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Conceptual crap

How to Polish a Turd
Tell Them it's Iraqi "Welfare Reform"


I've figured out how to get us out of Iraq and actually leave behind less of a mess than we see today.  Bear with me...

Remember the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996?  (You know, welfare reform.)  Halfway through his presidency, Bill Clinton made a controversial decision and signed welfare reform into law.  Though he'd been promising to 'change welfare as we know it,' he'd not fallen for the ultra-despotic GOP versions introduced by Congress, and, after twice vetoing the thing, worked his magic; he found a middle ground between his goals, and those of Mr. nutjob, 'boy, my penis must be absolutely microscopic for me to be this priggish' Newt Gingrich.

Although the bill/law, an actual compromise, initially upset both parties' extreme wings (liberal Democrats felt poverty levels would spike; neocon Rapture-ublicans felt the bill was too watered-down to change anything), it proved to be a success.  Not just economically, but politically as well.  Before you knew it, everyone was claiming the bill as his or her very own brainchild.

For example, to hear Gingrich tell it, he fixed welfare by setting time limits.  The spiel goes something like this: "People on welfare had been milking the system for as long as they could, because there was no incentive for them to get off the program.  I/we (meaning the GOP, not he & Clinton) changed that.  We limited the time a person could stay on welfare, forcing them to get out there and become productive" etc.

Moral Minority Report
Religious Neoconfusion reigns - are you scared?  I am.

Apparently right wing doctors can't tell the difference between contraception and abortion.  CBS News/60 Minutes actually reported something I found interesting (disturbing) tonight.  The administration appointed a fundamentalist doctor to oversee the FDA's Advisory Committee for Reproductive Health Drugs, a panel that voted to allow over-the-counter sales of Plan B, a contraceptive drug.  NOT, as many mistakenly think, the "abortion pill" (RU-486), an entirely different drug altogether.

Anyhoo, although the panel voted overwhelmingly to allow over-the-counter sale of Plan B, guess who overturned that vote?

Read about it here.

They're not hesitating a bit.  Right wing nuts don't mess around.  Science, freedom from state-sponsored religious zealotry, women's rights, you name it.  All currently in a swirling motion down the political toilet outhouse hole.

Does the nation deserve this giant, conservative leap backwards?  You know... yes, I think we do.

Despite the spotty corruption Mark Crispin Miller brilliantly defended this morning on C-Span, I still blame most of America's voters for the mess we're in; if Bushco overturns Roe v Wade, and half of you American women have to travel for days to get a legal abortion -- you fucking deserve it.  Maybe next time you'll actually drag your liposucked ass to the polls.


I used to think Theocratic Dictatorships were something we cautiously read about, or watched in disgust on TV - not something we want to personally experience.

Yeah, it's a vastly oversimplified (and only wee bit misleading) characterization.  But it's one of his -- and the rest of the "Contract on for America" crowd's -- most reliable bullets.  Never mind the duplicity; what matters is the central idea the GOP apparently feels comfortable pushing here: 'they' will milk the US govt as long as we let 'them.'

Well, if it's good enough for minorities and the poor, why not the Iraqi Army Divisions? If we say "okay, every month from here on out we're sending 20,000 troops home,"  I guarantee in two months or less you'll see them stand up quicker than the hairs on the back of Karl Rove's neck everytime he hears the name "Patrick Fitzgerald."

Brought to you by
Mr. Turd Blossom

Mr. "I'm not really gullible" Gingrich, explaining
to Sacha Baron Cohen how he saved the world.

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