Thursday, November 16, 2017

STOP THE GOP TAX BILL--CALL THE BASTARDS!!!!! The life you save WILL be your own!!!!!

22 November 2017 update: Happy Thanksgiving!
 
Happy Thanksgiving, dear Resistance friends!
 
This year, in spite of all the crap and pain, I am mightily thankful for my fellow Resisters--my dad and each and every one of you.
 
As the cold weather and short days draw us inward to reflect, I find this time of year particularly difficult because I miss Dot Calm.
 
Yes, I'm grateful for her sake that she was spared the continuing physical pain of her MS as well as the psychological torment that last year's election would have wrought on her sensitive soul.
 
But, yes, I can't help but miss her.
 
She was gone too soon and for the wrong reasons--insurance wouldn't pay for the medications that kept her condition in check; shitty doctors in North Carolina; a regional health care system overloaded and suffering from insufficient staff and resources even for those who could afford to pay; and, ultimately, death by poverty because the "rehab" facility gave up on Dot Calm and decided to warehouse and starve her to death instead.
 
This is not the kind of psychological wound one ever recovers from, especially when it's your best friend in all the world that our shitty, uncivilized society has ripped off the planet and discarded.
 
But still, I am thankful.
 
Thankful to have known her and learned so much from her, thankful she was spared seeing the orange orangutan occupy the Oval Office, thankful for the Resistance.
 
Yes, I am extremely grateful for my dad and for all of you--it won't likely be a quick victory, but we will surely win our country back as long as we refuse to give up.
 
I am grateful that I am not alone in my vision for what this nation could and should be--a beacon of liberal, humanitarian, egalitarian Enlightenment values.
 
And I'm humbled and honored to be on the same team with all of you working to achieve that friendly, promising vision.
 
And now, to honor Dot Calm, let me share some of her Thanksgiving traditions. Maybe they'll become traditions in your home as they are in mine.

If Dot Calm were here today, she would be wearing her Navajo Sleeping Beauty turquoise necklace, earrings, and ring from Alltribes.com to acknowledge the evil that this country perpetrated and continues to perpetrate on the Native Americans. The set looked something like this:

She bought the set specifically to support our Native Americans, who are still living in third-world conditions right here in the good ol' U.S. of A.

If you ever need beautiful silver Navajo or Zuni jewelry, belts, or other accessories for men and women, please support our Native Americans by shopping with http://www.alltribes.com/. I do.

Next on Dot Calm's Thanksgiving traditions: don't forget to watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade...Dot Calm's favorite! Here comes Santa Claus! My dad says it starts at 9:00 a.m. on NBC.

Last, don't forget Dot Calm's favorite video: Sarah Palin spews word salad while botching a Thanksgiving turkey pardon. Poor Sarah has no idea of the slaughter going on behind her. Inarticulate, oblivious to obvious reality...who does that remind you of?
 

 
*****
 
20 November 2017 update:
 
Friends, please read the original post below and CALL CALL CALL like your life depends on it because IT DOES.
 
The Republicans are trying to use their vicious tax bill to take away our health care--again!
 
Now that they've defunded CHIP, they plan to dismantle not only Obamacare, Medicare, and Medicaid but ALL health insurance by collapsing the markets--once they eliminate the young and healthy from the insurance pool, insurance costs will rise for us Americans who need insurance...and we will pay more money for less-to-no coverage, assuming we can afford it at all...until those of us who need insurance but are not rich get priced out and are left to die.
 
Republicans will succeed in killing tens of millions of us and our loved ones if we don't stop them.

Under the vicious Republican tax plan, if you make less than $75,000 per year, your taxes will go UP so that millionaires' and billionaires' taxes can go DOWN.

Let THAT sink in!
 
Public outcry is our last, best weapon, so USE IT.
 
My dad and I have been calling every single day.
 
We start each week by calling the short list below; then we start calling the rest.
 
This week, I'm going to use the contact information below to e-mail the bastards so that I can give them a piece of my mind outside of working hours.
 
Last week, I sat on the goddamn train into work and called the entire short list.
 
Fuck anyone who could hear me and didn't like it--it's their asses I'm trying to save, too, any way I can.
 
But part of the reason I am doing e-mails this week is so that I can send multiple messages to each bastard:
  1. Please don't kill us, duh!
  2. Please keep net neutrality--we are one of the richest nations on the planet, but we have the slowest, least widespread, and most expensive Internet of any developed nation, duh.
  3. Reinstate CHIP funding, duh.
  4. Help Puerto Rico--see #1, duh.

Yep, that's right--not only is our health care under attack AGAIN via the Republicans' vicious tax "reform" plan, but they're also after our Internet--which we paid for using our taxes and which thus is part of the public commons.

The bastards are after our Internet because it keeps us informed, and when we're informed, Republicans lose.

Welcome to disaster capitalism, friends--the fascist practice of heaping more crises on us than we can handle so that we can't possibly keep up. Well, fuck them and the horses they rode in on--there are still more of us than of them, so let's keep taking the fight to them.

Please get involved, friends--make the calls, send the e-mails, and fax the faxes. Let's all keep those pitchforks sharpened and those torches fueled and ready in case castle-storming time is nigh.

We can rest when this is all over and we've won our country back!

*****
 
 
*****

16 November 2017 original post:

Treason's greedings, fellow Dot Calm Readers, Freedom Fighters, and Truth Crusaders!

Walp, we had another mass shooting since you and I tawked last--in a direct contradiction of combover Caligula's tweets, it occurred in Northern California--not a second shooting at Sutherland Springs, TX.

It was yet another white terrorist--yet another radicalized domestic violence offender.

He very nearly shot up a school.

As it was, he left two children injured but would have massacred more innocent young lives if school authorities hadn't employed quick thinking and locked down the school before he could get in.

He shot up seven crime scenes, last time I counted.

Jesus ass-twerking Christ, friends.

Every time an American is shot, Wayne LaPierre has an orgasm...and so do the rest of the bloodthirsty, pro-death, pro-suffering Greedy Oligarch Putinists.

Fuck them all, every one.

******************************************
School Uniforms
Assorted plaids in attractive BULLET-PROOF
no-iron colors
--Dot Calm, 29 July 2013

*****

SLAUGHTERHOUSE, USA
 
WOW!
We can barely keep up with the shootings!
Where will it end?
Better stay away from malls,
don't send your beloved children to school...
Home school...
in fact,
don't leave your home except for essentials.
This holiday season,
 why not give bullet-proof vests
to those you really love?

This is a war zone!
 
HEY, LaPIERRE, ENOUGH YET???
--Dot Calm, 5 November 2013
******************************************

But that's not the reason I couldn't skip blawgging today to recover from my trip out of town with le dadster--the trip was awesome, BTW (thank you for asking, I assume).

The reason I perforce must blawg--the reason there's no rest for the wicked--is that the vicious GOP tax bill PASSED the House today.

That means that it's now the Senate's turn to stick it to us and watch us bleed...if we let them.

You know the drill by now...

CALL CALL CALL THE BASTARDS and e-mail them and fax them using the contact information below.

Here we are again...reduced yet again to begging OUR government NOT to kill us...begging OUR government not to give OUR money to the already-disgustingly-rich who need it least when we average folks are struggling...hurting...one calamity away from bankruptcy and financial ruin.

Let's review why it's so important to CALL THE BASTARDS with every fiber of our beings like our lives depend on it because of course they do.

First of all, the rich do NOT need tax cuts.

By definition, they already have more than enough money to survive on, including buffer against disasters.

We don't.

The system is already rigged in favor of the rich--it has been since Reagan took office.

Proportionally, even though the raw percentage is higher, the rich pay less tax than we do. Proportionally, they pay far less into the system than they take out.

In effect, what they are doing is socialism: making their debts public so that you and I pay them while making their profits private so that only they benefit. In other words, you and I foot the bill for the schools, roads, and other social services that benefit the rich most; the rich reap what we sow and keep it for themselves.

For example, when Wal-Mart refuses to pay a worker a living wage, you and I pick up the slack by covering Medicaid and food stamps. You and I are paying for the expense of the worker that Wal-Mart has incurred but refuses to pay.

And if that's not enough government-approved theft for you, remember that Wal-Mart pays little-to-no taxes, so you and I are also paying their tax bill...while the Walton family sells us Chinese crap and laughs all the way to the bank.

The rich pay their taxes from their excess; we pay from our sustenance.

Think about it: do you really think that a family of four with $5 million or $10 million--even $1 million--would literally starve to death anywhere in America?

Next point to review: trickle down doesn't.

Even George H.W. Bush called Reagan's trickle-down bullshit "voodoo economics." Kansas's Sam Brownback proved that cutting taxes cripples the economy by denying services to those who need them--hellz, even the Republicans in Kansas overrode Brownback to raise taxes. They got sick of the schools closing weeks and months early because they ran out of money. They got tired of driving on crappy roads there was no money to fix because they'd given all the money to the rich instead of investing it in civil society.

What happens when you give the rich more money is that they keep it for themselves.

Duh.

Maybe tRUmp "economic advisor" Gary Cohn could act surprised when the rich and the corporations informed him of this, but it sure AF ain't n00z to anyone watching Randi Rhodes or reading this blawg.

The corporations do not pay their workers more--they buy back their stocks and cut themselves nice fat checks for dividends and bonuses.

And here's another Republican myth busted: the rich and the corporations are not job creators. They do not create jobs because job creation comes from demand, not supply.

In other words, Republicans pretend not to understand that, to create jobs, you need people to spend their money.

I tried to educate my Tea Party Christian ex-friend on this point by giving him an example he can understand in his line of work.

He is a small business owner who works for individuals and families doing construction.

He once proudly called himself a job creator.

"Great!" I said, "If you're a job creator, then hire you twelve people right now and give them jobs."

"Hm," he mused, "I don't have enough work to keep that many people busy, even if I could hire that many good, skilled workers."

"So," I observed, "you're saying that it's not you but your clients who are creating the jobs--when they have money to spend, they call you. When they don't have money, they don't call you. When they're struggling to make ends meet, you go hungry."

One long, awkward pause later...

"That's about the size of it," he was forced to concur.

The same principle is true across the board.

Jobs are created by the middle and lower classes who spend money because they need to. Jobs are not created by the rich who hoard money because they can. Jobs are not created because stuff is available to buy but because people who need or want the stuff have the money to buy it.

And the Republicans in Congress want to extract the money out of our society and hand it all to the rich, taking it out of the economy--out of circulation.

Every time they've done this in the past, our wages DROP.

Just as Reagan and every president since has demonstrated, cutting taxes for the rich causes Americans' wages to drop, not rise, because there's no incentive to pay workers what they're worth. There is incentive only to increase profit by cutting spending, like by outsourcing jobs and driving the race to the bottom.

That's the first whammy.

Then, Republicans will go all "anti-deficit" on us and pitch fits that we can no longer afford Medicare, Medicaid, and ultimately Social Security.

They're already looking to use this tax bill to defund Medicare and Medicaid, and, if they get away with it, Social Security will be next.

That's OUR money, friends--money that you and I and my dad have been paying in our whole lives.

It's OUR money that the Greedy Oligarch Putinists want to hand to the already-rich who do NOT pay enough taxes and who did NOT earn it.

So the second whammy is that, if the Senate passes this gawd-awful bill, we will have to pay AGAIN, out of pocket, for these social services for which we've ALREADY paid.

And then there's the third whammy.

Republicans want to take away our tax deductions, which will also reduce what we have in our pockets to spend.

They want to take away the mortgage interest deduction, which would ultimately cripple the housing industry by keeping people from upgrading to newer, larger homes and incentivizing them to rent rather than buy in the first place.

They want to take away the charitable deduction, which is a huge reason many people make the effort to donate their lightly worn goods rather than throwing them in the trash.

And then there're those swanky, swanky teachers living phat like rock stars...

Well, gawd forbid they get to take tax deductions on all the school supplies that the rich, by demanding ever more tax cuts, have forced teachers to buy out of their own pockets. These supplies should be provided by the schools, since they're legitimate tools that teachers need to do their jobs.

By Republican logic, you'd think that the rich were poor and the poor were rich.

But wait--there's moar.

Republicans also want to repeal the Affordable Care Act individual mandate.

This would encourage young, healthy people NOT to buy insurance, which would drive up insurance costs for the rest of us who do buy insurance.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that our premiums would go up at least 10%/year.

Over the next ten years, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that this repeal would force at least 13 million innocent hardworking Americans off health insurance...which saves the treasury money because dead people make no insurance claims.

That sounds like a sick joke but isn't. It's deadly serious.

Ultimately, insurance costs would rise to the point that the entire industry would collapse because no one who needs insurance would be able to afford it, and those who might otherwise be inclined to buy it won't because it won't cover squat.

In short, if Republicans get their way, your pay would drop, your deductions would vanish, and your out-of-pocket costs for goods and services would skyrocket.

If Republicans get their way, we'll all have LESS money in our pockets to pay for goods and services that Republicans want to cost us MORE.

In other words, you'll be a whole lot poorer a whole lot quicker.

Got it?
 
And if you're still not convinced that the GOP tax bill is a gift only to the rich and a fuck-you to the rest of us, remember that any individual tax cuts that might help you or me vanish after a few years--but the tax cuts for the corporations and the rich are permanent.
 
Republicans pooh-pooh criticisms regarding this point, claiming that no Republicans who'd be in office at that future date would evar let the individual tax cuts lapse, oh no.
 
Yeah, right--they said the same thing about sequestration, and look where that got us! (Hint: it got us sequestered, with steep spending cuts across the board that neither party really wanted but that both parties got stuck with because Republicans can't govern, duh.)
 
So, please, friends, call...call like the wind...call like I do...call like my dad has been doing and will continue to do. Call the short list first; then call, e-mail, and fax the rest of the bastards because this is OUR money they want to steal from us and give to the lazy rich bastards who didn't earn, don't need, and don't deserve it.

- Dot Calm's shadow

(If you value my work, please consider supporting me on Patreon--thank you!)
    
*****
If thoughts and prayers are so effective,
let's give the rich thoughts and prayers
instead of tax cuts.
-- Dot Calm's shadow, 6 November 2017
*****

If you can stomach a quick 'n' dirty tally of each fresh new hell we find ourselves in with Putin's cock holster squatting in the White House (eww!), don't forget to check out What The Fuck Just Happened Today?

And if you prefer to watch your n00z and analysis in carefully pre-screened nuggets on YouTube, check out my videos page--Dot Calm's shadow's M00bies from The Resistance.

 *****

Contact Congress and give the bastards a piece of your mind!

E-MAIL your own members of Congress and be counted (by law):


FAX your own members of Congress; fax your own governor; fax tRUmp himself (new--and my newest toy, bwahahahaha!!!!!); and use "Letter2editor" to send a letter to your local paper:

Text "Resist" to 50409 

and then

CALL THE BASTARDS!!!!!

First, call your own senators, be they Republican or Democrat.

Next, call everyone on this handy triage list:
  • John McCain
  • Susan Collins
  • Lisa Murkowski
  • Jeff Flake
  • Shelley Moore Capito
  • Bob Corker (use his e-mail link below if the phone doesn't work)
  • Rob Portman
Then, if you can (with a brief script, plan on two hours to call all 52), please click each contact below (source: https://contactsenators.com/party/republican) and call every one of these bastards:

Republican Senators

This is a list of all current Republican U.S. Senators (52 total):

If you want numbers for all of the senators, click here for Daily Kos's directory.

If you want numbers for all of the representatives, click here for the House's directory.

covfefe, when the walls fell

*****
 

posted by Dot Calm @ 6:38 PM