Prairie Fire Journal

Now open for your dining pleasure, the Hogwash Cafe is now serving up plate-loads of conservative slop cooked up by some of the Gulf Coast's finest hypocrites. The coastal teabaggers have had to make some modifications to their original recipe of "No Government, No Way" and have come up with the new and improved version called "My Government, My Savior."

What's amazing is that the Gulf Coast teabaggers don't see any hypocrisy or contradictions in their behavior. They don't want the federal government to clean up the mess in the economy and the health care industry, but they do want the full resources of the federal government to be marshalled to clean up the mess along the Gulf Coast.

Here's a good example from AP:

In coastal Mississippi, Republican state Rep. Steven Palazzo has been critical of the federal government, including what he sees as an intrusive role in a health care overhaul that he — like many conservatives — calls "Obamacare."

As he runs for Congress in a district that relies on shipbuilding, tourism and the seafood industry, Palazzo says Washington should do all it can to protect the Gulf of Mexico. He said his stance does not contradict his advocacy of limited government.

"This is not only an economic nightmare but it's an ecological one as well," Palazzo said. "We cannot spare any resource."

What about the economic and healh care nightmare faced daily by tens of millions of Americans? What was your response to that nightmare? Limited government intervention, that's what you advocated. Let the states and private enterprise handle the problem, that's what you said. Let the unemployed take responsibility for their own problems.

But that was somebody else's nightmare and didn't really concern you. Now that the chickens have come home to roost, you don't like being covered in their shit. You don't like it too well and want the government to help you clean up the shit. Well, I have one word for you: HYPOCRITE!

The Gulf oil slick is perfectly symbolic of the ongoing castrophe that is the economy. It's a stinking mess that continues to wreck havoc on the American working class. Contrary to the Obama spin machine, things are not getting better for tens of millions of unemployed and under-employed American workers. The worst is not over, and for the unemployed millions, the worst is yet to come as unemployment benefits run out along with hopes of finding a job.

The Labor Department reported today that private employers hired just 41,000 workers nationwide in May. The government's May jobs report said a total of 431,000 jobs were created in May, but 411,000 of those were temporary census workers who will find themselves in the unemployment line by the end of summer. And the numbers don't add up. When you add 411,000 plus 41,000 you get 452,000. So somewhere somebody in the Labor Department doesn't know how to add too well.

The national official unemployment rate dipped to 9.7 percent from 9.9 percent, mainly because hundreds of thousands of workers gave up searching for work and were no longer counted. All told, 15 million workers were officially unemployed in May. Counting those who have given up looking for work and those working only part-time but wanting full-time work, the rate was 16.6 percent. The number of people out of work for six months or longer reached a record high in May of almost 7 million.

About 125,000 new jobs are needed each month just to keep pace with population growth. At the current pace of job creation, it could take until 2015 or later just to get back down to 6 percent unemployment. That's being optimistic. Unemployment is expected to remain above 9 percent for the rest of 2010 and above 7 percent the rest of the way into 2012. That's a long way away for people now facing hunger and homelessness with no relief in sight.

And what does president Obama say about the ongoing misery of the millions of unemployed? "Things never go smoothly in a straight line." he said. Obama wants the hungry and homeless to have patience. Eat some grass along the side of the road and find a nice tree to sleep under while the president recites the same old bullshit about his lameass stimulus plan that is only stimulating the rich.

America got change. From bad to worse. But don't worry, things will be better in 5 or 10 years. You've got to give these things time. For older unemployed workers especially, that time is running out. It's time for a revolution!

BP CEO Tony Hayward made the comment last Sunday that he'd like his life back. Well, Tony, I'm sure that those 11 workers you killed on the Deepwater Horizon would like to have their lives back too. They undoubtedly would love the opportunity to be able to complain about the travails of life. Perhaps they're even looking down upon you this very moment wishing they could give you their perspective on current events. The world can't bring those 11 dead workers back to life, and it would be wrong for the world to allow you to go back to your life of leisure after committing mass murder. So would you settle for an after-life? In a quiet gated community with a nice view? Think about it. I'm sure others are.

Gated community for oil company ceos.

The official Texas unemployment rate rose to 8.3 percent for the month of April, according to figures released today by the Texas Workforce Commission (TWC). At the same time, the highly political TWC managed to come up with some bizarre figures claiming that Texas actually added 32,500 jobs in April.

TWC claims that more Texans than ever before are now employed. That's why food banks across the state are struggling to meet the massive increase in requests for help. Statewide, the demand placed on Texas food banks increased by 30 percent over the past year.

TWC also claims that the April increase in unemployment was due to the Texas workforce increasing by 51,000 and not because of layoffs. That's strange, because according to the U.S. Department of Labor, 82,065 initial unemployment claims were filed in Texas for the reporting weeks of April 3 thru April 24. Those are new claims, not continuing or extended benefits claims.

It's not hard to understand how or why TWC comes up with such jibberish when you look closely at who's running the state agency. TWC Chairman Thomas Pauken, a Dallas attorney and ultra-conservative Republican, was appointed to the position by Governor Rick Perry in March 2008. Pauken is a former chairman of the Texas Republican Party and helped orchestrate its takeover in the 1990s by the religious right. Need I say more?

It wasn't too long ago that Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal was ranting about the overbearing regulations of the EPA and the need to let the oil companies do their thing in the Gulf of Mexico. Well Bobby, look out your window and you can see your wish come true. You got your oil just as you requested. BP made it real simple for you, just get a bucket and scoop it out of the marsh.

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal
EPA BAD! BIG OIL GOOD!

Mexican President Felipe Calderon was in Washington, D.C. again to whine once more to the Obama Administration about U.S. immigration policy. Calderon should spend more time worrying about the racism, corruption, and economic squalor in Mexico that are the cause of the mass exodus to the frontier and quit blaming the U.S. for the problems created by his own corrupt government.

U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter on Tuesday was defeated in a Democratic primary in his bid for a sixth term after taking the risky step of switching from the GOP. Voters picked U.S. Rep. Joe Sestak as the party's nominee and rejected the 80-year-old Specter in his first Democratic campaign.

While Specter may have been a moderate for a Republican, he was an opportunist who deserved to get defeated. Not only that, but nobody should spend 30 years in the Senate. It was time to send Specter home.

Political novice and far-right wingnut Rand Paul rode support from tea party activists to a rout in Kentucky's Republican Senate primary Tuesday night, jolting the GOP establishment. Claiming Libertarian roots, Paul was endorsed by theocrat and roving idiot Sarah Palin. That makes him about as Libertarian as Pat Robertson.

It's time for the Democrats in Congress and the Democrat in the White House to accept their responsibility for allowing the corruption and cronyism within the Interior Department's Mineral Management Services (MMS) that inevitably led to the current environmental disaster taking place in the Gulf of Mexico.

The Democrats want to blame it all on regulations passed while George W. Bush was in office. But if I'm not mistaken, the Democrats have held a majority in both houses of Congress since January 2007, and Obama has been president since January 2009. So just where have the Democrats been all this time? They all knew about the Bush/Cheney changes to MMS regulations that created “categorical exclusions” for oil companies, allowing them to bypass the last stage of environmental review before proceeding with drilling projects.

According to ABC News, the Interior Department under Obama is at this very moment still issuing such exclusions. In fact, MMS approved a BP offshore drilling plan on May 5 that lacks the same "potential blowout scenario" that BP was not required to file for the Deepwater Horizon site that exploded on April 20 and has so far gushed approximately 4 million gallons of oil into the Gulf.

In other words, even as this disaster continues to unfold, and even as oil company officials continue to use the phrase "we've never tried such a repair at those depths," Obama's Interior Secretary continues to approve similar drilling plans that lack emergency prepardness for blowouts. Cronyism and corruption! It's still alive and well under the Democrats.

You'd have thought Obama would have fixed the Bush/Cheney loopholes before he went Republican ass-kissing by expanding offshore drilling. Oh, hey, he'll fix it now, right?

"The Great Oil Spill Disaster of 2010" is the latest version in the ongoing series of Congressional dog-and-pony shows staged in Washington, DC. The enablers and the enabled once again gather together for a political theater presentation that they hope will quell any voter uprising against the corporate schills who control Congress. The anti-incumbent teabagger movement, similarly, is populated mostly by the extreme corporatists who offer political alternatives that will bring even greater economic and ecological devastation to America.

Whether right-wing or left-wing, whether Democrat or Republican, the U.S. Congress is a totally corrupt institution. And the reason America has such a corrupt Congress is that the majority of American people are themselves corporate schills, either by ignorance or by choice. As I've said before, "Congress is in the pockets of the corporations, the bankers, and the big energy companies. Environmental destruction, economic devastation, and deadly workplaces are all linked together."

Nothing will change until a majority of the American people themselves renounce corporatism and elect a Congress that has not been bought and paid for by big business.