Entries by W. O. Coach

The smorgasbord of emotions as the final day of the Bush disaster winds down is almost too complicated for simple words. We have the republicans just praying the last eight years go away, their Karl Rove dynasty crushed beyond recognition, to the democrats who still want blood, knowing they were robbed in 2000 and demanding justice for the disasters and crimes Bush/Cheney perpetuated while denying any accountability these last eight years.

Is justice to be served? Clinton, easily the most successful president in modern times using any criteria, was impeached for lying about consensual sex. Bush, using the same criteria is easily the worst president and he didn't just lie, his lies got thousands, hundreds of thousands of people killed. And his failures didn't end there, they will continue for as long as it takes to reverse almost every initiative he started.

The world is a far worse place since George W. Bush was handed the presidency by five people, the ideological majority of the Supreme Court of the United Stated of America. Sandra Day O'Connor, the swing vote, will go down in infamy as a disgrace. Rehnquist at least had the decency to die, but Sandra Day O'Connor lives on and her vote way back in December of 2000 is still costing lives and treasure around the world. She quit, took her ball and went home, but she can't escape her shame.

One can only wonder how these people forgive themselves, power and money I suppose. But as the GOP conservative brand continues to lose credibility, may the enablers be exposed for what they are; facilitators who place their own well-being ahead of the majority of Americans. Sandra Day O'Connor, we're talking about you. It's arguable that you're the one person most responsible for the ills the U.S. and world now face.
History is definitely going to catch up with this lady, and not very kindly.

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For people trying to hang onto their homes or jobs, all this bailout talk for millionaires has to be more than discomforting. Back in the early '80s, when Reagan started his deregulation crap by overturning the very policies that rescued us from the Great Depression, CEO salaries were about 20 times that of the average worker. As we sit here helpless in the middle of this current financial disaster, the equivalent CEO salaries with bonuses are now 500 times greater. And if that's not enough to get your sphincter muscle twitching, many of these companies are losing billions to boot.
People are losing their jobs not because of any wrong doing on their part, but because of greed and poor decisions by upper management. Instead of being innovative to reverse the process and increase business, they have been taking the easy way out by cutting jobs to reduce costs. This is just stupidity squared because job losses are reaching critical mass and unemployed people are not exactly known for buying cars, investing in stocks or buying homes. Quite understandably they will spend the minimum just to survive, so as job losses and unemployment expand, our consumer based economy is sinking into a depression.

Unlike the federal government, consumers can't print more money, sell bonds or borrow from foreign governments like China. We instead have to rely on credit cards or house equity to secure bank loans. Well, credit cards eventually get maxed out and home equity is something most can only dream of given the current circumstances. In fact, many new home owners hold mortgages of greater value than their house. Without a light at the end of the tunnel, it only makes sense to leave the keys in the door and walk away.

You can only feel sorry for the millions of normal folks who are getting crushed financially, and anger towards the bastards who abetted this disaster, but the thing that irks me the most is that the $700. billion bailout to the financial industry, the very culprits who started this mess, are using these funds not to help you, me, GM, Ford or Chrysler, but to buy up the weaker banks who couldn't survive this crisis.

Think about that for a second. The biggest banks got seven hundred billion in bailout money with little oversight other than the expressed purpose of easing the credit crunch, but won't loan a dime of it to the big three auto makers, which means the car guys have to come cup in hand to the government, that's us folks, for additional bailout money. The so-called big three are definitely guilty of poor decisions and being on the wrong side of the trend to smaller and more efficient vehicles, but when GM, once the largest corporation in the world is denied a loan from the banks, banks fresh with this infusion of our commitment to higher taxes to pay this off some day, you really have to wonder
And just to put it in perspective, with all these numbers involving billions, know this: to count to a billion, you know...1,2,3, 4, without a break would take 31 years.
Smoke that taxpayers.

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The wing nuts on the right are always so much fun. With all the free advice they've been offering Obama lately, one could be tricked into believing they actually have a clue how to govern, but the moment that thought catches a foothold, reality comes crashing back with Katrina, Iraq and the economy. The overwhelming reality of this election is that a black man with a funny name won easily and handed the GOP their fat, white butts. How much worse could it get for these bible-thumping illiterates?

Enough Americans finally clued in that GOP talk is just that, without the walk. And many of the most bigoted, intolerant, and religiously insane Americans voted with their pocket books this time rather than with their prejudices. How many homes or jobs did they have to lose to wise up?

For those of us who have been going crazy and feeling helpless while suffering through the last eight years, revenge is indeed a dish best served cold. But the fun's only beginning. The party of zero ideas, the party that has won elections by pushing hate and division, the party of lies, deceit and corruption has been dispatched to the political wilderness, which is exactly where they belong.

These smug Bush/Cheney apologists are now blindly running in circles with their shorts down around their ankles wondering what the hell happened to them. And while we could explain it, what would be the point? They'll never listen anyway because the nucleus of the party believes they aren't conservative enough, (read religious), and that someone like Sarah Palin is their god-send.

No way we'll be that lucky come 2012, and they do have four years to develop an alternative candidate if things don't go well for Obama. But other than Ginghrich, Romney and crew, the love affair between the GOP and the religiously insane will have to part ways before they can make any progress. In fact, many of the saner republicans are already making noises to this effect and turning in their bibles.
Meanwhile, sit back, kick up, and enjoy the implosion.

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With even conservative pundits calling for Bush to move aside and resign early, one has to wonder what is going through the man's head. He can put on as many brave faces as he wants, that he's satisfied with the progress in Iraq, that he's done his best and so forth, but the brutal fact remains he's been a dismal failure as a president in everyone's mind but perhaps his own. Talk about narcissism.

Think back to the 2000 presidential campaign when he promised open and honest government, returning honor and dignity to the White House, being a uniter not a divider and help is on the way for the troops. The sad fact is he's delivered exactly the opposite on every promise. And if that's not enough to disgrace him in the annals of history, he's also managed to sully America's image with preemptive war, torture, rendition, our way or the highway diplomacy all while presiding over and contributing to the worst financial crisis since The Great Depression.

You'd think that would be enough to secure his place in history as the worst president in American history, but oh no, he's also managed to allow more arsenic in our drinking water, more pollution, and fewer protections for our air quality, endangered species, forests, and even the Constitution. Add his record number of signing statements excluding him from laws passed by Congress, illegal spying on US citizens and secrecy that the worst dictator would envy, he leaves office as King George when eight years ago he was merely President Bush.

That twenty-five percent of Americans still approve of his job performance is something we as a country have to work on. How can one in four of us be so damned stupid? Calling him a lame duck, while comforting that were almost done with him messing our pants all over the globe, is hardly accurate. He's a cooked turkey, and this evening I'm going to enjoy sticking a fork in him.

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In what seems like an indeterminable transition period until Obama takes the reigns next January 20, many Americans will be worrying about keeping their jobs, their homes, and trying to find a way to put gifts on their families this Christmas season. Politics for junkies is pretty much dead during this period with even the Sunday gasbags reduced to speculating on who Obama should pick for key positions or will Sarah run in 2012. Oh, and speaking of Ms. Palin, isn't it unsettling that since the election, when after every canned stump speech her handlers threw a blanket over her and kept her dark until the next speech, that you now can't turn on the teevee or pick up a newspaper without her face dominating?

Caught perfectly in one of those, I wish I'd written that moments, catch this beaut from the brilliant Dick Cavett in last Friday's New York Times:

There she is with Larry and Matt and just about everyone else but Dr. Phil (so far). If she is not yet on “Judge Judy,” I suspect it can’t be for lack of trying.

What have we done to deserve this, this media blitz that the astute Andrea Mitchell has labeled “The Victory Tour”?
I suppose it will be recorded as among political history’s ironies that Palin was brought in to help John McCain. I can’t blame feminists who might draw amusement from the fact that a woman managed to both cripple the male she was supposed to help while gleaning an almost Elvis-sized following for herself. Mac loses, Sarah wins big-time was the gist of headlines.
I feel a little sorry for John. He aimed low and missed.

What will ambitious politicos learn from this? That frayed syntax, bungled grammar and run-on sentences that ramble on long after thought has given out completely are a candidate’s valuable traits?

And how much more of all that lies in our future if God points her to those open-a-crack doors she refers to? The ones she resolves to splinter and bulldoze her way through upon glimpsing the opportunities, revealed from on high.

What on earth are our underpaid teachers, laboring in the vineyards of education, supposed to tell students about the following sentence, committed by the serial syntax-killer from Wasilla High and gleaned by my colleague Maureen Dowd for preservation for those who ask, “How was it she talked?” My concern has been the atrocities there in Darfur and the relevance to me with that issue as we spoke about Africa and some of the countries there that were kind of the people succumbing to the dictators and the corruption of some collapsed governments on the continent, the relevance was Alaska’s investment in Darfur with some of our permanent fund dollars. And, she concluded, “never, ever did I talk about, well, gee, is it a country or a continent, I just don’t know about this issue.”

It’s admittedly a rare gift to produce a paragraph in which whole clumps of words could be removed without noticeably affecting the sense, if any.

(A cynic might wonder if Wasilla High School’s English and geography departments are draped in black.)

Ha ha, make him stop, too funny. You can read the entire article here Facebook | Digg | Reddit | Stumble | Buzz it! | Email Article |

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Ya gotta love Rush's ditto heads, all 20 million of them. Here's Joe the Speller, who graduated suma cume laude from Okie Public with a major in spelling. Joe successfully completed his third year in grade five when he decided he had enough knowledge, so he quit school and hit the streets with personally designed signs to educate the rest of us pinko commies on how to vote.

With nearly 70 days to go before Obama even takes office, the wing nuts on the right are already blaming him for the economic crisis. Heck, just the other day, wing nut in Chief Rush Limbaugh, accused Bill Clinton for all the woes up to Nov. 4, and Obama since then. The peace and prosperity of the '90's was nothing but an illusion according to His Pigness.
The irony of course is that Joe the Speller and Joe the Plumber are going to be better off down the road once an Obama presidency reinstates progressive tax policies and programs that favor the vast majority of Americans and not just the filthy rich. Neither Joe will understand any of this and undoubtedly vote for Sarah or Mitt or Newt in 2012 anyway, but what do you expect from people who get their views from radio and cable clowns like Limbaugh and Hannity. If it wasn't for rubes like these two Joes who have been convinced that Obama is going to take away their guns and bibles, AM hate radio hosts and almost everyone at Fox News would be begging on street corners with a tin cup.

If nothing else, I'm excited that a Barak Obama presidency is going to make intelligence and command of the English language fashionable again.

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Okay, agreed it's a tad premature to be thinking about the next GOP nominee to take on Obama in 2012, but you have to admit this is going to be fun for our side. I mean, who have they got? McCain's got several forks in him. Palin....puleeeze! Romney....Mormon, Guliani....double puleeeze. For sure there's got to be a couple of smart people left in the republican party who will find a new guy or gal who could challenge. From what we've seen of Obama before he even takes the reigns of office is that this isn't gonna be easy for the repubs. Even repubs admit he's smart and that he can hardly be blamed for the current problems confronting America.

One name they have left in their diminishing arsenal which I've been hearing about is Newt Gingrich. Aside from a name even weirder than Barak's, this guy is a three time loser with wives and an even bigger loser when it comes to governance. If Newt hadn't shut down the government in 2005 over a perceived slight with Bill Clinton, Bill would have never met Monica. Newt's also the guy who created the negative talking points about democrats, a list that demonized everything liberal. Like, we need all this negative campaigning again? Remember, the guy resigned as House Leader, the position Nancy Pelosi now holds. He resigned because he didn't want to be the minority leader, and that pretty much tells you all you need to know about him. He took on the big dog, (Clinton), lost, so he took his ball and went home. That's a leader?

Anyway, time to take a couple of breaths and give Obama a chance to organize for January 20th. Finally, the smartest guy in the room is going to be the president and how long have we waited for that?

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Well, to say Nov. 4 was emotional would be the understatement of all time. I lost track of how many celebrities who admitted shedding a tear or two because I was too busy shedding a couple of my own. This has been a long hard-fought emotional battle for eight years which seemed more like a lifetime. Yeah, yeah, I know I should be magnanimous in victory, but stick that thought up their crazy GOP asses. I want to stomp on their ugly heads every time they pop up from the whack-a-mole hole. I want to chase them into the hell they claim to believe in that they so richly deserve.

Our side always knew this election was never a black or white thing, but about right and wrong issues. We've been fighting for years against policies we knew to be pig-headed wrong, policies both domestic and foreign designed to favor the filthy rich at the expense of the majority. Policies based on fear and outright lies. It was beyond frustrating to suffer through the GOP stealing just enough votes and fooling just enough idiots with wedge issues to prevail. Why would anyone care if his neighbor married his dog? After all, we did find out from Sarah Palin that pit bulls wear lipstick, or hockey moms, whatever.

While everything seemed to go wrong for the McCain campaign, from his fumbling to find a consistent message to the bad timing of economic events, not to mention the almost perfect campaign Obama ran, the turning point for me was the Katie Couric interview, run not over one day but three. You almost had to feel sorry for the repubs (I didn't), going from the euphoria of her convention speech to three solid days in a row of rolling their eyes watching over and over again her flubbed grade three answers to simple grade six questions. The fight for moderates and independents was now over because how could they vote for a candidate who picked such a light weight for VP, a choice who quite possibly could take over the presidency considering McCain's age and heath. McCain, like Bush, was making choices based on politics and not what was best for the country. Most Americans had had enough of poor decisions and and god-awful choices for important positions in government and that was reflected with overwhelming clarity on November 4.

The future is hardly predictable, but at least for the next four years unlike the last eight, we know the smartest guy in the room will be calling the shots. What happens after that is anyone's guess, but it's a good bet that if the GOP picks Ms. Palin for 2012, we can all rest easy until 2016.

I suspect after a few more weeks, once the comics run out material for jokes, it will be Sarah who?

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Ten days to go, and each and every one seems to deliver more bad news for Johnny Mac. Palin's new 150K wardrobe, more GOP stalwarts like Scottie McCarron and C. C. Goldwater jumping ship, and how about the grenade the GOP tried to toss by accusing Obama of visiting Hawaii not to be with his ailing grandmother, but to steal his birth records which prove he's not a U.S. citizen. All horseshit of course, it's like they pulled the pin out of the grenade but forgot to throw it. And speaking of horseshit, did you catch that McCain volunteer, Ashley Todd, who got caught fabricating a whopper about a big black guy assaulting her and carving a backwards B on her face. Okay, you can't fault McCain for having a mentally challenged supporter, after all, there are a few more of those in his party, but you'd think he'd at least have the story checked out before calling her to offer his sympathy only to confirm more poor judgement on his part. The only thing these guys seem to be able to do well is shoot themselves in the foot.

While we know a week in politics is an eternity, the enemy is running out of time for any sort of October surprise. The stars are just not aligning for McNasty, and they must be aware of it because already we're hearing rumors of a rift between the McCain and Palin camps.

Being a dem, naturally I'm leery of seeing another defeat snatched from the jaws of victory, but at this late point can only see two scenarios; McCain either calls off the attack dogs in an attempt to preserve what little he has left of his dignity and go away quietly, or he goes all in and doubles down on the negativity. I suspect the latter considering the Rovian-trained crew he brought on board.

But what's more alarming, accepting the realizaton that Bush, McCain, and the GOP have been wrong on every issue of importance to Americans, is the fact they still have these so-called pundits or surrogates willing to get up on their hind legs on your teevee and look you in the eyes to proclaim everything will be hunkey-dorey if you just give the republicans one more chance. It's one thing to be a fool, but it's quite something else to put your face in front of a TV camera and remove all doubt.

This election has come down to who's stupid and who isn't. Without equivocation, it's clear that you can lead a republican to the kool-aid, but unlike a horse, you can actually make them drink it. Facebook | Digg | Reddit | Stumble | Buzz it! | Email Article |

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With millions of Americans losing their jobs, homes, insurance, retirement income and hope, John McCain's response to the crisis has been to run around screaming at the top of his lungs, "Bill Ayers, Acorn, tax cuts and Joe the plumber." Little wonder it's been so easy for Obama to pin the out of touch label on his forehead.

At the core of McCain's poorly run campaign was his willingness to go along with his campaign strategists who obviously convinced him to follow the Rovian blueprint of negative ads and dirty tricks. Well, could there possibly have been a worse time for these tactics considering the current economic climate? It may have worked in 2000, a period of unprecedented peace and prosperity when Gore should have run the Electoral College table on Bush, but it won't work now with real people suffering real losses. Even a few religiously insane nose-pickers are starting to comprehend that huge tax cuts for the already rich and a senseless two billion dollar a week war in Iraq have not worked in their favor. And isn't it fun to watch some of the smarter republicans jump the S.S. McCain.

As they say, it ain't over until the fat lady sings, and regardless of the outcome on Nov. 4, McCain has exposed himself as a typical, pandering politician who will do or say anything to get elected. He has done a complete 180 since his failed attempt at the presidency in 2000 and gawd save us if he does somehow pull off an upset, because no one of sane mind will believe this election was legitimate. In the unlikely event Diebold, disenfranchisement and other dirty tricks carry the day for McCain, and Obama folds like Gore and Kerry did, McCain faces a dem House majority and a potential dem veto-proof Senate. He could be a lame duck on day one.

Since he backed into the republican choice as their presidential candidate, his behavior has been contorted, confused, misleading and anything but presidential. His most important decision to date, his choice of Sarah Palin as his VP, will go down in history as a running joke that just keeps on giving. He's swirling down the toilet at such a pace that even his best new friend, Joe the plumber can't save him.

John McTurd, RIP. Facebook | Digg | Reddit | Stumble | Buzz it! | Email Article |

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Now that Vladimir Putin has been chased out of Alaskan air space by Guv-ner Sarah Palin, it's comforting for the rest of us to know that our most western front is so well protected from this trespassing peeking tom. If Putin sneaks into Alaska disguised as a wolf or moose, you should feel safer with Ms. Palin on guard, because with one wink she can vanquish any intelligent thought.

Ms. Palin, a stanch believer in dinosaurs walking with man, a miscalculation by a mere 160 million years or so if you believe the overwhelming majority of world scientists, also believes in the good book, the bible, verbatim. The bible never even mentions dinosaurs which begs the question how could this all important book miss something so big? But even using George Bush's fuzzy math there is no way you could get a mommy and daddy dinosaur on a boat with biblical dimensions of 300 by 50 cubits, whatever that means, along with two of every other animal on earth at that time. What did Noah feed them, the other animals? Sarah also seems to believe in witch exorcisms and the end times, which is all well and good if you believe in nonsense and idiots running around loose, but my concern is how could a guy like John McCain, someone who supposedly loves his country first, pick such a lunatic as his backup, an admitted trigger-finger happy hunter with the potential of controlling the nuclear codes.
You can put lipstick on a moose, but you can't make it kiss nicely.

This election isn't just about jobs, the economy, the failed wars and disastrous policies of Bush. It's about all of this of course, and electing someone with the good sense to avoid the pratfalls of the past eight years. McCain has established that he is not the man to reset our course by virtue of his pick of this boob Sarah Palin. His choice ranks right up there with Bush's decision to attack Iraq. The man is simply not qualified to lead America into a better future.

In a few weeks we will find out if American voters are smart enough to grab the reigns of their own destiny and throw out the bums. From what I've seen the past two presidential elections, it's a close call. Facebook | Digg | Reddit | Stumble | Buzz it! | Email Article |

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