Chuck Lorre Vanity Card: True but censored, #375

Censored because Republicans can't handle the truth.

CHUCK LORRE PRODUCTIONS, #375 (CENSORED):
[Forgive me a moment of political reflection, but I'd like to take this opportunity to discuss something that's been on my mind for a very long time. I've always understood the Republican Party to have, as its central platform, the idea that human beings should never be dominated by a monolithic government which tells them how to live their lives. I like that. It feels like a fundamental truth, and I can't imagine any right-minded person finding fault with it. I've also noticed that there are many in the Grand Old Party who insist on telling people exactly how they should live. For example: Alcohol, yes. Pot, no. Straight marriage, yes. Gay marriage, no. Jesus, yes. Others prophets, no. The death penalty, yes. Abortion, no. Capitalism, yes (by force if need be). Collectivism, hell no! Added to this is an inclination to find anyone who chooses these other paths to be deeply repugnant. All of which causes me to wonder, is there a middle ground? In fact, are there big political gains awaiting those of a conservative bent if they can figure out a way to celebrate individual freedom while simultaneously tolerating diversity of opinion and lifestyle? With that in mind, I humbly propose the following slogan designed to both embrace this paradox and ignite the general electorate in the coming presidential campaign.] emphasis added

Borowitz Reports: Republicans Fume President Using His Powers "To Lead"

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Responding to reports that President Obama is considering signing as many as nineteen executive orders on gun control, Republicans in Congress unleashed a blistering attack on him today, accusing Mr. Obama of “cynically and systematically using his position as President to lead the country.”

Spearheading the offensive was Rep. Steve Stockman (R-Texas), who charged the President with the “wanton exploitation of powers that are legally granted to him under the U.S. Constitution.”

Calling him the “Law Professor-in-Chief,” Rep. Stockman accused Mr. Obama of “manipulating a little-known section of the Constitution,” Article II, which outlines the power of the President.

“President Obama looks down the list of all of the powers that are legally his and he’s like a kid in a candy store,” Rep. Stockman said. “It’s nauseating.”]

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/borowitzreport/2013/01/republicans-accuse-obama-of-using-position-as-president-to-lead-country.html#ixzz2IGEKdf8d

Fiscal Cliff Deal: "praise an arsonist for extinguishing his own fire."

[Congress voted to permanently preserve the Bush tax cuts for roughly 99 percent of taxpaying households, but the rate increase for the 1 Percent has infuriated antitax purists, who vow to exact more spending cuts in a couple of months, when the U.S. faces the triple threat of a debt ceiling, postponed automatic spending cuts, and expiration of the law that keeps the government funded. The arsonists now have a new box of matches.

Why have Americans been sentenced to this years-long cycle of pettiness, delay, and zero-sum gamesmanship? You could argue it’s a crisis of leadership—that our elected representatives are examples of our worst, most partisan selves. That seems unlikely. Rather, the budget conflict, at its essence, is a clash over something that rarely lends itself to compromise: morality. Budgetary puritans believe, ferociously, that too much government spending is not just inefficient, but self-indulgent. They view the world’s largest economy as an indebted family that needs to get back to basics. “The federal government needs to tighten its belt just like every hardworking American family has had to do during our economic recovery,” Representative Kurt Schrader, a fiscally conservative Blue Dog Democrat from Oregon, said last year.

The economy-as-family metaphor is familiar, emotionally intuitive—and incorrect. It’s a fallacy of composition: What’s true for the part is not necessarily true for the whole. While a single family can get its finances back on track by spending less than it earns, it’s impossible for everyone to do that simultaneously. When the plumber skips a haircut, the barber can’t afford to have his drains cleaned.]  emphasis added

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-01-02/the-fiscal-cliff-deal-and-the-damage-done#p2

Republican'ts Have Gone Crazy

Republican't ideologues have become enamored with fixztions promoteed and pqaid for by their philosophical daddies and masters such as the Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson, free market modern day pirates who feel government ought not place qny limits on their plund4ring and rapacious selves.

Having procured a majority in a gerrymandered US House of Representatives, these amsteders of delusion seem willing to wreck the US economy and the world in order to increase their influence and wealth.

[“Leverage” only works against rational people. A large number of House Republicans aren’t just “nihilists,” willing to blow up the economy to get what they want, they’re plain morons who have impossible and horrible goals and no clue whatsoever how to reach them.

Rep. Tim Huelskamp, R-Kan., who held an iPad listing the names of would-be anti-Boehner conspirators in full view of a journalist’s camera, is an idiot. He is not just a person whose politics I find distasteful or extremist, he is a dumber-than-average human. Paul Broun and Louie Gohmert are two of the dumbest people on Earth. In a slightly better functioning political world, these three would just do what their smarter leader told them to do. Instead, they and their colleagues have forced their leader to act as if he is as dumb as they are regarding the process of governing. Boehner’s new position is that he will not attempt to negotiate with the party that shares control of the government, which makes no sense as a strategy for achieving conservative policy goals, but makes sense if you think the best way to achieve conservative policy goals is to destroy the country until everyone agrees with you.

As we race to the coming debt ceiling fiasco, please remember that while John Boehner and Eric Cantor and Paul Ryan know that raising the debt ceiling is a thing that just has to be done, there is no indication that the Gohmerts, Huelskamps, Steve Kings and Michele Bachmanns of their caucus agree. You can’t negotiate a compromise with people who are positive they’ll get their way if they refuse to negotiate at all. You can’t avert a catastrophe if you need the assent of people who think the catastrophe is precisely what this country needs to get back on the right track.] emphasis added
http://www.salon.com/2013/01/04/lesson_of_the_failed_boehner_coup_were_dealing_with_idiots/