Apparently the DoD has decided that if you sit your ass at a nice, safe joystick equipped computer monitor in Virginia — or wherever — and you pilot a flying killer robot ten thousand miles away you deserve a fucking combat medal for your “heroism.”

It’s called the Distinguished Warfare Medal and, if you can believe, it ranks higher than the Bronze Star Medal.

For those of you who don’t know what it might take to receive a Bronze Star — here’s what one guy did to get his:

Audie L. Murphy, 01 692 509, First Lieutenant (then Staff Sergeant), Infantry, Company “B”, 15th Infantry Regiment. For valorous conduct in action against the enemy. On the night of 2 March 1944, on the ANZIO BEACHHEAD in Italy, First Lieutenant MURPHY crept 100 yards over flat, open terrain during a fire fight between his small patrol and a group of Germans, to a point 50 yards from a partly disabled enemy tank. Taking careful aim, he fired several rifle grenades at the tank, hitting and completely destroying it. Then, when a great many enemy machine guns in the sector opened up, he led his men through the bullet swept area to safety.     

Oh, and this Audie Murphy guy?  In addition to the TWO Bronze Stars he managed to collect, he also received three Purple Hearts for wounds in action, the Legion of Merit, two Silver Stars {the nation’s third highest combat decoration}, the Distinguished Service Cross (the nation’s second highest combat decoration}, and The Medal of Honor.

You don’t get a fucking combat medal unless you’re physically engaged with an enemy and present at the fucking actual site of the combat.

This is a disgrace.

Here’s the deal — we stomped all over the GOP a month ago in the elections and handed them their collective asses because we don’t like what they’re peddling.

So no!  There’s no fucking reason to reach a compromise.

Or to be bipartisan.

Or to seek a grand fucking bargain with a group of theocratic, retrograde, know-nothing, plutocrat fellating, nihilist douchebags.

Just let the Bush tax cuts for the very wealthy expire, don’t agree to raise the age for Medicare, don’t fuck with Social Security, and let the fucking car go over the “fiscal cliff” if need be.

Every man Jack of us will know who’s to blame if the shit goes bad, and guess what?

It won’t be the Dems.

And it won’t be that bad.

Losing the Bush tax cuts will be great for the country, the people have no interest in seeing the age for Medicare raised, or of any fuckery happening with Social Security — and going over the “fiscal cliff” won’t really do all that much except reduce the deficit.

Which is what all the fucking deficit scolds and Very Serious People™ want anyway, right?

I mean Jesus H. Christ on a fucking Carnival Lines cruise to the Turks and Caicos!  Its not that fucking difficult!!!

We elected you pig fuckers to do the shit we want, not what the republican arsonists who are holding this country hostage want.

So fucking do it already!

Sooooo in case anyone missed it yesterday, Texas is about to send to the United States Senate a man who actually managed to run to the right of Governor Goodhair.

Ted Cruz just won a runoff election against ultra-conservative Governor Perry’s handpicked candidate, David Dewhurst — a man who also happens to be the sitting Lieutenant Governor of the state — by running as an EVEN MORE CONSERVATIVE CANDIDATE.

This was the guy Rand Paul and Sahria Plain Sarah Palin came to Texas to campaign for because he’s actually crazier and stupider than they are.

Cruz is a far right lunatic who believes that Sharia Law is an enormous problem in the U.S. and is also an outright nullifier, believing that the individual states have the right under the Constitution to nullify federal laws that they don’t agree with.

Which of course those of you who took history lessons in grade school will recall was one of the reasons we fought a civil war over — a war that took 600,000 American lives.

Cruz also believes that George Soros is behind a secret United Nations plot to eliminate the game of golf.

And this is the guy that Texans feel will make the best representative for them in the United States Senate.

And he’s gonna go the U.S. Senate in November because in the cloud cuckoo land that Texas has become there is simply no possible way for Cruz’ Democratic opponent to beat him come November.

Seriously Texas, you guys really should secede from the Union.

It’d make a bunch of shithouse rat crazy Texans happy {until you turned your new nation into Myanmar and we had to build a fence to keep you fucking imbeciles out of America} and it would be absolutely great for the rest of us.

Because we’d finally be shed of you preening, narcissistic completely bugfuck insane Texas twatwaffles once and for all.

And for those of you Longhorns who intend to take deep and abiding umbrage at how I’ve characterized you and your state, you can never again take me to task for the public contempt that I show toward all things Texas.

Because I have just three words for you . . . .

Ted fucking Cruz

‘Nuff said.

Forty years ago yesterday a bunch of two-bit crooks working for the Committee to Re-elect the President {CREEP} were arrested burglarizing the offices of the Democratic National Committee in the Watergate office complex in Washington D.C.

Two years later, under threat of conviction in an impeachment trial, Richard Nixon resigned the presidency in disgrace.

That historical denouement was made possible by the press doing its job, elected representatives from both parties doing their jobs, the judiciary doing its job, appointed officials of the Justice Department who had sworn to uphold the Constitution doing their jobs, and the citizens of this nation doing our jobs by registering our complete and utter outrage at what had occurred.

The system did, indeed, work.

Once

But we learned nothing from it.

Because if we had then Ronald Reagan would have been impeached and sent to jail for Iran/Contra.

And Bush v. Gore never would have happened.

And John Yoo would never have been able to get near a Justice Department computer to write his memo saying that it was perfectly fine for us to torture people.

And George W. Bush and Dick Cheney would have been handed over to a war crimes court at the Hague.

And we’d be drawing up articles of impeachment against Barack Obama for ordering the murder of American citizens without due process.

Yeah, forty years ago an event once aptly described as, “The hour of the Founders, come round at last,” occurred and we all did our jobs and the system worked — but clearly, we learned absolutely nothing from it.

“The failure of Obama to go to Wisconsin and campaign for Barrett — instead issuing a last minute luke-warm tweet . . . yes, a tweet – is shameful.

A Barrett win with enthusiastic support from Obama would have driven home the message that the working class won’t be pushed around anymore. But No Drama Obama played it “safe.” It’s not really safe at all. It’s a guaranteed losing strategy — for the good people of Wisconsin, and for Obama this November.”

Will Bunch on how Barack Obama and the national Democratic Party completely abandoned the recall effort in Wisconsin and allowed Walker to amass a 10 to 1 financial advantage over Barrett going into yesterday’s election.

Compare and contrast that with what Karl Rove and the Bush White House did to smear and destroy Gray Davis in California in 2002 and the resources they committed there.

I loathe Romney and abhor absolutely everything that the republicans stand for.  But as it stands right now, Obama doesn’t deserve to win this fall — and just because he’s marginally “better than the other guy” doesn’t mean that he deserves to be President of the United States.

Maybe if the Dems lose in November a republican victory will speed the calamitous destruction of our society so that rather than it happening more slowly — thanks to an Obama second term — it will happen quickly, due to GOP overreach and arrogance.

Then, once we’ve found ourselves well and truly in the shitter — with a Supreme Court packed with reactionary conservative ideologues, rapine republican policies and laws destroying the middle class, killing the poor and sick, and destroying our environment — we can finally get around to the business of trying to rebuild what we allowed to be destroyed over the last 40+ years.

That’s pretty much the only good I can see coming out of any of this.

Because I don’t know if you’ve noticed or not, but either way — a Romney win or an Obama second term — America is totally fucked.

I wonder if I’d be any happier if I just stopped paying attention to what’s going on in this country?

As only he can.

I’m going to say this and I’m sure its going to draw fire from a bunch of you, but here goes:

Barack Obama should be impeached.

There.  I said it.

And more importantly, I believe it.

Here’s the thing: Barack Obama has expanded upon the targeted Predator drone killings of “terrorists” started under Bush/Cheney to such a degree that even a depraved, amoral sociopath like General Michael Hayden — Bush’s CIA Director — feels that Obama has gone too far.

Under Obama we have shed any vestige of being a nation of laws by his assertion that as president he can order the killing of an American citizen without any due process whatsoever, simply in the name of the Global War on Terror and because he, The Leader, has determined that a particular American must be killed.

His reasoning being that an American who takes up arms against his native land is an “enemy combatant” and therefore forfeits any expectation of due process.

Which for a so-called constitutional scholar like Obama to make an assertion like that is so incredibly fucked as to be beyond belief.

Because what an American citizen who takes up arms and becomes an “enemy combatant” against the United States is . . . is a traitor.  A traitor who has committed TREASON.

Which is a . . . . . wait for it . . . .

CRIME

The Constitution is pretty fucking clear on this issue — here’s Article 3 Section 3 of that document:

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court. The Congress shall have Power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted.

And the key word in that passage is “convicted.”

In America you aren’t supposed to be able to be convicted of a crime without a trial. A trial that the law requires you to be present at and at which you get to defend yourself and challenge the two or more witnesses who claim that you’re traitor.

And you are certainly not supposed to be able to be convicted of a crime and sentenced to death by the President of the United States simply because he got told by someone that you deserve to die.

Even if they’re right and you are a terrorist and you do deserve to die.

Because first and foremost you’re still an American with constitutional rights.

Anwar al-Awlaki along with Samir Khan were killed together this past year by a Predator drone strike ordered by Barack Obama.

Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan were both American citizens and by all accounts they probably were terrorists who were either actively levying war against the U.S. or providing aid and comfort to those who were and were, therefore, committing treason.

But you don’t forfeit your rights by being accused of a crime, or of even actually committing that crime.  Even if that crime is treason.

And under Article 3 of the Constitution treason is most definitely viewed as a crime — as it has been by every court decision since that article was written.  And if you stand charged with committing a crime then the government is supposed to be compelled to prove in a court of law and beyond a reasonable doubt that you’ve committed that crime before they can take your life.

Additionally, the courts have been crystal clear for over 100 years that convictions in absentia are illegal and violate due process under the Fifth, Sixth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution. So if you want to say that an American is a traitor and you want to convict him of treason {or being an “enemy combatant”} you’re supposed to have to go get him and bring him back to stand trial.

Not blow him up with a targeted drone strike.

But now we order the killing of Americans just because the President gets told by some unaccountable, nameless intelligence bureaucrat that so and so is a terrorist and therefore no longer worthy of his constitutional rights and that its OK to go ahead and order his murder without a trial.

And that is why Barack Obama should be impeached.

Because no one is above the law.

And the question needs to be asked — if killing an American with a drone strike who’s been identified as a terrorist and a traitor but who hasn’t been tried and convicted is OK, then why isn’t it OK to kill an American with a drone strike or targeted assassination who’s been accused of say, murder, and who has fled the country to a nation that won’t extradite him.

And then having done that, at what point do we start letting the president — or maybe a secret committee, because the president is so busy — decide to kill Americans or arrest and hold them indefinitely and without a trial for lesser crimes?

Or to do so because maybe the president simply doesn’t like a persons politics or what they have to say about him?

It’s not something you get and then wipe your ass with when it becomes a bit inconvenient.

Which is apparently what Facebook co-founder and billionaire Eduardo Saverin thinks it is.

In anticipation of Facebook’s IPO Saverin, who was born in Brazil but who has been a U.S. citizen for the past ten years, has renounced his American citizenship in an effort at evading taxes on his profits from the upcoming IPO.  Taxes that could amount to more than $100 million.

Unfortunately for Saverin it appears he’s gotten some really shitty legal advice and that prior to his renunciation he was not aware that when you give up your U.S. citizenship for the purposes of avoiding taxes you may very well be prohibited from ever entering the United States again.

The law is rarely enforced but apparently in Saverin’s case its gonna be — especially now that the press is all over the news and two U.S. senators are on the case — including powerful New York Dem Chuck Schumer — who has said he’s going to make sure that Saverin never gets a chance to return to America.

I say fuck Saverin and the horse he rode in on.

This guy should never, ever, ever be allowed to return to the U.S. for any reason, period.

It’s bad enough that you renounce your citizenship — but to do so in a bald and shameless attempt at evading paying taxes is beyond the fucking pale.

This guy was able to come to the U.S. and attend Harvard — rather than some shit college in the educational backwater that his home country of Brazil is — where he met Mark Zuckerberg and from which he co-founded a multi-billion dollar company thanks to America’s business-centric environment.

And he was able to prevail in a lawsuit against his former partner — a lawsuit that made him stinking fucking rich — thanks to the American legal system.

But now he doesn’t want to be an American.

Or pay taxes.

Saverin and his attorney are apparently now being made aware of the magnitude of their fuckup and are laughably — and desperately — attempting to spin him as a “global citizen” whose decision to renounce his American citizenship just moments before the FB IPO had nothing at all to do with avoiding a tax bill.

Also, too, please ignore the fact that Saverin just moved to Singapore where he doesn’t have to pay ANY taxes at all because that too had nothing at all to do with trying to avoid paying taxes on the FB IPO, says his dipshit attorney.

This guy is nothing more than a rich entitled douchebag and if he ever tries to reenter the States we should arrest him and send him back to whatever rock he crawled out from under in handcuffs and leg irons.

And force him to fly coach to get there.