Sequestration (and Castration*?)

Our local Mouse Channel affiliate, WMTW Channel 8, has a story today about Acadia National Park in Bar Harbor closing its famous Loop Road and other amenities until mid-May, as a result of the Rethuglican-inspired sequestration. The same process eliminated public tours of the White House, leading some Rethugs to bitch mightily about the BMITWH "holding the nation hostage" to his budget plans or some such nonsense.

Now, granted, I do not have the economic knowledge or training of Badtux or JurassicPork, but allow me to offer some alternative plans to reduce the cost of government:

• Congresscritters -- both Senators and Representatives -- do not get paid until a budget has been passed and signed by the President. Some will claim the Constitution prohibits "adjusting" Congressional pay or benefits until after the next succeeding election; the Rethugs like to say their financial emergency trumps all else -- including national defense -- so it should also trump their financial well-being. Hell, if we gotta suffer, it's only fair they suffer with us.
• Congresscritters no longer get free or discounted travel anywhere for any reason, including official business. They get to fly Grayhound like the rest of us.
• Lobbyists must deposit their bribes campaign contributions into the Treasury, rather than the bottomless pockets of the pols.
• Eliminate free healthcare for Congresscritters. Let them see what it 's like to go without insurance.
• Eliminate free parking privileges for Congresscritters and their staff.
• In fact, eliminate their freakin' JOBS.

Wouldn't you LOVE to see the Zombie-eyed Granny Starver standing on the corner with a little cardboard sign that says "Will teabag for food"?

Scroom.

Scroomall.

* I vote for cutting their nuts off. No anesthesia, no bandages, no mercy. That's the only way to keep them from reproducing.

Mustang Bobby: Double Play!

Mustang Bobby has consecutive postings that are well worth reading: the first on Bigus Dickus and the Pentagon's "terrorist credit checks", and the second on "Spocko", a blogger who's fighting with MouseCo, ABC (as one wag put it, "Assimilated By Conservatives"), and KSFO, over the "extreme" comments by the station's neocon hosts.

In the Pentagon controversy, Bobby makes this observation:

Perhaps the most outrageous part of this maddening assault on our rights and our intelligence (pun intended) is the last one where the Vice President suggests -- hell, he proclaims -- that the opponents of the president and his divine revelations are playing into the hands of al-Qaida and other evil-doers. The truth is that it is the Bush administration who has lent encouragement to the terrorists with their weak and vacillating approach to fighting them, not to mention accomplishing their putative goal of destroying America from within by letting us do it ourselves with anti-democratic tactics like spying on our own citizens and bellicose bullying by the neocons like Dick Cheney.

Of course, the "bellicose bullying" is going to continue until (a) Cheney, bush, and company are impeached by the House, tried by the Senate, and removed from office, or (b) bush's successor is sworn in.

As for the Spocko saga, Bobby says:

Those of us who have supported Spocko, either with blog support or financial aid, know that this is just the start, and getting the attention of a major media outlet like the Times is a good step forward. Spocko also encourages bloggers to become well-informed about how they can defend themselves against the attacks of the likes of the trolls at KSFO and their minions in the legal profession. Education is the ultimate weapon and a bulging-biceps defense of bloggers' rights under the copyright law's Fair Use doctrine is part of that.

The mouth-breathin', Bible-thumpin', hooker-humpin', sister-marryin', rifle-rack-in-the-pickmup neocon wingnut idjits have gotten away with their shit -- aided and abetted by the bushtards -- for so long, they see absolutely nothing wrong with it. Civility just does not work with these morons:

KSFO’s Lee Rodgers: “Well I haven’t apologized for anything and I am not going to start with you. How the hell do you like that, creep?”

We're supposed to reach out to these oxygen thieves to promote bipartisanship? I call bullshit.

I wish I thought we would reach out to them as they "reached out" to us in 2000 and 2004... with the same vitriol and hatred, the same lack of respect, the same sarcasm and cynicism they showed us.

But we won't, and I know it.

Because WE are better than that.