Sunday, December 16, 2012

Current Comedy: Suffering Little Children


Back in the happier days when … Aye!) Fonzi was cool & B) fore it was “goodbye blue skies, hello gray,” the sitcom series “Happy Days” seemed seamlessly inventive and we could depend on the Cunninghams & clan to resolve each and every problem within 22 minutes thus keeping the world always seeming right, right? Simple and understandable. That is until that one episode when the whole gang went to Hawaii and Fonz jumped his surfboard over a shark. Then we all realized they weren’t simply simple, they were simply stupid. Nowadays you can’t even find that tripe in syndication on cable. It’s dead. The whole Happy horse crap had eaten itself. Like the way the GOP elephant keeps in-breeding itself into a mammoth extinction.
 This season as we watch the collective “conservative” character careen past contemptible and straight-aways into farcical and we once again endure these wingnuts boasting over the open pyre they’ve made of their once grand old party, it’s beginning to look a lot like it’s time to pop the cork on the whole thing and sing “Auld Lang Syne.” These guys won’t even make believable cartoon villains anymore, not after this one.
Tis the season to make folly as they say. Or so it seems for the GOP this yuletide. First off, there’s the whole McConnell filibustering himself business, which adds a whole Keystone Cop-ish flair to their work these days. Or the fact that it is supposed to be big news that SC Senator Jim De Mint sent in his resignation so he can go run the Heritage Foundation to collect more donations to advance conservative legislation. Or there’s that part where 25% of GOP want their states to secede because Obama is crushing business meanwhile we’re experiencing the largest increase in corporate profits in history. But now, as outrageous as the veryday antics are,the GOP has not only now officially jumped the shark, but  they twirled their mustache and tossed Tiny Tim’s crutch in the Barbie. & just in time for Christmas!
Now over the years, I have watched the GOP make some major bonehead moves, like that whole Bush thing, spending the surplus on tax cuts, and putting a billion dollars behind the idea that the majority of the American thinking-public would consider Romney remotely human. You guys crack me up.
But this whole Rick Santorum/Glenn Beck driven Agenda 21 fiasco the Right have been churning for the past several months has finally lead to the Republicans voting down spreading the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) globally because so many GOP hate the UN that we are supposed to be afraid this treaty is secret proof the UN wants to kill our children. That’s right, the treaty that establishes universal accommodations for the disabled and is modeled off of our own 1990 ADA is actually such a Republican freak-out that icky old Ricky Santorum came out of mothballs to come on stage and call for the GOP to torpedo the treaty by saying signing the treaty to enforce the ADA throughout the rest of the world would give the UN the power to euthanize US disabled kids. So keep it straight, if we are loyal Americans we need to be OK with not caring about the lame and the weak, because if we do the bad guys will kill our children. Thom Hartmann points out that following the successful Santorum drive for rejecting the treaty, Tricky Ricky sent out his latest fundraising letter.
You know the most amazing irony of this whole thing is that the actual acronym for the treaty is CRPD, which equals “crippled,” right? These guys are picking the CRPD and imagine themselves heroes. Of course, along with their track record on the sick, the young the poor and the elderly, I guess that makes sense.  
Like with the mass shooting in Connecticut, even as parents around the country are still fearful of sending their kids back to school and kids around the county are even more tearful about going, TX GOP loudmouth Louis Gohmert is already on the airwaves screaming that the injustice in this was that the principal hadn’t had an M-4 automatic weapon on hand and FOX is shrieking that Obama’s a dictator for mentioning in his eulogy that we could do a better job of protecting our kids from gun violence. Of course to give credit where its due, if Republicans had had their way these past few years, the GOP dream of the good old days is so union-free that those kids would never have been in danger in those classrooms. Heck, by age 7 they all would have been shackled to machinery in sweatshops instead.
But you know what? America knows their happier days weren’t yours and they certainly weren’t mine. This isn’t leadership, those guys aren’t heroes, they aren’t statesmen, and they’re nothing more than bad actors. When they’ve gotten to the point of suffering the little children because their deaths interfere with the GOP’s pre-scheduled flag-waving, it begins to look a lot like Republicans have taken leave of the census and all they are left with is cunning hams & the Klan.
Otherwise Happy Holidays!
--mikel weisser writes from the left coast of AZ.

Mohave County Democratic Elects New Leaders





The Mohave County Democratic Party held elections at their reorganizational meeting in Lake Havasu City on December 5th. The group elected Kingman resident and county District One party chair Joe Longoria to a two year term as chairman of the county party.  A recently returned Kingman native, Longoria was elected last month to the District One position and had served as the county point man for the Arizona Democratic Party’s Coordinated Campaign.  “I didn’t think that I would end up in this position, but we learned so much. Dems are going to go to the state house not facing a super-majority and our Congressional delegation is majority blue. We set up a lot of ground work, to move forward we will build from that.”  Joe will replace Ed Pyrzynski, also of Kingman.
Stepping down, due to family illness, after serving as an interim chair for much of the turbulent 2012 election season, Ed Pyrzynski, a former postman from Chicago was happy with the election. “The year started out rough, but things worked out. The Dem booth at the County Fair was impressive.  All of us made a difference.”
Rounding out the executive board, two-time state senatorial candidate, Beth Weisser was re-elected to her position as first vice chair and Peach Springs’ community leader Wanda Quesula was re-elected to be second vice-chair. After over a decade in the county leadership, Lake Havasu’s Kay Lilland announced her retirement as party treasurer and promised to stay in an active position to help train her replacement, Kingman’s Danny Baker. Acting county party secretary Mikel Weisser was elected to continue serving in that position. And, Bullhead City’s David Hamilton was re-elected Sergeant at Arms. 
The Democrats will be facing a major rebuilding year with not only the replacement of much of the party officers, but also the departure of the heads of all three county districts as well. In Lake Havasu’s District Three, in addition to the retirement of long-time county treasurer and Havasu organizer, Kay Lilland, district chair Dave Tunnell, another Havasu mainstay, is also stepping down citing illness in the family. Tunnell will be replaced by Joan McDermott. Both Tunnell and Lilland have a driving force in the Lake Havasu Democratic Party for years and both intend to remain active. Besides training the new county treasurer, Lilland will continue to be the leader of LHC’s Democratic Association of Havasu and Tunnell will take a role on the newly revamped finance committee.
In District Two serving the Bullhead area, acting chair Julie Piquette will continue officially in the role. Piquette replaced former chair Hillary Williams when she resigned to run for the newly created Mohave County District Five Supervisor position. In Kingman’s District One, long-time chair and county party office manager Mary McLaughlin is stepping down after eight years. Her son Patrick Gonzales also previously served as county chair.
In addition to electing Mohave County Party officers the group also approved the slate of delegates who will represent the county party at the state party’s quarterly meetings. Following a successful season of voter registration and increased precinct volunteers the county delegation is increasing from 14 to 20. From District One, the Kingman area, the delegates are:  Ed Pyrzynski, John Holland, Mert Glancy, Joan Johns, Wanda Quesula, Beth Weisser, Mikel Weisser, Patrick Gonzales, Mary McLaughlin, Susie Gestine, and Perry Wickerd of Dolan Springs. From District Two, the Bullhead City area, Marty & Patricia Coburn, Julie Piquette, Dave Hamilton, and Laureen Hayden. And from District Three, Lake Havasu, Joan McDermott, Kay Lilland & Dave Tunnel. The party also announced its list of newly appointed PCs, or precinct committee leaders: Paul Dean Young, Merrit Becket, Jacky Goode from LHC; and  Carol & Pete Voydanoff, Hilary Williams, Richard Krup, Iretha Badnar, Barb Grier from the Bullhead City area.

In addition to the election of officers, the party’s monthly meeting also served as the official kick-off for this year’s annual fundraiser, the Presidential Inaugural Ball. Event chair Dave Tunnell, working with is the lead on the committee, reported the essentials of the Inaugural Ball: It will be held Jan. 19th, $35, black tie optional. Dinner/Dance guest former Board of Regents Chair and recent leader of AZ’s delegation to the Democratic National Convention, Fred Duval. Tunnell’s survey  of LHC Dems suggests that there may be a true interest in such a celebration.” We are also hoping to be able to read a blurb from the Whitehouse thanking Mohave County Dems. The tickets are distributed to district chairs.
For more information Contact, Joe Longoria, county chair Mohave County Democratic Party, 620 E. Beale St., Suite 4 Kingman, AZ 86401, ph: 928-753-0006. Or visit the website at: mohaveweb@mohavedemocrats.org

Thursday, December 6, 2012

December Newsletter


Hello Everybody,
Another exciting month I tell you. Since the election we have been pressing for every idea we could develop, which continued to advance the issues we tried to promote in the congressional campaign: social justice, economic fairness, celebratory diversity, Democrat cheerleading, GOP jeer-leading, bad rhymes, loud music, art & fun.  Larger than politics, I joined into this effort of the Democrats and launched my own personal campaign within it, to help our world get better, not just try to get votes. With your help and support we have accomplished some things I wanted to share. Right now, tonight as I type, I think we are doing just that, accomplishing some things, changing the world.
So first, to acknowledge the realities of politics in the Mohave County, as yet another election goes by and Dems only gather around 30-40% of the vote in this county, it became apparent to me that  it was not only me who could not win in the new AZ CD4 without Mohave County, no Democrat in the region could until we revitalize the party and change the overall culture. So, rather than wait for someone else to start working on it, since the election I have thrown myself into our local District One Party and Mohave County Central Committee. Towards that end I stepped up to fill a vacancy and, first, served as acting county/district one secretary and now, as of Dec. 5th , I have been elected by acclaim to both those positions. I also am thrilled to say my best friend and great inspiration Beth Weisser has been re-elected to her position as county party first vice-chair.
Mohave County Democratic Party: http://mohavedemocrats.org/
Next, while many Dems can trot out carloads of reasons we need to sound moderate and be gentle with the GOP around us, I feel those guys have been willfully impoverishing the country and wreaked untold suffering among the public and, more so, will only stop when confronted and if possible, as often as possible, be belittled in as comic a way as possible so the public will begin to see their policies for the jokes they are and stop falling for the all snake oil. So, with 2012 congressional campaign officially over I have re-activated my political humor column, Current Comedy (now in its 22nd year) Already there are two new columns available online at my own blog sites of course, The Left Coast of AZ (the renamed blog page from the original campaign blog) & the Current Comedy site (which recently celebrated its 5th year online). But even more, Current Comedy is also being featured on such national sites as Op-Ed News and Daily Kos and has returned at last to my hometown Kingman Daily Miner. Please visit KDM and post a comment.
From the Left Coast of AZ:  http://mikelweisser.blogspot.com/

On the issues of social justice, ethical economics and public health and safety, I have joined in the push for cannabis reform and pooled my efforts with a long-time Dolan Springs activist (who also happens to be my campaign assistant) Perry Wickerd, and LEAP (Law Enforcement Against Prohibition) regional spokesperson, Jay Fleming, to promote MMJ (medical marijuana) awareness and reform. Our nation is coming to a new age and the legalization and regulation of social cannabis is the only way to win the drug war. Arizona’s fledgling MMJ laws, while a great move forward, are still draconian at best and filled with unnecessary obstacles for patients and unreasonable impediments for the commerce of this already robust and expanding industry. So far, since Jan Brewer finally allowed Prop 203 to take effect of sorts this past January, over $5,000,000 have been generated in state revenue despite the best efforts of Brewer and the GOP to cripple every aspect of the initiative. However, a dispensary license has approved for Dolan Springs, so the public there need to be informed of its impact on their society, their rights and responsibilities, and have some of the persistent myths of the drug war debunked. With that in mind, we have disorganized a Dolan Springs town hall meeting Thursday, Dec 13 5:30-7:00 at the Ranch Club in downtown Dolan Springs. Today news of that upcoming meeting was front and center on the local Kingman Daily Miner website and our efforts are just beginning. If you can attend this meeting, come and share your voice. The restaurant at the Ranch Club loves this idea so much they are holding a $5 pizza buffet for that night. While the meeting will be held to feed your head, if you come with the munchies you can also feed your belly for the cheap.
Lastly in our continuing efforts to promote art and diversity of culture, we are thrilled to announce we are resuming our collaboration for the 6th year with Kingman wunderkind, our resident rocket scientist Bruce Carter and the Mohave County Library to organize and host Kingman’s immensely popular book festival KABAM, (“Kingman-Area-Books-Are-Magic!”) In addition, also thanks to Bruce and his dear wife Frances,  our very own So-Hi Peacesign Themepark will be hosting a visiting artist Mata Ortiz pottery exhibit and demonstration Dec. 22nd late afternoon. Details on these two are TBA.
But hey, what an exciting month! Help us keep the activity going. Spread the word, The Mikel Weisser Campaign is making a difference today. Join us now and we will make an even bigger one tomorrow. Please understand, I know I don’t know what I am doing, but I am doing my very best at trying to figure it out as I get there. Thank you ALL for teaching me as I go. This campaign is about us making the changes we want to see: universal health care, a fully rounded, fully staffed, fully funded public education, an ethical economy, a social justice system where all are fairly treated and a vibrant arts community where expressions are championed and embraced. I think we can move this world in that direction.  Let’s try—
Thx again for everything, happiest of holidays. See ya next year!
Mikel


Monday, December 3, 2012

Current Comedy “If at First You Don’t Secede …”




What do you call someone who cheers and sneers when our country fails and works constantly against our successes? What about someone who schemes to starve our fellow Americans, gleefully engineers their impoverishment and homelessness, lie to their families and friends to get them to ignore their crimes and then joyfully demeans millions of others for being offended at their chicanery?
Well, personally, back in my construction worker days I would have leaned towards the 14 letter phrase that translates loosely into proper English as copulating rectum, though probably, a more accurate single 7 letter word would be traitor. However, for the sake of this article, I will simply use the common 10 letter term for such people: Republican.
Of course, dear reader, do understand I realize that may appear an unduly harsh thing to say. Understand as well, I am painfully aware considering the hostile demeanor of many GOP rank & file that that kind of language is risky since I live in a community that is 70% GOP. And not your Orange County, Polo shirt wearing, white-whine Republicans; but the hardcore “hoist the rebel flag on the back of your pick-up, hate gays, dismiss minorities, pass no loitering laws, try to avoid paying your share of taxes for a functioning government at all costs, Obama’s a Kenyan & W was your hero”-type Republicans.
While we liberals in Mohave County may suffer from an excess of such Republicanism, we by no means have a lock on the market.   In the weeks following the election, predictably but pathetically, disgruntled GOP bought armaments of all sorts and in 40 different states went to the Whitehouse website itself to toss down the gauntlet and post their petitions to secede. That’s right, if Obama was going to be president, they would rather leave the nation. Or rather in some blind fantasy would rather their state’s non-existent but imagined untold wealth to give the evil Obama the weakening he deserves.
The irony here is that these folks, especially here in the red states where such attitudes prevail; seem to think secession would be to their advantage. But then since those red states contribute a minimal amount of tax revenue and require a maximum amount of government services, since they face the greatest amount social problems such as alcoholism, teen pregnancy, obesity,  and in-breeders named Bubba, the rest of the country will be better off without you.
It is also worth keeping in mind that given how intertwined state and federal resources and finances are, even with such stellar Tea Party governors like Texas’ Rick Perry and our own Jan Brewer, no actual red state governments have endorsed the idea of secession, only those states’ more desperate, pathetic racists.
Well, if at first you don’t secede, don’t let the door knob hit you in the behind on your way out the door. Still, playing the pouty little four year old isn’t going to fix the problems our country is facing. The majority of the economic woes Romney whined about were created by you guys. All that bleeding heart BS about your worries about the deficit? Well why did you make it in the first place? Obama came in with 11 trillion of debt from you guys and Bush. You knew you were borrowing 40% on the dollar instead of collecting taxes for a decade for phony wars, pork barrels by the bucket-load, and foolish tax cuts for the plutocrats, but that crap was OK because a Republican was doing it. But talk about money to fund schools, provide health care for the elderly, or rebuilding our roads and rails before yet another trainload of toxic chemicals derails into yet another river, and now it’s “no that stuff is too expensive, don’t understand money doesn’t grow on trees?” Please.
See? That’s why I oppose the conservative values agenda, and it’s not so much the R or the D behind the name, as the ideology in general. The GOP like to act all morally superior, until no one is watching. You want to talk about being responsible, talk about this: The government borrows 40% of all it spends because the GOP resist taxes, which means that we owe the money later anyway. You can’t run government without money, and you can’t run a society this complex or an economy this fragile without one; so who are they helping with this anti-tax BS? The public who at some point will still have to pay for the debt through future taxes anyway or the GOP’s banker friends who get the pay back either way guaranteed?
You can't cut away 40% of government spending without ravaging the government (the parts we all depend on) and the economy that depends on consumer spending to function no matter what the propagandists of the “job creators” try to tell you. You guys still falling for that rouse about government being nothing but waste and if we just cut this and just cut that, then everything will be better? Politicians on both sides of the aisle have been selling that canard and hacking away at social service funding for so long in most government agencies where cutting even  possible have already been slashed to the point our government is already on life support after 30 years of a concerted effort to drown it in the bathtub. Do the math.
 I suck at math & i can tell you it can't be done and shouldn't be done and there is no rational reason to wish it except for personal greed or other avarice. The federal government is a job creator no matter what lies GOP might spin, it creates 4 million jobs directly and tens of millions otherwise through contracts and employee spending on their lives.  And that’s just a fraction of the eighteen million local and state employees. More than twenty million people, 11% of all the jobs are government job.
 Real people, real services provided and real money spent in their communities and our common economy, and that isn't even talking about the folks who receive services through the government and the impact their lives have on the economy. All that costs money and GOP rail about taxes but they spend money at a faster rate than Dems. (Obama's spending V Reagan/Bush I or II? It's no contest.) So what are you going to do? Cut ALL federal jobs? That hardly dents the deficit, if that's what you’re concerned about? About all those food stamp moochers and unemployment deadbeats? Well that public aid goes DIRECTLY to living expenses for the poor and straight back into the economy in the form of their personal spending. They aren't Romney shipping the money to off shore accounts you know? Or did you think that far? Cut off all aid to the supposed 47% of losers who supposedly leech off of faultless sinless noble you? Kill off the population?
For the past 40 years Republicans have driven this country pretty much however they’ve wanted , which appears to have been straight into the ground. We followed their policies into the S&L crisis, into Iran-Contra, into Enron, into two should destroying wars and into gutting our public to give trillions to the banksters designed our disaster in the first place. And then wag your supposed holier than thou ness in our faces as if that trumped all other points?  What makes you think you appear trustworthy in any fashion in the first place. You guys are just the bullies that have been running the show. But that doesn’t mean I have to like it, or that America as a whole isn’t getting sick of it.
Here is a little story illustrating what I am talking about. According to Romney, Ryan and the rest of the Republican talking heads,  the purposes of government isn’t to ensure domestic tranquility, promote the general welfare, or provide defense for the public against predators foreign or domestic. No, for the GOP the purpose is accelerate the process of serving up the poor for the rich to eat them and demonizing and restricting all minorities who won’t vote conservative. Which, I guess, is all well and good if you are a member of the club.  Except like Fight Club, they aren’t supposed to admit these aims to the public. Flags, guns and Jesus are all the public should see.
So when Romney grumbled out loud in a post-election taped phone call about how the fabled 47% had let America down, he let the cat our of the bag that Republicans basically hate the public and see them only as prey. So, other GOP still hoping to bilk the public into thinking they might have souls, turned on him like they do everyone else. No honor among thieves I guess.
Finding that kind of crap hilarious, I shared an article about the sharks eating their own with the general Facebook public. Following the leaking of his post-election donor phone call, according to some reporters, Romney appeared to have become the most hated man in America. Next thing I know an area Republican, Mohave County District two Supervisor, Hildy Angius felt obliged to assert no matter how much I thought I hated Romney, she hated Obama 16 trillion times more, because, as is typical of GOP, she believes her opinions aren’t just more important than anyone else’s, but trillions of times more important.
It's that senseless sense of hyperbole and mock outrage the GOP typically employ that is part of the attitude i find offensive. If i actually hated Romney, which i don't, there would be no way any other single person could hate Obama 16 trillion times more. One person = one person. That’s a false sense of entitlement and elitism. Romney wasn't ever hate-able in himself. He was just a salesman, for other people's ideas. I battled the ideas. Why waste energy hating in the first place much less hating a figurehead. Like the song goes, "Republicans need a puppet and you fit/got their hands so far up your rear they call you Mitt."
No wonder folks like Romney and Boehner can so casually discuss destroying the education of a nation and call for the starvation and impoverishment of millions of poor, disabled, elderly, veterans, and/or unemployed. If those people aren’t GOP then they don’t matter. Even if they are GOP, if I can’t make money with or off of them, they don’t matter. They might as well not even exist. No matter what possible tragedy or agony they might be going through, it isn’t even equal to a trillionth of a Republican’s minor irritation. Typical Republican I guess. Maybe, if she’s lucky she’ll realize the error of her ways & her math. If not, maybe we’ll be lucky and she’ll want to secede like the rest of the Tea Party math deficients. So the people who actually love America can try to repair some of the messes they’ve made.
 --mikel weisser writes from the left coast of AZ.