How is it that that only place I’ve seen mention that Obama renewed the Patriot Act for another year is on metafilter?

Regardless, I thought you’d want to know that Big Brother is still watching.

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So, dear Rush Limbaugh is being taken to task for the use of the word ‘retard’ on his radio show. This–in and of itself–is completely unsurprising and not very interesting. I mean, this IS the guy with all the taste and class to imitate Michael J. Fox having a seizure, after all.

No, the delicious part is this:

“Our political correct society is acting like some giant insult has taken place by calling a bunch of people who are retards, ‘retards,” Limbaugh said of the report on Wednesday’s show. “These liberal activists are kooks, they are looney tunes.”

Liberal activists, you say?

You mean, like that tea-baggin’, moose-shooter Sarah Palin? Just a scant few days before Rush ate his foot, Palin was chastising her own colleagues for use of the same word, which in turn was only a day or so after wanting White House Chief of Staff Rom Emmanuel (D) fired for using the same word … about liberals.

Does everyone in D.C. have their heads so far up their own whazoos that no one can see they’re drowning in irony? Honestly, I think these people might be r… ah, challenged.

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Holy. Shit. Just when I thought Bush/Cheney were done bending over America and fucking it in the ass, their supreme court appointees take up the slack. (AND they get to kick John McCain in the balls doing it. Double win for die-hard GOP’ers!)

Today the Supreme Court opened the flood gates for unlimited corporate contributions in campaigns. Read the article or at least listen to the 3 minutes story in the link. All the rules of the ‘game’ just changed. What Obama raised in 2008 through individual contributions will look like petty cash come 2012. Politicians–EVERY politician–will be wholly owned by corporate sponsors. If you thought it was tough getting health care through Congress this past year, it–and any other piece of legislation that might upset special interests/corporations–is now beyond dead.

Outlandish prediction: Heavy backing of pro-business Republican candidates across the board, with huge gains in Congress and local elections. Just as we look back through American history and see the coming and going of political parties, this will later be seen as the death knell of the Democratic Party. How huge is this decision? Republican domination for the next 40 years, until some internal strife fractures that party. Start preparing yourself to hear the words “President Palin.” Start now, because I know it will take some time getting used to.

Sure, that sounds crazy. But so is overturning a cornerstone piece of legislation that’s been around and strengthened over the last 100+ years. Until today.

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I

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1. Nothing. If you don’t like it get the fuck out!
2. Or, Rush Limbaugh calling for segregated buses. We have known the man is an idiot for the last 15 years. I’m actually amazed that we can now unabashedly add ‘racist’ to that modifier. You’d think that it either would have been obvious much sooner or simply never come up. But yet here we are in 2009 and the man is calling for segregation. Fucker.
3. And our disposable lifestyles. This depressing article from the NYT highlights self-storage, a concept I didn’t get before the article. Now it just makes me want to scream.
   

   Even by the early ’90s, American families had, on average, twice as many possessions as they did 25 years earlier. By 2005, according to the Boston College sociologist Juliet B. Schor, the average consumer purchased one new piece of clothing every five and a half days.

   What is wrong with us? Why do we have a compulsion to spend money?

4. And Wolf Blitzer failing beyond miserably at Celebrity Jeopardy while Andry Richter mops the floor with him. Skip 2 or 3 minutes in if you don’t want to watch the entire 10 minutes. So the comedy sidekick (and genius) cleans up; the man who is supposed to deliver news can’t even get out of the red.
   

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Congratulations. Way to suck, California.

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Everybody has something to say about the economy, the downturn, and who is at fault. And there are a ton of ideas for how to fix everything.

But fundamentally, somewhere along the line, we’re going to have to make the turn from our 1950s mentality to a sleeker, more sophisticated future. Using television metaphors, we need to move from “Leave it to Beaver” and start becoming “Star Trek.”

For years, Congress was cowed by the auto industry to NOT make regulations on fuel standards. One has to wonder if the Big Three (Big Two?) wouldn’t be in a better position now if they’d been pushed to be better a decade ago.

Some are crying about spending too much on education. Because, surely, all those great cuts in education, the denigration of learning as “elitism”, that came during the Reagan Era have put us in such good stead 20 years later, when all those kids are out of school now. What does it say when after 8 years this past president still has 27% of the populace ardently supporting him? It says that 27% of the American populace is straight up ignorant, unable to deal with rational thought, overpowered by faith as opposed to fact.

We hear “Drill here, Drill now!” That’s catchy. Republicans have always been good with words, turning a phrase, ‘making’ the situation. Which is fine if you have faith, but doesn’t work if you review the facts of how much there really is down there to drill, now or later. To enhance our stature in the world economy (we left isolationism along the side of the road a loooong time ago), we need to start making things the world wants again, not just running up our credit cards buying Hannah Montana dolls made in China. What the world needs are technologies that simultaneously solve our energy and environmental problems. By creating those, we can solve our financial problems and maybe, just maybe, start paying down our debt for future generations.

How do we come up with those technologies? Oh, right. Education! It’s hard to make the next electric car if you don’t start understanding currents and electrical theory early on. Not just at college. Earlier. Not high school, earlier.

Because the sad fact of it is, we may not be done with this downslide. It may take another generation to get our society truly moving in the right direction.

So … let’s give them the tools, the foundation, the philosophy and idealism to do what needs to be done when they get there. Because I hate to be the one to break it to all the Baby Boomers out there: Wally and the Beav are going to live forever on celluloid, but all of you guys are eventually going to die. So stop driving this thing like it’s never going to run out of gas, will never need a new transmission, and will never be any better than it was when you were a kid.

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