BlameBush!

Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwiches for Everyone

John McSame has been spreading scurrilous rumors that Obama is a "socialist". Ugly, horrible, right-wing lies from a lying Repug whose entire campaign has been one smear after another.  Obama would be well within his rights to sue McSame for slander, or at the very least have him referred to a reeducation facility until such a time that a renewed Fairness Doctrine can silence such right-wing hate speech. But our future President is as merciful as he is witty, and chose instead to counter McShame's smears with a one-two punch of good ol' progressive humor.

"I don't know what's next. By the end of the week, he'll be accusing me of being a secret communist because I shared my toys in kindergarten. I shared my peanut butter and jelly sandwich."

And that's all Obama wants to do, really. He just wants to share his peanut butter and jelly sandwich with all the people of this country. Well, not quite everyone. Just those who need it the most. And it's not exactly HIS peanut butter and jelly sandwich he wants to share, either. After 8 long years of Bush's failed capitalist policies, the nation's peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are now unfairly concentrated in the hands of a small few. While the proletariat has been living hand to mouth, the richest 1% have been gorging themselves on sandwiches made from the peanut butter and jelly of the working class. In fact, the sole reason you don't have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich is because a rich guy somewhere has two. Obama just wants to liberate a few peanut butter and jelly sandwiches from their greedy cakeholes and spread them around a little, so that all Americans can have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. It's not Socialism, it's compassion. And President Obama plans to be pretty compassionate with other peoples' peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, believe you me.

Courageous Cantwell Tackles Big Oil Behemoth

Relief may finally be in sight for working Americans forced to pay through the nose for gasoline. Our spunky Senator, Maria Cantwell, has introduced bold new anti-gouging legislation that will punish oil companies and retailers that charge “unconscionably excessive” prices at the pump. What constitutes “unconscionably excessive” will be determined through litigation, as all good things are (except for Presidential elections).

A GOP-introduced provision to curtail “unconscionably excessive” attorney fees and “unconscionably excessive” class-action lawsuit settlements was scrapped for being “not vague enough”, as well as financially harmful to lawyers who charge fair market prices for a valuable public service. It seems the Repugs aren't as anti-pork as they claim to be. However, a compromise is in the works that would cut through all the legal red tape by simply giving trial lawyers a lifetime of free gasoline, allowing them to fly their private jets back and forth between New York and New Orleans without having to worry about who they’ll have to sue to get a next tank of gas in this dump. In return, every American taxpayer would receive a coupon worth one free download of the amazing RealNetworks player.

So everyone wins – right? Not if those Congressional Republicans can help it. The only laws they're in favor of are ones that will line the pockets of the weasels that put them into power.

Working Americans Deserve a Living Family Leave Pay

The Washington State Legislature is on the verge of passing a generous new law that will require all employers to give their workers five weeks of paid family sick leave. The payments will initially be capped at $250 a week and funded with a 2 cent per hour increase in payroll taxes - or less than the cost of a cup of coffee, the time-honored method by which the legislature determines the justification for new taxes as well and the worthlessness of tax cuts. As the company morale officer at Seattle Hemp Products, I decided to give my coworkers the wonderful news at the daily staff meeting this morning.

“THIS IS OUTRAGEOUS!” Andy from Accounting growled as he furiously pounded his fist on the table. “How do they expect us to survive on 250 measly bucks a week? It’s an INSULT!  I have a RIGHT to a Living Wage, and dammit I deserve a Living Sick Pay, too!”

“Calm down,” I assured him. “I think they just put that in there to discourage people from taking a whole month off all at once.”

“Right on,” said Tom in Shipping. “I just got a Playstation 3, so I’ll be taking three day weekends for the next six months.”

I shook my head. “Unfortunately, it says that you have to use the time for personal sick leave, to bond with a newborn or adopted child, or care for a sick relative or domestic life partner.”

Edward in Human Resources raised his hand, cutting off Tom’s phony coughing fit.

“Can I take some time off to care for Harvey, my invisible rabbit?”

“Have you had sex with him?” I asked.

“Nope, it’s strictly platonic.”

“Then no, the plan wouldn’t cover it.”

Ed slumped in his chair.

“However,” I added. “That week you spent drilling holes into your skull to release the evil spirits would now be considered personal medical leave and covered under the law.

"Frank, do you have a question?”

“Yeah,” Frank in Shipping answered. “I make an effort to stay healthy and never get sick, so I probably won’t use all my sick days. Can I sell some of them to Tommy Tuberculosis over here?”

“Sorry, no," I told him. "They had to cut both that and the provision for company-paid labia piercing in order to get the Repugs on board.”

"THIS IS OUTRAGEOUS!" Andy roared, angrier than before. "I have a right to a Living Sick Pay, and dammit I have a right to get my labia pierced free of charge, too!"

"Andy, please..."

"IT'S IN THE CONSTITUTION, LARRY!"

"If I can't sell my sick days," Frank interrupted, "then do I at least get a refund check for the $1250?”

I stared at him in wild-eyed disbelief. “Let me get this straight…you want the government to take the money that would be used to help poor Edward care for his sick bunny rabbit and pay you for actually working five straight weeks?”

“You selfish bastard!” Edward cried. "Have you no compassion?"

"Sure," Frank replied. "But I'd rather have a high definition TV for the Super Bowl."

"I knew it!" I screeched. "He's a con! GET HIM!"

Frank ran but didn't get far before he was tackled and bludgeoned violently with a wide assortment of ceramic bongs.  He suffered two broken ribs, a fractured clavicle, and will lose between three and four weeks of work - without pay.

One more working man falls beneath the bloody wheels of Capitalism.

Free Gasoline for Everyone!

Since the day Bush was sElected, rising gas prices resulting from his ties to Big Oil have been a heavy financial burden on working families. With the cost of fuel now breaking the $3 per gallon mark, even lazy white Republicans are feeling the pinch.

Meanwhile, rich fatcat CEOs wallow in their piles of ill-gotten cash like pigs at the capitalist trough. Indeed, every dime of profit a corporation makes is stolen from a poor person somewhere. It is only through a corrupt federal government beholden to Big Business that profits are tolerated at all.

At Seattle Hemp Products, we’ve evolved past the 20th Century make-a-buck mindset. I’m proud to say that we’ve been operating in the red for three years now. In fact, our 2005 annual report boasted that the company is “teetering precariously on the edge of bankruptcy”, thanks mostly to all the hard work we’ve done insuring that our monthly profits never exceed the wages of our lowest paid employee. Most recently, that person was our little Ukrainian janitor, Yuri. Yuri was a sweet guy and it’s a shame he didn’t survive the first round of layoffs. Another innocent victim of Bush’s failed economy.

Thankfully, politicians are finally taking steps to punish greedy corporations that profit at the expense of the consumer. In California, wise Democrat leaders are proposing heavy fines on the petroleum companies should their obscene earnings rise any higher. With their costs shooting through the roof, Big Oil would then be forced to lower prices at the pumps. If they took it once step further and confiscated all of Big Oil’s profits, logic dictates that gas prices would then drop to mere pennies a gallon (plus state and local taxes). Only a Democrat could think up such a brilliant idea. But it’s not rocket science folks. It’s simple economics.

The same principle can be applied to almost any business, from the health care industry to real estate. When it comes right down to it, all we really need is some government entity deciding which businesses are making too much money, and how to punish them for it. It worked for Seattle Hemp Products and it will work for Big Oil, if our peeResident would only listen to reason.

If the electricity is back on when I go to work Monday, I’ll send Bush a nice little email.

A Weekend of Terror

Watching the TV news last weekend, it was hard not to be sickened by all the acts of sadistic cruelty performed in the name of a supposedly peaceful religion. Even more so when one realizes that these Abu-Ghraibesque atrocities were being committed right here on American soil, against our own children, and within the once-sacred confines of the People’s House.

While the nation watched helplessly Sunday, hundreds of innocent toddlers were herded like cattle into an enclosed area and forced to collect brightly painted chicken embryos in a bizarre ritual to appease Bush’s angry consumerist Man-God.

Senseless? Yes. Barbaric? Rooty patootie. But forget for a moment the inhuman conditions that thousands of chickens are forced to endure at egg farms across the country. Put aside your gut-wrenching horror over the millions of unborn baby chickens who are never given a chance at life, hard-boiled inside their colorful shells by a peeResident who wouldn’t fund embryonic stem cell research to save Christopher Reeve’s life. With it’s emphasis on competition and the hoarding of natural resources, the traditional White House Easter Egg Hunt is less a homophobic neo-Nazi rally than an exercise in capitalist greed.

Isn’t it about time that we as a society abandon this primitive ritual in favor of a more community-oriented and earth-friendly alternative? I have the fondest memories of my mother’s annual Fungus Hunts. Every fall, the familiar sounds of Jefferson Airplane floating out of Mother’s van would be the signal for all the children of the neighborhood to go forth into the woods and gather mushrooms. No chickens were harmed. No children were emotionally scarred by an authoritarian male Easter Bunny. Instead, Mother would provide the kids with positive reinforcement by paying them a penny for every mushroom they collected, and a dollar if they stumbled upon one of the many plastic baggies of herbal glaucoma medication she stashed about the yard. The grand total was held in trust until the end of the day, when she would award it not to the child who found the most mushrooms, but to the one she deemed most needy. Although my bad back prevented me from joining in on the fun, the extra cash in my pocket went a long way towards lifting my spirits. At least, until I got the stuffing kicked out of me by the fascist neo-con larvae that were unappreciative of Mother’s valuable lesson about sharing with others.

And isn’t that what Easter is really all about? Sharing? Or is it Christmas? Whatever. Judging by the selfish, consumerist Götterdämmerung at the White House yesterday, it’s a lesson that so-called Christians seem to have forgotten.

Big Oil Companies Only Out for a Profit

Several fat, greedy oil tycoons were called before Congress today to explain how they could make such huge profits while working Americans are unable to afford enough gasoline to fuel up their jet skis.

That's one of the reasons I enjoy working at Seattle Hemp Products. It's so refreshing to be a part of a company that isn't obsessed with turning a profit. Plus, it makes it a heck of a lot easier to break it to the employees that they won't be getting raises each year when the company never makes any money.

Most of our employees are unselfish progressives who take the news fairly well, but there was one unfortunate incident with a subordinate of mine. Personally, I loathe the term "subordinate", as it refers the primitive boss/employee, master/slave corporate hierarchy that has turned this country into a capitalist cesspool. A business should be a "working community", i.e. one big "family" working in harmony for the common good. In a family, you sometimes have to sacrifice a little for the sake of your brothers and sisters. That's why I couldn't understand how Doug could sit there and bawl like a baby when I told him we'd be cutting his weekly income allotment by 60% this year.

"I just bought a new car!" he blubbered. "I won't be able to make the payments!"

"Gosh, that's so wonderful that you got a new set of wheels there, Rockefeller," I scolded him, "but Wilma in Shipping hasn't been able to work at all since she fell off her Segway and broke her hip last April. Do you want her family to starve this winter just so you can cruise around town in your gas-guzzling SUV? I can't believe anyone can be so selfish and greedy."

Defeated and dejected, Doug shuffled out of my cubicle, only to return ten minutes later nursing a severely crushed right hand.

"I accidentally slammed it in the car door!" he cried. "Seven times! How will I ever feed my family?"

No worries. That's the beauty of a "working community"! Carl in Hemp underwear would gladly work a double shift at half pay to cover for Doug and his family. Actually, he threatened to quit and go work for the competition. Luckily, we have a "no hiring escapees" agreement with Emerald City Hemp Products, or he might have gotten away with it. But Carl was a real trooper and stuck around, pulling his own weight as well as the weight of everyone else that suddenly had a mysterious accident. He was probably one of the hardest working, most efficient employees in the We-story of Seattle Hemp Products, and it was a real shame to let him go. But I wasn't about to go before the Circle of Elders and try to explain why my department turned a profit this year. Indeed, we're all deeply ashamed here if we manage to somehow break even. Someone must have been cheated. Someone must be making too much money at the expense of someone else. Someone must be dealt with!

So it's wonderful to see that our government is now in the business of deciding which industries make too much money and how we can punish them for it. Our own Senator Maria Cantwell was a real tiger today, grilling those rich fat cats like a plate of cheese sandwiches. Having made millions in the software industry, she can spot a capitalist a mile away, and won't hesitate to condemn them for their greediness. Don't be fooled: Most private companies are only out to make a profit! The have been for years. But with aggressive taxation and bold new regulations enacted by progressive democrat leaders, we can insure that no man ever makes more than the government thinks he deserves again.

Bush Lies in Mysterious Ways

The only things missing from Bush's speech on African aid last Tuesday were some tinted goggles and a thick Irish accent. Nice try, Shrub, but a man with neither an entourage of hairdressers nor a single gold record under his belt can possibly lecture anyone on the plight of the world's hungry.

After Live Aid completely wiped out world hunger in the 1980's, Bush's globalist policies have resulted in a holocaust unseen since the official Holocaust. From Rwanda to Sudan, Africa is suffocating under a pile of debt, due mostly to unscrupulous credit card companies that entrap the poor with promises of easy credit at high interest rates - and often with hidden charges. Faced with starvation, many Africans tragically find themselves unable to afford the latest U2 cd, and increasingly resort to downloading it illegally rather than forking over the 17 bucks for a copy. In once thriving socialist utopias like Eritrea, famine and disease have taken a such a serious toll that the entire forced labor system is on the verge of complete collapse for lack of workers.

But there's still time to save the millions of emaciated victims of western civilization. In order to meet its obligations to third world counties, Americans must work together to correct their long history of stinginess and share a portion of their good fortune with those who made it possible. Reparations must be made to all African nations for 3000 years of white male hegemony, beginning with complete and unconditional debt forgiveness, and a $17 gift card to Sam Goody for every man, woman and child in Africa - except for those white racists who keep whining about having their farms confiscated and families hacked up with machetes.

Here at home, certain luxuries will also have to be sacrified for the sake of the International Community, such as the repeal of the tax cuts for the richest 1% of Americans - most of whom probably procured their wealth by exploiting third world labor. Next, Bush must sign Kyoto and bring an end to global warming, so that barren wastelands stricken with famine and ruled by genocidal maniacs will become fertile agrarian oases ruled by benevolent genocidal maniacs. Finally, Donald Rumsfeld must resign.

Will Bush step up to the plate and do what's necessary to end world hunger? Sadly, I don't have much faith in the so-called "compassion" of a man who has never once been photographed in a dashiki.

Georgia On My Mind

The Shrub must have been sorely disappointed as he gazed out at the sea of Georgian faces that cold, rainy day, overcome with the realization that they weren't Braves fans and he wasn't in Atlanta. Dammit! Karl had tricked him again! But then the clouds parted and the sun peeked through, illuminating Freedom Square with a golden aura. A bright rainbow arched over the jubilant crowd as they chanted, "Bushi! Bushi!", waving both Georgian and American flags in a show of gratitude for Bush's support of their fledgling democracy.

As much as I despise Bush, I have to admit it was a breathtaking sight. The logistics involved in packing the audience with 10,000 GOP operatives boggles the mind. Karl Rove is brilliant if not diabolical.

This time, however, he was a little too obvious. Only a dimwitted con would prefer the corrupt, Western-style democracy Georgia now languishes under to the kinder, gentler, more progressive democracy it enjoyed before Jimmy Carter won the Cold War. There was less crime, the trains ran on schedule, and obesity related health conditions were only something party officials had to worry about. Of course, there were some wet blankets who had nothing but negative things to say about a few forced labor camps and mass executions. Some people simply didn't appreciate how much nine-hour lines for toilet paper united the community in a common cause. Say what you will about Joe Stalin, but the man knew a thing or two about bringing people together.

Bush, on the other hand, is a divider, not a uniter. After poisoning the Middle East with his wild ideas about "Freedom", he now wants to impose the same "cowboy democracy" on Congress, seeking a "nuclear option" that would require only a 51% vote to make Robert Byrd shut his cake hole.

EXCUSE ME, BUT DID I WAKE UP IN RUSSIA THIS MORNING???

The last time I checked, only the dictionary defined "democracy" as "majority rule".

Conservative hypocrisy knows no bounds.

SUV Kills 10 in California

Chalk up another 10 innocent lives to the red state's vehicle of choice, the deadly SUV. This time, the bloody tiretracks pass through California (a blue state, of course). An SUV parked on some railroad tracks forced a train to derail, killing 10 Kerry supporters on their way to counseling. As usual, the driver of the SUV survived without a scratch. The news says he was "deranged", so five will get you ten there was a "Bush/Cheney" sticker and a "Support Our Troops" ribbon on the SUV's back.

Needless to say, this tragedy never would have happened if there was a more fuel-efficient car on those tracks. While hitchhiking through Tahoe a couple years ago, I watched in horror as an Explorer ran a stop sign and t-boned a Mini-Cooper. The Cooper launched about 30 feet into the air, bounced off a couple of pine trees, rolled down an embankment, and was carried off by squirrels. All 100 clowns inside perished. Meanwhile, the driver of the SUV stood up on the road, laughing his ass off.

Such is the case in any accident in which an SUV is involved. The car is transformed into a mangled mass of smoldering metal, while the SUV that caused the wreck remains virtually unscathed. Is that fair? How many more limbs does Max Cleland have to lose before we ban these expensive death machines from the highway? It's high time we level the playing field so that wealthy, white collar suburbanites and working class families die horrible, screaming deaths in equitable numbers.

Time for A Federal Maximum Wage?

In a bold new move to persuade blue collar voters that he's a Blue Collar Joe, future president John F. Kerry called for raising the federal minimum wage to $7.00 by 2007.

"If a president can go out and fight for four years to provide over a trillion in tax cuts to the wealthiest people in America," Kerry said, "we can fight for a few months to raise the minimum wage for the poorest people in America."

It's a great idea, and I'm sure the starving, emaciated, poor people are already looking forward to eating in three years. But why only 7 bucks, John? Cable TV bills are skyrocketing, and DVD's run at least twenty dollars a pop nowadays. I'm a big Kerry fan, but sometimes his timidity annoys me. He needs to go for the gold, reach for that proverbial brass ring! If the minimum wage needs to be raised in order to stave off mass starvation, then something around $20 an hour is a more realistic figure.

Of course, whenever we progressive liberals suggest raising the minimum wage one penny, the "compassionate conservatives" scream and wail about inflation and unemployment, and the rich fatcats threaten to lay people off. Perhaps paying their employees living wages wouldn't be such an impossible task if they'd stopped sucking up the entire wage pool themselves. In my company, the janitor makes $7.12 an hour, but the owner of the company is a millionaire. Is that fair? Is that what the Founding Fathers intended?

Not according to Ralph Nader: "Earlier this year Bill Gates’ wealth was equal to the combined wealth of the poorest 120 million Americans. Whatever this enormous imbalance says about the Great software imitator from Redmond, Washington, it means that about tens of millions of Americans, who work year after year, decade after decade, are nearly broke. What democracy worth its salt would have led to this profound inequity?"

Thomas Jefferson often complained to his slaves about that very same thing. The gap between rich and poor is wider than ever, and it's because the rich people have all the money. Today, that concentration of wealth and its political power has reached such obscene proportions that people are now earning $1 for every $416 that the CEO gets.

FDR ended the First Great Depression by blessing us with a federal minium wage. Perhaps a federal maximum wage is an idea whose time has come, too. If the minimum wage were set to $20 an hour, and the maximum wage as well, there would no longer be any disparity of incomes between working Americans and CEOS (who are neither working, nor Americans).

Imagine an America where the busboy earned the same income as the computer programmer, where the janitor made the same as the neurosurgeon. The gap between rich and poor would cease to exist, as would the very class system itself. There'd be no more competition, and everyone would live together in peace and friendship. Of course, some goldbrickers might see the new wage equality as an excuse to slack off. Why strive to improve when you'll always make the same amount? Why worry about getting fired from your lucrative software programmer's job when you can work at McDonald's for the exact same salary? Why is the company janitor sawing open my skull?

Waaaa Waaaa Waaaaa!!! Maybe you should stop being so selfish and think of someone else besides yourself for a change!