I woke up to this bullshit on my Facebook page today:
Remember that check the Government gave us a few months back, the one you didn’t want? The taxes you’ll owe in Jan, Feb, Mar and Apr will be a lot less than that. Good thing you didn’t want it and put it in Savings. Using free money from the government to pay taxes. Trump is genius!!
Every time someone says Trump is a genius I wonder what their standard is. He is not a genius, stable or otherwise.
Uh'm unfortunately my wife and I were laid off because of the pandemic... you know, the one with 15 cases and soon to be none, and that was supposed to go away with the heat in April, that he now apparently knew was a lot deadlier then he told people? So I damn sure had to spend my stimulus check on groceries and bills for my family to survive.
Trump downplays the severity of the virus!
You think Trump is a genius? His tax cut added 1.5 trillion to the debt before the virus ever hit(you know, the tax cuts that were supposed to pay for themself in revenue?), now another 3 trillion so far due to the virus. 22 million people out of work and an economy that only looks good because it was built on deficit spending and stock buybacks.
As far as the stimulus covering your taxes, if your taxes are withheld correctly for your paycheck you don't owe much (if anything) at the end of the year anyway. That's the way it's designed.
If you owe, you didn't pay enough during the year. So basically, you got a stimulus check, if you were poor and desperate like my family at the moment you had to spend it. If not, you get to rub it our faces now. Either way, it was extra money that had to come from the government (even if you pay it back it was extra.. because otherwise, you'd have to come up with it now.)
It also was NOT Trump's stimulus. He signed a bill for the first stimulus that was veto-proof on arrival from the senate.
Sooner or later someone is going to have to get that money back somehow, and you will blame them instead of blaming the guy who created the debt. That's how it works. Biden's plan still doesn't raise taxes on anyone making less than $400k a year, Trump's plan is apparently to keep digging a hole. Nothing more, nothing new, no admitting it hasn't worked.
There is no genius here! Not even close. Trump has been an unmitigated disaster!
My employer recently sold my part of the company to someone else. I blogged about it back in December but I want to do so again with some fresh thoughts.
This is real to me now. Before the Healthcare problems of this country, while extremely important to me, did not affect me directly.
Now it is personal to me. Before I rant, let me say I'm not blaming my new employer, I'm blaming a broken for-profit health care system.
My old employer, Pioneer Natural Resources, paid $21k a year and covered my family at no cost to me. None!!! We even had our own clinic. Most American's probably don't even realize how much their employer contributes.I'm going to make a total guess here, but I believe when most people hear about the cost of a single-payer system they are not thinking about the money their employers are already putting into the system.
My new employer only pays for my insurance. I will have to pay in $11,900 a year to make sure my wife and kids have insurance. I'm actually going to be okay, I can handle it... it's not going to be easy, but it is doable.
My coworkers can not. Their compensation is based on a 40hr work week even though they put in 96 hrs a week. Mine is based on salary, I put in 84 a week, but it would be the same no matter what. In 2018 their wife and kids were covered. Every sickness, every broken bone, they had insurance.
In any other industrialized country in the world, this wouldn't happen. The amount paid would be the same (But in America we use healthcare as leverage to tie people to a job). Most middle class and poor people in this country live to their means (in other words their spending comes close to their paycheck), most cant absorb the sudden loss of almost $1000 in income a month.
Some of these guys will have to choose now between bills and coverage.
Now.... we spent $3.4 Trillion on healthcare as a country in 2016. It went up about 4% 2017 and is expected to be up 5.3% after the final numbers for 2018 (Edit - I have the numbers now, $3.6 Trillion).
Conservatives estimate the cost of universal healthcare at 32 trillion over 10 years. Democrats estimate $2.8 trillion. That's $3.2 trillion a year by the con estimate and covers everyone.
By any measure that's a savings of 2 trillion over 10 years.
A friend of mine posted the following piece of trash on his Facebook...
This one really pisses me off and I feel the need to set the record straight!
Point by ridiculous fucking point:
Guns: Only the extremists want to ban guns. A total ban has not ever been a goal. We only want common sense gun laws, something President Trumplestilskin is even starting to agree with. You know this and yet perpetuate this nonsense.
I will be strongly pushing Comprehensive Background Checks with an emphasis on Mental Health. Raise age to 21 and end sale of Bump Stocks! Congress is in a mood to finally do something on this issue - I hope!
Vegetarians: I was a vegetarian growing up (This is true, I was). We were friends. Did I ever once try to stop you from eating meat? Nope. And guess what, my vegetarian liberal friends don't try to stop me either. Once again, you are talking about extremists.
Being Down and Out: I've been down and out. Never asked anyone to take care of me. I used my unemployment benefits, but those were paid for by my employers. By the way 70%of people on aid have at least one job. I know you think they can magically better themselves but since conservatives are also against paying living wages that makes it difficult for the already disenfranchised to suddenly pull themselves up from their bootstraps. Especially if they have children.
Complaining: You crybabies are boycotting the NFL, Starbucks, Target and 100 other organizations because your feelings got hurt by something they did. Not to mention repeated calls for the firing of Stephen Colbert, Jon Stewart, Woopi Goldberg and a host of other. In fact you can put this one in the straight out lie department.
God: I seriously doubt any liberal had come to your house and asked you not to talk about your God. Likewise they don't try to stop you from paying or going to church. The most we do is try to keep it out of government. That's it. I see crosses on every third or fourth house where I live. That's your right. Build a 50ft tall Jesus in your back yard, it's your property. Your religion doesn't belong in the public square. Oh, and by the way... do you know who else is against public prayer? Jesus. Matthew 6:5.... read your own holy book sometime.
Health: I have fantastic insurance. Paid for by my employer (who, by the way pays about 10k as their portion of my premiums - while I pay around $2400 myself). But the prices are high because the poor have to use hospitals like they have revolving doors (they also have to wait until they are desperate becuase they can get no preventative care for anything). They can't pay their bills and that gets passed on to all of us. 3 out of 5 bankruptcies in this country (over 600,000 a year) are people who had insurance and still couldn't pay their medical bills. Why is looking at any way to fix a broken system a bad thing?
I didn't delete it. But you are absolutely right I'm very offended at this stupidity.
First a little background: On January 6, 2016 a group of armed idiots took over the the Malhuer Wildlife Refuge in Harney County Oregon. Although it's become convenient to call them the Oregon Militia the groups real name, according to them is The Citizens for Constitutional Freedom and they come from all over the place. There leader is an asshat named Ammon Bundy who is apparently on a mission from God.
Ammon Bundy ~ Driven by God
That's right, he is on a mission from God. In case you didn't know this apparently God wrote the constitution of the United States on Stucky's napkins and gave them to George Washington. We have been messing with God's divine plan for all this beautiful land. How bad? The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has dared to charge ranchers for using federal lands to graze their cattle. It's irrelevant that the USA charges them far less them they would pay on private land. Or that taxpayers will have to foot the bill to upkeep that land without those grazing fees being collected. These constitutional scholars think they should be able to use the land for free. Bundy's daddy Cliven has refused to pay his grazing fees and even had a standoff with the feds in Nevada last year over this very issue.
If that wasn't bad enough the feds also arrested two men, Dwight and Steven Hammond, for poaching deer and setting fire to federal lands in Oregon (That's not what they claim they did, but their own relatives say they were paoching). These winners were apparently trying to cover up a deer slaughter with a fire and burned a lot of Federal BLM Land. The were sentenced to prison, but for less then the minimum required by law, so the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ordered them back to prison and they also lost their cattle grazing rights for two years.
Apparently this rilled up Ammon Bundy and the Redneck Militia that we are now call Y'all Qaeda or Vanilla Isis. They brought their guns to Oregon for a protest and then bravely stormed and took over an unmanned Wildlife Refuge and they have been there since and will not leave until the federal government gives up control of the wildlife refugee. They were vague about what they wanted at first, but now want the government to give up the land.
Okay so these dumb fuckers gave up jobs and left their loved ones to come and fight the good fight against what they feel is government overreach. Who do they want to control that land? No one is sure, How should there goals be met? They have no idea.
They are a bunch of idiots who want to play army. They are a bunch of seditious traitors who are wanting with all their little hearts to take up arms against their country. Oh, and the Hammond's... the guys these idiots are doing this for, have said straight out to go the fuck away. They don't want their help. At all.
This is Jon Ringlingbrother Ritzheimer. This guy is one of the Militia idiots occupying a federal Government Building in Oregon. He is a combat vet whose only sources of income are his GOVERNMENT disability check and his wife's job. He is a member of the Untied States Paramilitary Patriot movement and was a member of the Oath Keepers until he got kicked out. Wait a minute how the fuck do you get kicked out of the Oath Keepers? Oh, he wanted to arrest a member of the US congress. Apparently that is where the Oath Keepers drew the crazy line.
I could go on and on about Jon but instead I'll leave you with one final fascinating fact. He tried to raise 10 million dollars on a GoFund me page to either finance his life in hiding or challenge John McCain for his Arizona senate seat.
The main takeaway from this is that Jon is getting disability checks from the government which he is now using to fight the government.
In fact a lot of these guys are on disability or welfare or other government programs.
Apparently one of them was also in the foster kid business, He was getting over $100,000 a year for fostering four children, On the plus side that money came from Catholic Charities and not from our taxes but something inside of me is deeply cynical about someone whose main source of income was raising children who undoubtedly helped him work his small ranch.
His name is Robert "La Voy" Finicum and he is actually surprised the children were taken away. He is quoted as blaming pressure from the feds who, "must have gotten to the Governor, who told the state to take them away from there." Could it be because he is committing a felony?
Finicum press conference after destroying supposedly hidden cameras that were in plain site.
Jon Ritzenburger Ritzheimer is right there grabbing 15 more minutes of fame with him.
Seems like a lot of guys with too much time and way to much paranoia got together to play military. Poor dumb overprivileged assholes with too much time on their hands. Willing to follow anyone who will lead them against the government they blame for everything.
So far we have allowed these asshat insurgents to come and go as they please. The government has taken a very low key approach. These assholes have removed cameras and added at least on road to the refuge, destroying public lands. We have done nothing. They have called for reinforcements. We have done nothing. They called for snacks. That's when the Internet started mocking them. That's when the Internet started sending them sex lube, and sex toys. That's when the Internet started sending them dicks.
Jon responds to a good dicking!
They have been called Y'all Qaeda and Vanilla ISIS and those names seem to fit. As I said Ammon Bundy believes this is his divine purpose. He is being driven by God, just as ever religious zealot is. And like any good religious zealot he has found many willing to follow him. So the names fit. They are the American Taliban.
They are also poor fools who think this rich man is acting in their best interests. Ammon Bundy is the son of a millionaire. These are not people fighting for the rest of us, they are fighting for the 1% as fools throughout history have always done. Cliven Bundy is not some small rancher getting crushed by the Government. No! he is a super rich asshole who just doesn't want to pay his fair share. Make no mistake if it wasn't for the BLM these lands would probably already be used up. The Bundy's and this militia are not just trying to take this land from the government, they are trying to take it from all of us.
And that's why they all deserve a big bag of dicks!
Sooner or later if I ever get any readers I will eventually get a troll. I'm looking forward to it. That being said there is a proper way to troll. If you want to do it successfully you will at least attempt to follow the rules.
1) Make sure that you disrespectfully refer to the twice elected sitting president of the United states as Obummer, Muslim in Chief, That Mentorship or Dear Leader. Other right wing asshats may not know who you are talking about otherwise.
I actually saw someone refer to the president as that Kenyan Islamofacist Socialist today. That was some good trolling right there.
Nothing makes your point better then insulting the president. Feel free to use this hilarious trolling picture.
2) USE ALL CAPS. IT'S KIND OF LIKE YELLING, AND WE ALL KNOW THE LOUDEST ASSHAT WINS!
3) Use bad grammar. I'm no expert either but try, you on the other hand do not have. If you spell liberal as libral, librel, labradoodle or whatever trust me every other 4th grade reading level teabagger will still understand and respect you. I'm not talking about something simple like using the wrong form of your or you're, heck everyone occasionally does that.
4) The only sources you should use are brietbart.com, the blaze and little tiny right wing news sources no one has ever heard of.
5) Make sure you tell me my sources are all part of the liberal media. Even if I source factcheck.org, heck even if I source Fox News or the Wall Street Journal. If I use it then it must be a lefty rag.
Follow these simple rules and you will be well on your easy to successfully rolling this or any other liberal blog.
I work 90 hours a week in the oil fields of West Texas.
Literally 90 hours a week and I can barely make ends meet for me and my
family. Isn't that just ridiculous in this society? I make rich people
richer and barely see my wife and kids during my two week on hitches.
And if I don't get my 90hrs I can't afford my bills and put myself deeper in debt. It's not easy work either. We have no scheduled breaks 12-15 hours a day on most wells. God forbid we take a vacation day. When we do we get paid 8 hours straight time. Every day of vacation I take costs me several hundred dollars in pay. My employer even schedules my 14 day hitches to start on Tuesdays just to get out of paying one day of overtime (my hitch ends on Monday).
Everyone around me is right wing and can't be made to
understand that they continually vote against their own self interests.
Sly politicians have convinced them to vote for non issues instead of
something that could actually help them. They keep the middle class poor
and make the poor absolutely destitute and somehow have convinced
people it's the poor people's fault.
It's not the poor people's fault. It's just not. You idiots want to cry and whine about welfare recipients. They are not getting your money. Corporate welfare is not paying their share. The rich are dodging their taxes so you have to pay more and more and more. You cry about welfare cheats when very few exist. You cry about drug testing that actually costs more then it saves. You call these people lazy and tell them to get a job, but at the same time you are against giving them a living wage.
Wake the Fuck up! There was a time in this country when hard work got you somewhere. Now all it does is line the pockets of the rich! My grand parents bought a nice home and raised 6 kid's on one 40hr a week income. Stop letting them steal the American dream and making us their bitch!
