that’s just me). What Democrats have failed, either purposefully or not, to notice is that there won’t be much left of their party or anyone with the ability to make a change, unless they start to stem the tide now.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not talking about dealing with the Tea Party. Those idiots will flame out in a blaze that will probably be attributed to lighting their own farts on fire. I’m talking about the people who paid for the party, Tea or otherwise. Corporations have won the right, confirmed by the Supreme Court, to buy elections. This is easily seen in the results from the 2010 election cycle. See here and here if you aren’t following me. People, 40% of all the outside money spent on the 2010 election cycle was made possible by the Citizens United ruling. That’s $186 million dollars! Those of you who have walked through the fires of Fundraising Hell know that’s one heck of a bake sale and what was sold wasn’t brownies, it was our government. How do we know this? Because they have worked so very hard to prove it during this recent, manufactured, budget “crisis.”

Meaning, Not You

Humans – I will use very small words here so that you cannot fail to understand. It was never about the budget, it was only about power for those with incomes in the top 1%, meaning not you. I’m going to sit here and munch on some grape stem while you re-read that however many times it takes for it to sink in… … … ….

Oh, you can attend a Tea Party rally, march with your misspelled sign and shout some slogan that references an historical event or movement of which you have no educated understanding but not one wit of the beneficial changes in the budget will be felt by you. No, what 99% of Americans will feel will be all the things that flow from underfunding programs upon which the less fortunate rely and by “less fortunate” I mean everyone not in the 1%.

I’ll give you some examples:

  • the top 1% can afford to hire a personal courier to deliver their mail, can you?
  • the top 1% don’t need farm subsidies, though many of them take them, can the same be said for the average farm family?
  • the top 1% can afford top-notch fire suppression and burglar systems throughout all of their homes so they are perhaps not as reliant on the first responders they have cut back; how about you?
  • the top 1% can afford to pay for 100% of their health care directly out of their pocket, for the rest of their lives, without risking their home no matter what illness befalls them; you?
  • the top 1% send their children to private schools from pre-school through university, their children never need a government backed loan or scholarship and neither do they – also, they don’t give a heck about the quality of public schools because their children aren’t there; you?
  • the top 1% already have the whole retirement thing completely under control; you?

Yeah – that’s what I thought.

Oh – and one more little thing, when the top 1% is using the Tea Party as their meat puppets to push through tax cuts for… you guessed it, the top 1% – it might behoove our Democratic leaders and President to stand up and shout that TARP AND the auto-industry bail-out AND oil company sibsidies AND, in fact, the entire corporate tax structure, already functions as their tax break. …and where, exactly is the trickle down from that? Oh, never mind, I found it.  It’s right there in my litterbox. *blush*

But shouting isn’t the way of our “leaders.” They think it makes them look too crazy. Meanwhile, Michelle Bachman actually says, out loud, that because so many courts are disagreeing with her, Congress should strip federal judges of the right to hear marriage-equality cases. STILL, our “leaders” sit quietly by while those of you who are ill go to the gallows of no health care and those of you who are healthy are headed, via the worst of usury practices by financial institutions and abuse by corporations, for bondage. And not the fun kind.

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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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And Did I Mention I’m From Kenya?

Posted in Politics, tagged , , , , , , , , on Sunday, 12 September 2010| 3 Comments »

I’m sure I at least mentioned it. I’m from Kenya. We know this because I was born in Indiana and I’m a different color than many of you. More to the point, because of my coloring, I have a “Kenyan anti-colonial” worldview. What this means is that if you do not have an accurate predictive model for my behavior unless you have a clear understanding of Kenyan history and politics. Oh, yes, and you need to be a racist. Being a bigot helps but racism is really the handle by which you can carry away this pot. Newt Gingrich and Dinesh D’Souza found me out. Their firm mastery of the racism laid me bare before them.

I must learn to accept the repercussions of being a Kenyan anti-colonialist. Either that or someone needs to teach all these idiots what words mean and I have to tell you, the chances of the latter having any impact at all is about the same as the chances of me turning down my serving of kale leaf tonight. (For those not fortunate enough to live with a Kenyan anti-colonialist rabbit, the odds of kale rejection occurring would be zilch.)

There is an old joke: the UK and the US are two nations divided by one language. An example of this would be as follows:

British, ” I think I’ll knock her up and see if she has a rubber I can borrow.”

American, “I think I’ll call her and see if she has an eraser I can borrow.”

Frankly, it’s funnier when the Brits say it but that’s not my point. It has become clear to me that Americans now fall into three groups divided by a single language. There are those who still use words as they are defined in the dictionary, also known as Democrats; those who use existing words and invent totally unrelated definitions to suit their political ends, also known as Conservative Republicans or the Tea Party; and those who invent their own words from scratch, also known as computer nerds, if you grok my meaning.

For the Conservative Republicans/Tea Party, it works like this:

  1. select a scary sounding word, like “Muslim” or “Kenya” or “Qur’an” or “anti-colonialist”;
  2. attach to it all kinds of racist and bigoted rhetoric that is designed to frighten people remembering that unlike bunnies, humans are at the top of the food-chain but near the bottom of the common sense chain;
  3. know that, historically, identifying with cruelty generally works out, like the fans cheering for Michael Vick this weekend;
  4. make sure that at no time is factual information or factually based educational material allowed to gain a foothold;
  5. dominate the weak-willed, corporate-owned, conservative main-stream media.

So, in a nutshell, that explains why I am both a Kenyan anti-colonialist and a Muslim. My response is this:

People, buy a dictionary! Read a book! Grow some balls! Muslims, Kenya and the Qur’an aren’t the enemy – ignorance is – and vicious, rabbit-eating coyotes. I think we can all agree on that.

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