I want to teabag some of these Teabaggers

All across America yesterday, idiots who are totally enthralled with right-wing ideologies and apparently have no idea how taxes and government finance works got together and had “tea parties”, which were supposed to be in the spirit of the famous Boston Tea Party I guess. Anyway, I thought it was worth noting how ridiculous these little protests are.

They are all obviously anti-Obama and anti-Democrat, which is the thing that is dumb. Apparently they feel that when they filed their income taxes (if they did) they were paying hugely outrageous income taxes to pay for Obama’s yet-to-exist deficit. Here’s why that’s stupid:

• You’re paying income taxes for 2008. Before the last election. Before Obama became President. It’s not like Obama woke up on April 15th and decided “Gee I think I’m going to charge this much for income taxes today!” The tax scale that you’re paying for comes from the Bush era.
• A lot of people might ASSUME that they’re going to be paying more taxes if the Obama budget passes because it runs a deficit. But where were all these “teabaggers” during the past 8 years of Bush’s deficits?
• All of these people who think that Obama is ruing them are drawing conclusions from their preconceived notions, not from reality. The man has been President for what, three months? There hasn’t been time for him to really get anything major passed into law, let alone evaluate the results. If you want to tear the guy down, whatever, but how can you seriously be protesting something Obama’s done when he hasn’t had time to do anything?

Look, I’m not just all about rubber stamping everything the guy does. But I’m not going to go spouting off idiotic rhetoric and throwing a little protest over something that hasn’t happened.

It’s a Party…a COMMUNIST PARTY!

I know I have a pretty huge following out there on the internet, being Montana’s only known Communist blogger and all. In fact, I bet that many of you out there have been thinking these past two-some years, “This Red Montana guy is pretty rad, I wish I could totally party down with him.”

Well now you can.

This Wednesday, the 15th — TWO DAYS FROM NOW — I’ll be hosting the coolest pro-union get toether this little town has seen in decades. I cordially invite you to the…

Employee Free Choice Act Letter-Writing Party
Hosted by the Butte area Young Communist League
WHEN: Wednesday, April 15th — 7:30pm
WHERE: Butte, MT (contact me for the address…all are welcome, I just don’t want to publicize it on the blog)
WHAT: We’ll be writing letters to Montana’s Senators to tell them that we support the Employee Free Choice Act. This week is the Senate recess, so they’ll all be in the State. It’s the best time to get in touch with our people in Washington. If we get enough people to show up to make it worth doing, we will discuss plans to hand deliver the letters to the Senators’ local offices. Oh, and there will be some light refreshments served.

Again, everyone is welcome. If you want to swing by, contact me for the address. And bring  a friend. Bring four friends. Bring 100. Bring your grandma. Any pro-labor letter writers are welcome. We’ll have paper and pens and all that jazz available, so don’t worry about a thing (although if you wanna throw a few cents in to the paper fund we’ll gladly let you utilize our donation jar). We’ll also have good company, snacks, communist propaganda, maybe some tunes, some and a little time to munch & mingle.

So please, please, PLEASE get in touch with me, and swing by Wednesday night. I would really like to see as many people as possible. See you there!

Announcing MTFreeChoice.Info

The past couple weeks I’ve really been hammering on the Employee Free Choice Act on this blog, and it has become the semi-official cause of the Butte-area Reds at the moment. Toward that end, we’ve published a website about the Employee Free Choice Act — what it is, why it’s good, what you can do to help, etc.

http://www.mtfreechoice.info/

Please go ahead and check it out! I hope it will help some of you pro-labor people get involved and take action. Also, if you could, we have a flyer up for the website, and I’d really appreciate it if you could print out a few copies and help spread the word around Montana.

We’ll probably be trying to ramp up the actions around this issue, each one building on another. First we’ll hand out some flyers/leaflets, then if we generate a “buzz”, get a petition table set up. And if that goes really well, possibly even having a rally or demo of some sort. So anyway, please help get the word out about the Act and the website, and stay tuned for any updates.

North Korea: Launch Away!

North Korea is going to launch a satellite into space, and the West doesn’t like it. Why? They want you to think that it’s because they feel threatened that this could be a secret missile test. Their own people say otherwise, though (emphasis added):

U.S. intelligence analysts continue to believe that North Korea aims to launch a communications satellite rather than conducting a missile test, which would violate a U.N. resolution. However, the rocket launch would yield data directly applicable to its long-range ballistic missile program.

Of course the same technology used in aerospace is also used for warfare. But the same could be said of anything. What’s next? Is North Korea not allowed to have commercial airliners because airplanes can also carry bombs? Maybe we should pass a UN Resolution banning reading in North Korea because Koreans could read about military tactics and that would be bad.

I don’t buy the whole “dual purpose” argument.

What I think this is, is an attempt by the West to keep the Koreans from becoming self-sufficient. All the sanctions imposed against the DPRK for doing things that we do on a routine basis — like having nuclear power plants and maintaining a nuclear arsenal — wouldn’t really work if some day they were to become self sufficient and not rely on other countries to get by. And one thing that the West can cut off from the Koreans is communications…that is, unless they can put their own satellites into space.

It’s no secret that North Korea has some serious problems and is in many ways a backward country. But every time they try to do something to bring themselves out of the “dark ages”, whether it be by building a nuclear power plant or launching a satellite into space, Washington, Tokyo and Seoul step in and say “you can’t do that!” Say what you will about North Korea, but can you blame them for telling the rest of the world to fuck off? If I were a North Korean I would be tired of more powerful countries treating me like the little kid everyone pushes around. I think that’s exactly how they feel, which is why they’re always making “provacative” maneuvers.